Most every writing teacher can relate to the curse of reading yet another incoherent essay, the contents of which resemble an unorganized junk drawer of thoughts. Such essays cry out for a main idea. The remedy is a thesis, and teachers rightly take pains to help students discover this. Yet in spite of this, writing teachers ought to bear in mind…

In The Ox-Bow Incident," author Walter Van Tilburg Clark dramatizes the truth that speakers who whould urge men to think before acting need at least as much courage as those who would act first and think later." (Author/RD)