The thesis statement is a one-sentence statement that expresses the main idea of the essay. The thesis statement is an arguable statement that communicates the author's stance on a topic to the reader. In order to better understand the differences between a thesis statement and main idea, it's important to understand the components of an essay. Essentially, it's not a "versus" situation because the thesis statement and main idea cannot exist without the other.
The thesis statement is the foundation of the essay because it tells the reader what the essay will be about and gives the essay direction. The goals of the thesis statement are to organize and development your argument and provide your reader with a road map or guide to your argument. The thesis statement should answer a question about the topic you are exploring as a writer. A good thesis statement will express only one main idea and will assert your conclusion about a topic.
Article continues below this ad
If you are given a topic to write about, it's important to first do your research and identify some main ideas associated with that topic. If you are writing about a piece of literature or specific work, you'll still need to do research but you will also need to read for key concepts or key ideas within that piece of writing first. Consider rereading the piece of literature to locate the main idea of the writer. Once you have located the main idea, you can then generate an opinion about the idea and create your thesis statement.
The topic of an essay is the subject, or what the essay is all about. An idea is what the writer says about the topic. The ideas include the main idea, which is then expressed in the form of a thesis statement. The main idea is not arguable like the thesis statement should be; it's simply an idea. Before writing, you should first develop the main idea because you cannot generate an arguable thesis statement about a topic until you have identified what you think of the topic.
Article continues below this ad
The main idea of an essay is conveyed through the thesis statement and carried out through the topic sentences. An idea cannot be a statement, but a statement conveys an idea, hence the purpose of a thesis statement to state the point of an idea to convey to the reader in the development of an essay. Topic sentences also express the main idea. It's the first sentence of each subsequent paragraph in the essay and should be followed by supporting details, all supporting the topic sentence, which should support the main idea expressed in the thesis statement.