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| | The Writing Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
 | | A good thesis, then, is essential to a well-written analytical essay, and at least four things are essential to a good thesis: it must be clearly defined, adequately focused, well supported, and relatively high in the orders of knowledge. |
 | | For example, if your "thesis" is that "In experiments conducted by the American Cancer Institue, 70 percent of the rats subjected to cigarette smoke over a two-year period died of lung cancer," your paper can hardly develop into anything more than a report about the experiments and their results. |
 | | A good thesis, though essential to a good analytical essay, is not a panacea for sloppy exposition--there are scores of other things you must consider as you compose (such as style, syntax, organization, originality, punctuation, and diction). |
| www.rpi.edu /dept/llc/writecenter/web/thesis.html (1284 words) |
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