Getting Started: Consider Topic, Audience, Purpose T he first step in writing an academic essay—what is often called the prewriting stage— involves selecting and reflecting upon your topic, considering the needs and expectations of your readers, and establishing your purpose. You must, of course, keep the needs and expectations of your readers in mind and continue to refine your purpose while you draft your essay. But if you consider your TAP (topic, audience, and purpose) before you begin to draft, you will generate some ideas you can use to develop your essay and will begin to develop the voice and style you want to use to complete the assignment successfully . Reflect upon Your Topic If you are like most students, you begin work on an academic essay immediately by annotating the assignment sheet containing the list of topics your professor has given you. You circle the number of the topic that most appeals to you, underline a key phrase or two, and make a few preliminary notes about main points to cover and references to check. Perhaps then you put a question mark beside another topic or two that you could turn to if your first choice doesn’t work out. Perhaps in other topics you find information that might provide some insights into the topic you have chosen. If your teacher wants you to choose your own topic, you likely will undertake a different strategy. You may browse through your lecture notes and textbooks, underlining and highlighting sentences and phrases that interest you, trying to find preliminary connections between and among them, connections that might eventually lead to an interesting and feasible topic. These are good strategies, good places to begin. The simple process of annotating your assignment sheet or selecting your own topic will center your assignment, encourage you to come up with some ideas to develop your topic, and help you focus the research you eventually will have to carry out . Your topic, whether your teacher assigns it or you choose it, likely will contain key words that will help clarify the nature of the assignment. Read the assignment sheet and list of topics carefully. Look for terms such as describe, explain, define, discuss, compare and contrast, and analyze. To describe, in the context of an academic essay assignment, is to put into words the characteristics of your subject: Describe the architecture of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. To explain usually requires the delineation in words of a process: Explain the process of photosynthesis. To define involves identifying the group to which a concept belongs and then distinguishing it from other members of that group; if you had to define the term democracy, you would identify it as a form of government and then illustrate how it differs from other forms. To discuss usually presupposes causes: Discuss the causes of World War I. To compare and contrast requires you to point out the similarities and differences between the two items that are the subject of your essay: Compare and contrast the themes and styles of “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” To analyze is to examine closely one or more of the component parts of a process or an action or an artifact (often a written text), usually as part of the larger process of analyzing the whole: Analyze Tiger Woods’s long-iron game. Stick to your topic and focus on that key word contained within it. If you are asked to compare and contrast “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” do not discuss the life of John Keats, except insofar as it might be relevant to the main topic. If you are asked to discuss the causes of World War I, do not compare and contrast the peace settlement of World War I with the peace settlement of World War II. Teachers often complain that a recurring problem in student writing is a tendency to drift away from the topic . ●Freewriting Having considered carefully the wording of your topic, you are ready to do some brainstorming, freewriting, and other creative thinking activities designed to help you come up with information and insights that might eventually be useful in developing the paragraphs in your essay. Freewriting is a form of brainstorming on paper. It is a technique designed to help unblock the creative process by forcing you to write something—anything—about the subject of your assignment. The process is as follows. Using your assignment as a prompt, you write nonstop for a limited period of time, usually about ten minutes. You write whatever comes into your mind without worrying about spelling, grammar, or any other aspects of “correct” writing. No one but you sees your freewriting. After the ten minutes are up, you read your freewriting and extract from it ideas and information that might be useful to you as you write your essay. You can use these ideas as additional prompts and freewrite again and even a third time if you feel the exercise will yield results. (For an example of freewriting done as part of the prewriting process for an academic essay, see—on page 28—the freewriting Hannah did when she began working on her essay about our celebrity culture ). ●W5 + H1 Questions There are several variations on the freewriting process—other activities designed to do the same thing: to generate ideas. Journalists are taught the W5 and H1 strategy, which is a method of asking and answering the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how as they are developing and reporting a story. This strategy can be adapted to academic writing as well. When you have selected your topic, make up a list of W5 and H1 questions about it. Who will be reading this essay? What does he or she want from me? Who are the important people relevant to the topic? Where did important events related to my topic take place? What do I want to accomplish? When did the events relevant to my topic take place? Why did events transpire as they did? Why is this subject important? How will my reader evaluate my work? Some of these questions you will be able to answer, and at least parts of those answers eventually will find their way into your essay. Some questions you will not be able to answer, but by asking them, you at least will begin to focus your research . ●Webbing Webbing is a similar strategy, one that exploits our ability to generate ideas through free association. In the middle of a piece of paper, write and circle the topic or the concept of the paper that has been assigned to you. Jot down ideas as they occur to you and arrange them randomly around your topic or central concept. Circle each idea and draw lines between and among them and the central concept to illustrate their various relationships to each other. This linking process is especially valuable because it can reveal relationships between ideas that might not otherwise have occurred to you, relationships that might help you see an effective structure for your essay. Suppose, for example, that you are a business major taking a marketing course. You are assigned to write an essay about how toy manufacturers market dolls. Such a topic requires research, of course, but before you begin the research process, you might try a web as a way to provide some focus and impose some structure onto your topic. Write and circle, in the center of a blank page, the phrase marketing dolls and see what connections you can make. (See the example on the next page Consider Your Reader Writing an academic essay is a process of analyzing and synthesizing knowledge, a way of helping us to know and understand our topic in a meaningful, complex ,and intense way. Writing is so important a school subject—one of “the three R’s”—because it requires active learning: You learn a lesson thoroughly when you have to express your knowledge of its content in writing. You don’t, however, write academic essays only for yourself. Other invisible but important participants are involved in the process: your readers. You write an essay to inform your readers, to provide them with information you want them to have or that they have requested. Or you write to convince your readers that your position on a debatable issue is valid. It is important that you consider the needs and expectations of your readers before you begin to write and while you draft, revise, and edit. Your readers will influence the content and the style of your text and, on some level, will judge its quality . ●Readers Influence Content Your primary reader is your teacher. You might share your essay with a classmate, a friend, a tutor in your writing center, or a family member and get his or her input before you hand in your essay. Your professor might show your essay to a colleague or share it with the rest of the class. After you graduate, you might write for an employer, an employee, or a professional organization to which you belong. Throughout your life, you will write for a variety of readers, and you will have to remember that different readers require different information, even about the same subject. An article about the new Chrysler engine written for an automotive engineer would be quite different from an article on the same subject written for a car salesperson or a potential customer. For now your primary reader is your teacher, and it is his or her needs and expectations you must meet. Those needs and expectations should be evident from the assignment sheet or from class discussion about the nature of the assignment. If they are not, it is important to find out from your professors what their expectations are. Professors might want original ideas or some evidence you have a solid understanding of the course content already covered. They might want you to tell something about the topic they do not already know, or they might want your take on one of the debatable issues discussed in class. Know what your reader wants, try to achieve those goals while you write, and your work will have a clearer focus. It will help, as well, to know how long your reader expects your essay to be. Length will determine the level of detail you are expected to provide. An economics professor, for example, could ask for a 1,000-word or a 5,000-word essay on the law of supply and demand; the length would dictate the level of detail you would include in such an essay. Meet or exceed slightly the required length. If you do Finally, clarify any important aspect of the assignment your teacher may not have made clear. Question anything not clear to you: Do you want us to include a plot summary along with our analysis of the story? How many sources do you expect us to cite? Are there sources you particularly recommend? How many words do you want? May we use subtitles? The more you know about what your reader wants, the more successful your writing will be . ●Readers Influence Style Style identifies the manner in which you present information to your readers. If you are sending an e-mail to your friend, your writing style will be informal; your sentence structure might be fragmented; you may use slang; you will not be overly concerned about spelling. The readers of your academic essays, in contrast, are well-educated women and men working with you in an academic setting. They will expect you to present your information in a mature and relatively formal writing style. You should not be flippant or sarcastic in an academic essay, nor, at the other extreme, should you be pedantic. Try to strike a balance with a style that is smooth and natural but appropriate for a welleducated reader. Most of your textbooks should be written in such a style and might provide you with a model to emulate. Here, for example, is a paragraph from the essay “The Qualities of a Grade A Essay” by Edna Bell, a student in a school of education. The entire essay is on pages 166–169. The second quality of a Grade A essay, report, or article is that it meets the needs and expectations of its readers or “audience,” to use the term many composition scholars prefer (Lunsford and Straub 179). Writers for newspapers, magazines, journals, and book publishers have an implied contract with their readers that they will present certain information, at a certain rhetorical level, in a certain style. Student academic writing is usually read and assessed by teachers and professors, who expect students to obey the rules of Standard English (Blaauw-Hara). They want to see smooth and logical transitions between and among sentences within a paragraph and paragraphs within the essay or report as a whole. They don’t want to see errors in sentence grammar, sentence structure, spelling, or punctuation. They want academic voice and academic style. Academic voice is formal and steady, not ostentatious, not flippant, not sarcastic, while academic style is generally clear and concise, specifically aligned with the discourse conventions of the discipline. Scientists, for example, writing for an academic audience typically use a comparatively clear and simple sentence structure; they will use the language of their discipline, assuming that their readers share their knowledge of that language. Humanists also will use the special language—the jargon—of their discipline but typically Note, first, the length of the paragraph. At 224 words, it is longer than the typical paragraph in a letter, e-mail, newspaper, or popular magazine, but not much longer than a typical paragraph in an academic journal. It has nine sentences, with an average length of 25 words. The sentence structure is varied: the first sentence is simple; the second, complex; the third, complex; the fourth, simple; the fifth, simple; the sixth, simple; the seventh, complex; the eighth, compound; and the ninth, compound. The voice is clear and formal but not ostentatious. The paragraph is typical of the style of solid academic undergraduate writing . ●Readers Judge Quality A friend who receives your e-mail will not judge your sentence structure, paragraph structure, spelling, or grammar. Your friend just wants the news, a casual, friendly response to his or her questions, a diversion. Those who read your writing in an academic or business setting will judge its quality. Other students might be invited to read and respond to a draft of your essay, to make suggestions about how to make it better. In the future, colleagues and bosses will read your work and, at least indirectly, will judge its quality, especially if it does not give them the information they require. For now, the primary judge of the quality of your writing is your professor, who will pass ultimate judgment on your work by giving it a grade. You are well advised to try to find out everything you can about the criteria your professor will use to assess your work. If your professor provides you with a list of the criteria, work closely with it as you write and revise your essay. Studies indicate that students who understand the criteria on which their writing will be judged write better essays than students who do not know how their teachers will evaluate their writing. If your professor does not have a set of evaluative criteria or, for one reason or another, cannot provide students with one, at least keep in mind, while you draft, revise, and edit, those basic criteria for good academic writing we have already discussed: intelligence, substance, clarity, and energy. Try to write an intelligent and informative essay that is well supported with details, facts, and examples, clearly expressed in a strong and confident voice . Establish Your Purpose After you have considered the needs of your reader, consider your purpose in writing this academic essay. We write for many reasons: We write a letter to exchange news with friends; we write a poem to express our feelings; we keep a journal to record daily observations . Academic writing has usually one of two purposes: to provide information that a teacher has requested or to advance an argument about an issue related to the subject you are studying. In other words, academic essays generally are written in either the expository or the persuasive rhetorical mode . ●Expository Mode An expository or informative essay presents complete and accurate information about a specific topic. If you are asked to discuss the causes of the conflict in the Middle East, to explain how to treat a victim of a heart attack, to define poststructuralism, to compare and contrast Freudian and Jungian methods of treating obsessive- compulsive disorder, or to explain the rules of basketball, you will write an informative essay. The purpose of an informative essay is to provide your reader with information he or she has requested or can use. There are several different patterns by which expository academic essays are typically developed. One or any combination of these patterns may be used to structure and develop an expository academic essay. Usually, one pattern will dominate, but others will be present. There may also be some elements of a narrative or persuasive mode within an expository framework. One common expository mode is the process analysis, which details the parts of a process and their relationships with each other. If your health sciences professor asks you to write an essay about the circulation of the blood through the body or about how the body converts carbohydrates into energy, you will write a process paper. If your physical education professor asks you to write an essay about teaching children how to swim, you will write a process paper. Another common expository mode is the cause and/or effect essay. Your economics professor, for example, might ask you to write an essay in which you explain the causes of inflation or the effects inflation has on a certain community. Your European history teacher might ask you to explain the causes of the Crimean War or to discuss changes to (the effects on) the map of Europe that resulted from the war. Your marketing professor might ask you to write an essay about why an advertising campaign for a fast-food restaurant failed or to write about how the failure affected the management structure and practices of the company. For a major paper, professors often combine the cause and effect modes: What causes inflation, and how does inflation affect an industrialized society? What caused the Crimean War, and how did the war change the map of Europe? Why did the marketing campaign fail, and what effect did the failure have on the company as a whole? In “Are Drinking Games Sports? College Athlete Participation in Drinking Games and Alcohol-Related Problems,” printed in Part Two, Joel Grossbard and his research colleagues speculate on the possibility of a causal relationship between participation in college sports and alcohol abuse . A third expository mode is the comparison/contrast essay. Compare and contrast the developmental theories of Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner; compare and contrast Immanuel Kant’s and Johann Goethe’s concept of free will; compare and contrast the marketing campaigns of McDonald’s and Wendy’s. Professors often use compare/contrast assignments because these challenge the analytical ability of their students, who have to juggle and ultimately synthesize similarities and differences between two objects or concepts. The compare/contrast mode demands a fairly sophisticated organizational structure. For a good example of a compare/ contrast essay, see “Faculty and College Student Beliefs About the Frequency of Student Academic Misconduct,” by Hard, Conway, and Moran, in Part Three. A fourth expository mode is the analysis/interpretation essay. Analyze and interpret Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the foreign policy of President Clinton, the presidential campaign strategies of Barack Obama, Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night, Henry VII’s role in discrediting Richard III, the advertising campaigns of hybrid cars: If you have been a college student for more than two years, you undoubtedly have encountered assignments similar to these. Analysis is the process of dividing your subject of study, your topic, into its component parts. Interpretation is the process of assessing and describing how those parts coalesce into a coherent whole and cause the enterprise you are analyzing to succeed or to break down. To write a successful analysis/interpretation essay, then, you need to define the distinguishing features of the whole, divide the whole into its component parts, analyze the parts, and interpret the relationship of the parts to the whole. In “From Sex to Sexuality: Exposing the Heterosexual Script on Primetime Network Television,” in Part Three, Janna L. Kim and her colleagues analyze the gender content of several popular television programs and draw certain interpretations—about these programs’ obsession with masculine sexual prowess, female sexuality, the nature of contemporary sexual politics—from that analysis . A fifth expository mode is the problem/solution essay, topics for which are typically framed in the form of questions. Why did fourth-graders from poor families score low on a nationwide math test, and how can educators improve math education for this group? Why is Iran a threat to our national security, and how can we reduce this threat? Why did it take the Democratic Party so long to select a candidate for the 2008 presidential election, and what can the party do to make the process more efficient in the future? These essays have two parts: a full explanation of the nature of the problem, followed by an analysis of solutions and their likelihood of success. The student essay in Part Two, “Saving the Vancouver Island Marmot,” is a good example of a problem/solution essay . Vancouver Island Marmot,” is a good example of a problem/solution essay. Problem Once abundant in central and southern Vancouver Island, the marmot has become an endangered species . Solution Fortunately, British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment and the general public are aware of the problem and want to implement an aggressive program to save Marmota vancouverensis from extinction. A sixth expository mode is the essay developed by details and examples. Of course, details and examples are important components of all modes of academic discourse, but some academic essays have as their primary developmental system a series of facts, details, and examples. What hockey teams use the neutral-zone trap effectively? What are the most challenging mountains to climb? Who is the leading U.S. sportswear designer? These are examples of topics that require a thesis and details to support the examples. Knowledge of the modes of the expository essay can help you structure an essay successfully and stay on topic. But remember that an academic essay is often a combination of several modes, even though one usually predominates . ●Persuasive Mode The purpose of a persuasive essay, in part, is to present information to your readers. But its primary purpose is to convince or persuade your readers that your views on a particular controversial topic are valid and legitimate. If you are asked to discuss the causes of the civil war in Kosovo, you will write an informative essay, but if you are asked how you feel about NATO’s involvement in the war, you will write a persuasive essay. If you are asked to write an essay synthesizing the reasons why Islamic fundamentalists attacked the World Trade Center, you will write an informative essay, but if you are asked to write an essay in support of or in opposition to military action in Saudi Arabia as part of a campaign to end terrorism, you will write a persuasive essay. If you are asked to define and explain the process of poststructuralist criticism, you will write an informative essay, but if you are asked if you believe poststructuralism is a viable method of literary analysis, you will write a persuasive essay. Often academic essays straddle the expository/argumentative border. Valerie Wee’s essay, “Resurrecting and Updating the Teen Slasher: The Case of Scream,” in Part Three is clearly an argument. The first sentence of the abstract notes, “The author . . . disputes,” and the second begins, “She argues.” But the first third of the essay is expository, in that the author traces the history of the slasher genre, reviews the literature on slasher films that preceded the Scream series, and summarizes the plots of the films in the series. She then proceeds to advance her argument, the core of which is that the Scream films are not conservative and reactionary but advance a feminist agenda . Hannah is taking a sophomore-level course in cultural studies. To fulfill the course requirements, Hannah must write an academic essay of approximately 1,500 words on a topic related to the content of the course and of interest to her. Hannah enjoyed most the unit on popular culture, especially her professor’s lecture on the general public’s obsession with even the most trivial aspects of the lives of celebrities. She decided she would like to do her essay on this topic. She knows this is a broad topic and that, as she proceeds, she will have to narrow her focus. For now, she is considering several possibilities: the history of celebrity obsession, the role of the media in perpetuating a celebrity culture, the dangerous role of the paparazzi, celebrities as role models for college students, the reasons why the public is obsessed with celebrities, and the effect this obsession has on celebrity watchers . Hannah considers her reader: My reader is my cultural studies professor. I am writing my essay on an aspect of popular culture but I am writing for an academic audience, so the content of my essay and its voice and style will have to respect the traditions of academic discourse. I am going to have to do a lot of research for this essay, and my prof will expect me to use reliable and authoritative sources. There will be a lot of unreliable and less than authoritative sources on celebrity obsession—probably thousands on the Internet, so I will have to be careful to verify the qualifications of the authors whose work I use. Prof. Ellis requires MLA format and five to ten sources . Hannah determines her purpose: What do I want to accomplish with this essay? I don’t think our obsession with the lifestyles of the rich and famous is healthy. Do I want to write an argument about the need to live our own lives and to not live vicariously through other people? Or I could do an expository essay tracing the history of how we have treated celebrities in America, say, from 1900 to the present. Or maybe limit it to film stars. That would make an interesting historical essay that might trace the way we have idolized or reviled film stars from the 1920s to the present day. But I think at this point that I am most interested in the reasons why there are so many television programs and magazines about rich and famous people. What need are we trying to fulfill? I think people obsessed with celebrities have self-esteem issues. This approach would combine the informative and persuasive modes. There must be a lot of commentary about the effects of celebrity worship on our personality and on the way we relate to others—our family, friends, coworkers . Hannah tries some freewriting: At seven o’clock on any weeknight, I can watch at least 3 tv shows about the lifestyles of the rich and famous—what they are wearing, who they are dating, what kind of trouble they are in with the law, when their babies are due, what their houses are like, what kind of car they are driving . . . half an hour later I can watch another 3. When I go to Borders or Barnes and Noble, I can’t even count the number of magazines I can read that focus on celebrities. Why have we gone so crazy? Why are we so obsessed with these people? Does the media create a celebrity culture and do we just go along like sheep? Or is the media just responding to our inherent interest in rich and famous and beautiful people? Are we lacking something in our own lives? Faith? Love? Why do we do this? How can I narrow down a topic so I can write an essay about this? Should I write an argument—we need to stop this madness. Should I do a literature review? I could do an informative essay about some aspect of the topic. I could zero in on a certain type of celebrity—athlete, pop star, television star, film star. Even politicians are fair game these days. There is some psychological need we have, some need we need to fulfill that explains all this. I’m guilty too. Maybe I could write something about the reasons why I watch these shows and at least browse through theses magazines. Those tabloids are at the checkout counter at the grocery store. No one admits buying them but their circulation is huge. Maybe there is a topic there. Maybe there is a certain demographic—do poor people buy these tabloids? Does everyone regardless of race or class? I think women buy them more than men. I’ll check this out. Housewives. What about age ? Hannah considers a preliminary thesis: At this stage of the process, Hannah is considering three possible central ideas for her essay: ■Historical approach: Ever since the 1920s, America has been fascinated by the lives of its film stars, but today this fascination has evolved into an obsession. ■Identity-based approach: People who are obsessed with the lifestyles of the rich and famous are lacking something in their own live—friends, self-esteem. ■Media-based approach: The media has created a dangerous and vicious cycle, whereby it responds to the public’s demand for information about famous people and then fuel the demand by intruding more and more into every aspect of the lives of celebrities, destroying their right to privacy and even threatening their safety. At this point these thesis statements are in draft form. The one Hannah chooses will be clearer and more refined when it appears in the final draft of her paper . Compose Your Thesis Statement The end of the beginning of the writing process is the composition of the thesis statement. The thesis statement is an expression of the central or controlling idea of your entire essay. It is the essence of your academic essay, what would be left if you put your essay into a pot and boiled it down to its most essential component. Your thesis might be very specific and incorporate the main point you want to make about your topic plus the supporting points. Here is an example of such a thesis statement for an informative essay about taking effective photographs: To take good pictures, a photographer must pay attention to composition, lighting, and point of view. Such a thesis is effective because it provides your reader with a blueprint, a mini plan of the body of your essay. It suggests to the reader that those three points— composition, lighting, and point of view—will be developed in more detail in subsequent paragraphs. For a more complex essay—a persuasive essay, for example—a detailed thesis might be difficult to compose and hard to understand. For such essays, you might prefer a more general thesis, as in the following example: If he were judged by today’s standards, the narrator of John Donne’s poem “The Flea” likely would face a charge of sexual harassment. This thesis has a persuasive edge to it, which means the writer will have to acknowledge and refute opposing points and then develop and support his or her own argument. Here a general thesis is preferable because a blueprint thesis would have to encompass so much, it would seem unwieldy. Professors often assign broad topics and expect students to narrow the topic down to a viable thesis. Broad topics are good in that they allow you to compose a thesis of interest to you and to write about whichever aspect of the topic you want to write about. But they do require you to have a strategy for narrowing a topic down to a workable thesis. For such assignments, the invention strategies discussed for reflecting on your topic—especially freewriting—work effectively. You can also narrow a topic effectively by thinking about the topic in the context of the rhetorical modes, discussed earlier in this chapter. Does the topic lend itself to a compare/ contrast approach? A process analysis? An explanation of causes and/or effects? Khaliq is a business major taking a course in business ethics. His professor wants a term paper “related to the theme of the course.” The course has focused on recent cases of ethical malfeasance in certain American corporations and on laws, old and new, that attempt to curtail ethical violations. As Khaliq reviews the content of the course and freewrites about aspects of the course that interest him, he is struck by the number of laws Congress has had to pass to regulate business practices. He knows that new laws will probably be needed to regulate Internet businesses, and he considers the Internet and the law as a possible topic. But he knows this idea is still too broad. As he walks around his campus, he notices that outside the bookstore, tables are set up and piled with fake Louis Vuitton purses, Burberry scarves, and other faux designer merchandise on sale for a small fraction of the cost of the originals. He is surprised the vendors can sell this merchandise with impunity and wants to find out if what they are doing is legal and, if it is, if laws need to be developed to prevent the sales of fake goods. Using LexisNexis as his first source, he begins to research the topic. What he finds surprises him. It is illegal for a retailer to sell designer goods that he or she claims are real. But it is not illegal to sell “knockoffs,” which are imitations of the real things the vendors admit are imitations. In fact, Khaliq learns that knockoffs do not have an adverse impact on the sales of the original products and may even increase their appeal. His topic becomes “Why Laws Against ‘Knockoff’ Products Will Never Be Passed ”. ●Placement of the Thesis The thesis statement is often the final sentence of the introductory paragraph. Here, for example, is the introductory paragraph for an essay called “Prototypes for the Characters in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.” Note the clear thesis statement that concludes the paragraph: William Shakespeare was a master at describing and developing characters who are so complex and intriguing that they have become a part of our shared cultural heritage. Most literate people in the English-speaking world, indeed the whole world, know of Lear, Othello, Falstaff, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo, and Juliet. Many of Shakespeare’s characters seem so real, in part, because they were based upon historical figures, even if the playwright did take some dramatic license in depicting these people, their motives, and their actions. Similarly, the people who appear in Shakespeare’s famous sequence of 154 sonnets are rendered so authentic that many scholars, encouraged by Shakespeare’s tendency to base his characters on real people, have suggested that, taken together, the sonnets tell a story based on the poet’s own experiences and that the characters in the sonnets have real-life prototypes . The thesis might be expressed in the form of a question, which the rest of the essay will answer. Here is the first paragraph for an essay about gender and pronoun agreement: There is no doubt that the feminist movement has influenced the English language. Only the most linguistically conservative have problems now addressing a woman, directly or in a letter, as “Ms.” Sexist words such as policeman and fireman have given way to police officers and firefighters. Restaurants hire servers now, not waiters and waitresses; airlines hire flight attendants, not stewardesses. But one problem with gender-neutral language remains. How should writers use singular pronouns to refer to a singular gender-neutral noun they use in a sentence ? The thesis might be spread over two sentences if the essay is long and complex. Many academic essays do not even contain a recognizable single-sentence thesis in their introductions, but the essay’s central idea will certainly be implicit within the essay’s introduction, especially when the essay’s title helps establish a context for the introduction. Jermaine had to write a definition essay for his first-year composition class. He chose to define the term racism, and he titled his essay “Not Our Fathers’ Race War.” Here is his opening paragraph: A half century ago, racism in America was transparent and undeniable. Indeed, the legal system, especially in the South, institutionalized racism with laws that enforced segregation. African-Americans were denied entry into white schools, churches, and restaurants and were herded to the back of buses and subways. The Civil Rights Movement gradually abolished segregation laws, and if it is not yet completely color-blind, the American legal system now presupposes racial equality. Yet some argue that racism is alive and well, even if it is expressed in more subtle ways. Geraldine Ferraro, a prominent liberal Democrat, once a vice presidential candidate, has been, to her amazement, vilified and branded a racist for saying Barack Obama is a contender for the presidency because he is African-American. On the cover of Vogue magazine, basketball great LeBron James has his left arm around supermodel Gisele Bundchen; he is bouncing a basketball with his right hand, and he is screaming. Gisele is smiling, but the scream has some social commentators accusing Vogue of racism because that scream combined with LeBron’s size and his menacing body language perpetuate the stereotype Jermaine’s thesis is that the term racism has become difficult to define because, now more than ever before, it is in the eye of the beholder. Words and actions with no intentional racial animus are being interpreted as racially insensitive. There is not a single sentence in this paragraph that states the thesis in so many words, but through the examples Jermaine presents, his thesis is implied . Note, finally, that at this stage of the writing process, your thesis statement is preliminary. As you think more about your topic, do some research, and write a few paragraphs, your central focus might change, and you might return to the beginning of your essay and alter your thesis. Eric, a business major, was writing an essay about the drawbacks of collaborative management. He wanted to make the point that a company is best off with a single strong leader, a person who has the charisma, vision, and work ethic that inspires employees and brings out the best in them. He knew he was going against current conventional wisdom that stressed the value of a collaborative approach—the “there is no I in team” approach. His early attempts at formulating a thesis were heavy-handed, criticizing as they did political correctness, arguing that democracy was fine for a government but counterproductive to business, and suggesting that a benevolent dictatorship was an ideal model for business leadership. His professor pointed out to him that he risked alienating readers, offending them even, if he appeared to question political correctness and support dictatorship in any form. He needed a less threatening, wittier opening to undercut so controversial a topic. After writing and rejecting several possibilities, Eric finally settled on the following : In today’s business climate, collaborative management is held in high esteem, business executives reasoning that teamwork involves all in decision making and fosters a happier and hence more productive work environment. But a camel, the old saying goes, is a horse designed by a committee. When too many people are making decisions, arguing for their own point of view, and ultimately being forced to compromise, productivity declines, morale suffers, and decisions are delayed. Although in theory an enlightened and democratic concept, in practice collaborative management is less effective than management by a single person, one who inspires confidence, has some vision, and wins the loyalty of employees . Conclusion In writing, as in so many other activities, a strong start helps assure a smooth journey and a solid finish. You dramatically improve the chances your work will be well received if you take some time—before you draft—to consider the needs and expectations of your readers. Your work will be substantive if you take some time during the prewriting stage to generate relevant information. And if you are certain of your purpose before you begin to draft, your writing will project that rhetorical confidence good writers strive for and expectant readers appreciate . WRITING ASSIGNMENT Write an essay of approximately 500 words in which you describe “the typical reader” of a magazine with which you are familiar. The articles in the magazine, the ads, and the letters to the editor will give you valuable clues about the target audience at which the magazine is aimed. Include in your essay such information as the gender, age, interests, and personality of the typical reader. Note that this assignment calls for an expository essay . EXERCISE 1. Use the methods discussed in this chapter to generate ideas for an essay on each of the following topics: ■A person who has had a significant influence on your life ■Typical characteristics of the dysfunctional family ■The benefits of school uniforms ■A review of a restaurant where you have eaten recently ■Strikes by professional athletes ■Sexual harassment ■A topic already assigned to you in another course you are taking (make up your own topic if you have not yet been given an assignment) read Chapter 2 "Getting Started: Consider Topic, Audience, Purpose" and complete on pp. 32-33, Writing Assignment AND Exercises ~ Sixth Edition Publication a American Psychological Association • Washington, DC Copyright © 2010 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. 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