A rough draft should include a conclusion. Your conclusion to a paper of about fifteen to twenty pages should be from two to four paragraphs in length. If you revise your paper in any significant way, you will need to adjust your conclusion as well. The following tips are for the rough-draft stage of your conclusion. When you write the final draft of your paper, you will need to reconsider each of these points again.

As you write your conclusion, keep these questions in mind:

• Does the conclusion agree with what I said about the theme in the introduction? If your conclusion does not match your introduction, then you must change your conclusion.
• Have I made reference to the most important points in the paper? If you have left one or more important points out, you should expand your conclusion.
• Is my conclusion supported by my evidence? If you find that your conclusion is not justified in the body of your paper, you must change your conclusion so that it does not claim more than your paper has demonstrated.