← Chapter 4
English Composition · Chapter 4

Shape, Placement & the Promise Audit

Use the six shapes the way a carpenter uses a jig: they get the angle right, you still cut the wood. Pick a shape, then type your own material into the slots — the sentence assembles live. The panel on the right reads the sentence back and lists what your reader is now entitled to expect, because a thesis is a promise about the document. Then scrub the placement slider and see what moving it costs.

1 · Choose a shape, fill the slots

2 · Where does the claim sit?

Schematic of an essay showing where the thesis sentence sits among the paragraphs. INTRODUCTION CONCLUSION
Risk in a graded paper low

Your sentence

The trap in this shape
Remember: a thesis has to be one idea, not necessarily one sentence. Complex claims often need two — one to concede the obvious objection, one to state the position. Cramming both into a single sentence usually produces a clause pile no reader can parse.

The promise audit

Your reader will hold you to the sentence’s scope, its verbs and its emphasis. Here is what this wording has just committed you to deliver.