Thesis Statement: the devil or the deep blue sea

HPS 210F Comments on Essay 1

Comments on Essay 1

Thesis Statement: the devil or the deep blue sea . . .
- Have a clear thesis in your introduction. Never leave your reader guessing regarding your argument.

- Thesis statement was too general and/or didn't actually say anything or argue anything (e.g.: of the "this essay will discuss..." variety) = deep blue sea.

- Thesis statements that are WAY too ambitious (usually resulting in a surface treatment of all the ideas they bring in) = devil.

- "This paper will compare and contrast Aristotle and Aquinas with respect to their views about God" is not a clear thesis, as it is of the ‘deep blue sea’ kind. You should summarize what argument you will make, and how you will support it. Which specific views about God are we talking about, for instance? If Aristotle was pre-Christian, then such a thesis really needs clarification. ‘Too vague’ means you are not actually committing yourself to a specific argument. “I will compare Aristotle and Aquinas regarding physics and God” is both vague and a ‘devil’, the ‘devil’ being the sin of biting off more than one can or should chew in a small essay. See comments on ‘Focus’

- In fact, it is a good idea to write the body of your essay first, and then go back and write your introduction and thesis statement by paraphrasing what you wrote in the body of the essay. By the time someone finishes reading your introduction, they should understand your basic argument.

- A ‘thesis statement’ is NOT like a laundry list of two positions, as if a thesis about the question “compare and contrast A and B” could be “This essay will show that A says a, b, and c, whereas B says only a and b, and adds e.” A thesis statement is YOUR opinion about the contrast, based upon your selection of some subset of the writings available to you.

Focus:
- You must select a specific topic. Avoid trying to compare and contrast the entire intellectual achievements of two historical figures, for instance. The essay should have a much narrower focus.

- Your guiding thought should be “cut a slice through all the possible things they say, and narrow down to a particular focus, and then say something decent about that narrow focus.”

- A good trick: constantly ask yourself whether the material you are introducing into your essay is relevant to your thesis. If not, cut it out.

- The narrower your focus is, the more precise becomes your thesis statement. Both work in your favour.

- Never forget that your author is writing in a particular context. Neither take everything they say as absolute truth, nor dismiss their claims as irrational.


Grammar, Organization & Referencing:
- Have somebody - anybody - read your thesis, in order to double-check for clarity.

- Reread for GRAMMAR. When bad grammar obscures your meaning, the line between grammar and content disappears. Your mark suffers accordingly!

- Consult the writing centre (book early!) if grammar was a problem in your first essay.

- Consult a style guide (or see http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/document.html) for proper citation format.

- Your essay will flow better and your argument will be easier to follow if you begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, and make sure all the points in that paragraph are related to its opening sentence. It helps you stay on track.

- Explain concepts and terms as soon as you introduce them.

• 
  Formatting is important. Quotations more than 4 lines long should be indented and most definitely single-spaced. When you indent a quote, do NOT use quotation marks.
  

- Book titles should be underlined or italicized.

- Number your pages, preferably in sequential order…

- When you're "borrowing" a quotation from a secondary source (say an Aristotle quotation in an text by Aquinas), your citation should specify "quoted in...".

- When you reference a preface or an introduction written by an editor/translator of a book, you need to cite your source by the name of the editor/translator, and then list the preface separately in your bibliography.

- If you're referencing some comment by the translator and your citation reads (Aristotle 4), this is confusing, not to mention misleading!
Quotations:
- Quotes back up your argument. They are not to be confused with your actual argument.

- Failure to explain quotations often mean the quotes you are supplying to back up your argument remain, in terms of their evidentiary significance, unclear. This is connected to the general point about the failure to explain how examples (e.g.: Aquinas’ religious beliefs) presented in the body of the paper related to the thesis. It is not enough simply to throw in a quote. YOU, the author, must provide your own argument about how the quote supports your thesis. This is the task you take on, as the author, to insert yourself into your own paper.

- Be careful about trying to make quotations say more than they're actually saying, just so they fit into your argument. Don't force it!

- Avoid floating quotations (quotations that stand alone as a complete sentence). They're grammatically incorrect.

Sources:
- If most of the material in the essay was from lectures and tutorials, you most likely did poorly. If we wanted you to repeat what was given in lecture or tutorial, we would have asked for that in the essay topics. The essays are meant for you to be doing extra research, outside of those contexts.

- Don't rely too heavily on secondary material. You can generally use lecture and tutorial material to obtain sufficient biographical information for your purposes. If you decide to reference secondary material, do not automatically assume that everything the author says is correct.

- The purpose of the essays is for you to read primary sources, as a means to understanding debates and issues in their actual historical context. If your TA was not convinced you had used primary sources, they marked you down accordingly. If you just tore quotes from secondary sources or translator/editor introductions, it normally shows. Keep in mind that what you have ‘in your head’ might not always be what ends up on the page, but your TA just has the page. Be sure you have conveyed the product of your primary source reading on the actual page.
Read the Instructions:
- The essay questions are detailed for a reason. No, it is not to punish you. It is to set out minimal expectations, pointing you to the types of sources you will need to write your essay and the types of topics to address.

- Ensure that you are addressing what you should be addressing. Do not omit important issues that the instructions explicitly ask you to address.

- Do not hassle either the Lecturer or the TA’s with questions that could be answered if you just read through the essay question with due diligence.
Hagiography:
- ‘Hagiography’ is the name given to the intellectual enterprise of research about, and worship of, Saints. Applied to the history of science, it is when one writes about how remarkable people are/were, whether or not they were geniuses, how much they ‘changed the world’, ‘showed us the way’, etc.

- What you wrote: “Scientist X was a remarkable person, who did this and that wonderful thing, golly gee gush gush I would have dated this person if I lived at the same time . . .”

- What your TA thought: “Blah blah blah, I’m skimming this crap, they are wasting my time, I am bored, turning a blind eye now, hoping they will start writing something serious . . . this is just ‘filler’ because they didn’t do enough research, deducting marks abooouuut . . . now.”

- Just assume that they were all very smart, and move on.

- It is just as much a sin to flap on about superior geniuses, as it is irrational fools.

Page of