As a student, professors increase their requirements for your work as you advance through your education. This increase in expectation includes longer research papers, more in-depth research and more attention to your writing style. Your thesis paper is the important bridge between a professors' goals for your graduate work and the anticipation of your future doctoral work. The work you put into your thesis paper helps prepare you to write your doctoral dissertation, which will be a longer, more intense research project.
Each thesis paper is a unique piece of research, intended to extend the academic information in your area of specialization. Before selecting a thesis topic, you are responsible for reading other thesis projects in your focus, and verifying that no other student has ever produced a thesis on your topic before. This ensures that each thesis project broadens and extends your field of study. Your thesis paper is also your opportunity to create your first academic project, which will be published and stored in your university's library.
The increased expectations in your writing style, which professors expect you to uphold in your thesis project, include an increase in your writing accuracy. Each word and sentence in your thesis needs to say what you intend it to say. For instance, where a statement such as "The Gothic genre began in the Romantic and Victorian periods" would be acceptable for a research paper, on a thesis project, you would be expected to say, "The Gothic genre began in the Romantic period and continued through the Victorian period." Professor review will catch these errors and require you to revise your draft to improve your writing style.
Your thesis project requires more comprehensive research than a standard research paper. This includes using primary sources, written sources closest to the subject of your research, such as using passages from Ann Radcliffe's "The Mysteries of Udolpho," and secondary sources, which are peer-reviewed academic sources written about primary sources. You are required to bring numerous sources together to support each statement of fact in your thesis. In science fields, you are expected to use refined experiment techniques to achieve the most accurate results possible for your research.