Sample paper proposal (i.e. topic sentence outline)

Compose a topic sentence outline (see WT2) addrssing the prompt below. Label each element (question, topic sentence, thesis, etc.) and put each on its own "line":

• Question
  
  
• TS1
  
  
• TS2
  
  
• TS3
  
  
• Thesis (TS1 + TS2 + TS3)
  
  

 

Topic prompt: Examine Essig and Owens’s assessment of marriage’s shortcomings in America today.


Central question: What, according to Essig and Owens, are marriage’s shortcomings?

Topic Sentence 1: Essig and Owens argue that marriage is expensive and practiced mostly just by white people with money.

Topic Sentence 2: Essig and Owens show that fewer than a quarter of Americans actually live in married households—just 23%

Topic Sentence 3: Essig and Owens suggest that while marriage was workable in 1900, when the average marriage ended after one of the spouses died, it is unreasonable to expect couples to live together in harmony for forty or fifty years according to typical lifespans in 2020.

Thesis statement: Essig and Owens see shortcomings in marriage today in its being practiced mostly by wealthy white people, in fewer than one-fourth of Americans actually living in married households, and in the unreasonable expectation that couples can stay married for four or five decades as Americans are living so much longer than in the past.