Posted by Adam on Sunday, December 9, 2007 at 3:51pm.
What is your "bad thesis statement"? Sometimes, if it can be changed or streamlined, you can continue -- instead of waiting (more procrastination!) until tomorrow.
-The ruling of “separate but equal” facilities being constitutional in America in the “Plessy vs. Ferguson” case was one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court’s could have made because it led the pathway for the Southern society to become economically unsound, morally unjust, and the decision still scars the American society of today.
Sorry about the grammar error above. Its from me changing it so many times.
That is a good thesis statement...and someone already gave you a good suggestion as to how to structure your paper... one paragraph on each of those items in your last sentence. Use your research to see how Southern society became economically unsound... etc.
We will be happy to help you proof after you have done some writing.
GuruBlue is right. If you are not writing your paper from an outline based on your thesis statement, that's probably your big problem.
I. Intro, incl thesis statement
II. Economically unsound
III. Morally unjust
IV. Scars American society today
V. Conclusion
Each section (II, III, and IV) doesn't have to be a paragraph. In fact, if this is a true research paper, each of those sections probably will have more than one paragraph. Before going any farther, you should write a brief outline or plan for each of those three sections.
Here's a suggestion for redoing your thesis statement a bit:
The ruling that made “separate but equal” facilities constitutional in America in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case was one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court could have made; it led Southern society to become economically unsound, morally unjust, and ultimate scarring of American society even today.
See what you think.
Rethinking: "it led Southern society to become economically unsound, morally unjust, and ultimate scarring of American society even today."
This is difficult to rephrase because it is in the form of a series, and the parts of the series need to be parallel.
... as a result, Southern society became economically unsound, morally unjust, and ________ scarred even today.
http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/parallelism.htm
Be thinking of a better way to state the last part of that series.
-The ruling that made “separate but equal” facilities constitutional in America in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case was one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court could have made; it led Southern society to become economically unsound, morally unjust, and ultimately scarred the American society of today.
or- The ruling that made “separate but equal” facilities constitutional in America in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case was one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court could have made; it led Southern society to become economically unsound, morally unjust, and scarred the American society of today.
In either sentence, that series is still a problem. The sense of what you're writing is clear, so the thesis statement is good.
The problem: All parts of a series need to follow the same pattern to be parallel. This includes parts of speech. In both sentences, this is what the series is composed of:
economically unsound (adverb & adjective)
morally unjust (adverb & adjective)
scarred (verb)
Do you see the issue? The last part of the series needs to be transformed so that it's composed of an adverb followed by an adjective, just as the previous two are.
Another way around this is to get rid of the series and rephrase. Here's a possibility:
... it led Southern society to become economically unsound and morally unjust, and it has scarred American society ever since.
See what you think.
??
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