The Prompt, the Position and the Citation Rules

Read the task verb before you read the sources

Synthesis prompts are not all the same. The task verb decides what a defensible thesis even looks like:

• "Evaluate the extent to which…" — you must give a degree, not a yes or no. A thesis with no "how far" in it has not answered.
• "Develop a position on…" — an outright stance is expected, with the conditions attached.
• "Argue what factors should be considered…" — you are being asked for criteria, and the essay should defend why these criteria and not others.

Underline the verb and the key noun in the prompt. Everything after that is service to those two words.

A defensible position, not a survey

Three theses on the same prompt:

• "There are advantages and disadvantages to online voting." — not defensible, because nobody disagrees.
• "Online voting should be adopted." — defensible, but flat: it invites the essay to ignore the hardest sources.
• "Online voting is worth adopting only where a paper record can be reconstructed afterwards; where it cannot, convenience is bought with the one property elections cannot lose." — defensible, and it already contains the line of reasoning.

The third thesis also does something practical: it tells you which sources you need, and it makes the opposing sources usable rather than inconvenient.

Citation: the smallest rule that costs the most

• Cite every borrowing — quoted, paraphrased, or summarised.
• Use the label the prompt gives: (Source A), or the attribution the prompt supplies, such as the author's surname. Either is accepted; mixing them inconsistently is not a problem, but inventing a citation format that does not identify the source is.
• Attribute before the borrowing where possible, so the reader knows whose voice they are hearing.
• Use at least three sources. Using six shallowly is worse than using three well — but using two, however well, caps your score.