How Long Is A Thesis Statement (And Why)?

Exact Answer: 1 Sentence Long Or 20 To 50 Words

A thesis, or also known as a dissertation, is a document written by a candidate which has all the information about the writer’s professional researches, or inventions, or any such findings. The complexity, formats, and quality of the research and the thesis can vary from country to country or it also depends upon the university and the type of program. 

The thesis is The structure of a thesis includes the complete and deep explanation of the purpose, previous researches done, methods used, findings from the research, and all other such information about the research. 

How Long Is A Thesis Statement?

To be very specific and straightforward about answering the question that how long should a thesis statement be, it should be just one sentence long or if taking the word limit as the measure, then the thesis statement should range somewhere between 20 words to 50 words. However, while writing the statement of thesis, several factors should be put under consideration as well. The reason behind that is because these factors also determine how long a thesis statement should be. Depending upon those factors, the length of the thesis statement can be either increased or decreased as well.

Here is a quick summary of how long a thesis statement should be according to different calculative units:

However, it is also important to know what kind of topic you have chosen for your thesis. Depending upon the topic, the perfect length for the thesis statement can be decided. There can be topics where it somewhat becomes necessary to write a long thesis statement that can go long enough to range between 60 to 70 words if the word count is taken as the measure, or maybe about 2 to 3 sentences long if the number of sentences is taken as the measure for counting the length of a thesis statement.

In such cases, it becomes extremely important to divide the word count into the number of sentences equally and proportionally. A thesis statement should not have one sentence to belong while the next sentence barely touches the word count of at least 10 words. 

For example, let us assume that if the rough draft of your thesis statement is nearly around 60 words, and you want your thesis statement to have only 3 sentences. Then in such a case, you will have to think smartly such that the word count of the three sentences of your thesis statement ranges between 15 to 20 words.

Why Is A Thesis Statement That Long?

The main purpose of the thesis statement is to give you a quick insight or a quick, short, and precise idea of what the thesis is about. Thus, it becomes extremely important for the thesis statement to be short and precise. Thus, when talking about short and precise statements, the minimum can be 1 sentence long. Therefore, the thesis statement should be just one sentence long only. 

Moreover, talking about word limit, a sentence that ranges between 20 words to 60 words is consistent to be short and precise. Any sentence having a word count of more than 60 words is considered to be lengthy and not a sentence. Therefore, the word limit for a thesis statement is 20 words to 60 words only.

No matter how long or how short your thesis is, what all is included in your thesis, how long it took you to research or write a thesis, you should always and necessarily try to write the thesis statement to the point, accurate and specific.

Conclusion

Although for some people it might sound like a really difficult task to write the thesis statement to be as short as possible, it is not impossible to do. Anyone can write a perfect thesis statement by just following a few steps like not using more supportive words or more conjunctions. The reason behind that is because these words don’t have a major role in describing someone. These words just work on making the sentence seem and sound better.

References

1. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(08)60292-5/fulltext
2. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13501789500000003