Thesis Writing Tips

My research supervisor gave us all these general and practical research tips. I thought it should be quite relevant to everyone busy with postgrad studies.

1. Do not make use of informal language. This is an academic work and needs to be written formally. What I mean by this is do not use “we”, “I”, “they”. Write passively.

2. Experimental work and conclusions are written in past tense. The rest in present tense.

3. Refer to everything by name. Do not make use of “it”, “this”, “these”, unless there is absolutely no ambiguities (how ever you spell it).

4. Try not to write long sentence. Writing should be like coding. One concept per sentence.

5. Be sure to write with flow. Each sentence/paragraph/section/chapter should follow on the previous. The reader should at all times know what he/she is reading and why.

6. If you have many mathematical symbols and acronyms, define them in appendices. This will also help you to make sure that you assign one meaning to a symbol. Do not overload the meaning of symbols. It makes reading difficult. Do not use different symbols for the same meaning.

7. Try not to use quotes and footnotes. Footnotes break the flow. Quotes say what someone else think. The purpose of the thesis is to show what you think.

8. Your background should be as complete as possible. You need to have in the background all theory, previous models, etc that have relevance to what you are doing. And remember, do not assume that the reader has prior knowledge. You need to write to show that you understand the field, that you can critically discuss and evaluate existing literature. Do not assume that the reader will read between the lines.

9. The introduction chapter is very important. It provides the vehicle through which you set the stage. It is the overture of an opera. You need to position your work, and motivate why you have done this work. The introduction states your objectives and how these objectives will be addressed. You outline your contributions. Then you tell the reader what to expect for the rest of the thesis by giving an outline of the rest of the thesis. The reader should, after reading the introduction have a precise idea of what you are doing, why, how and where.

10. The conclusions chapter is just as important. Herein you state what the objectives were, how they have been addressed and what were the main findings. Then you give ideas of future research emanating from yours.

11. Each chapter should end in a conclusions section, where you summarize the objectives of the chapter, how these have been achieved and what the main findings were. Then you introduce the next chapter and relates it to the current one — to conserve flow.

12. Each chapter should start with a short paragraph just to link it with the previous chapters and to state the goals of the chapter. This comes before the Introduction section of the chapter where you elaborate more.

13. I get many questions as to the length of a thesis. This is difficult to say, because it depends on the type of thesis. My believe is that you write what is necessary, and that’s that. However, good guidelines are that a Masters thesis is approximately 130-200 pages, and a PhD 200-300 pages. But again, when you have written all than you can say in less (or more), then that is your thesis.

14. Make sure that you have up-to-date references. You need to make sure that you obtain and read the recent literature. Also, all references must be cited in the thesis. References must be complete, and in consistent format. Cite original references. For example, if you make use of backpropagation, cite the original work of Werbos.

15. Before you start writing, plan the thesis. Set up a table of contents and plan what you expect to include in each chapter and section. If you have a plan like this, send it to me for comments. It will also be a good idea to look at other theses. Download those from the CIRG website.

16. All figures and tables need to be discussed and analyzed.

17. Use a spell-checker!

~ by ahauptfleisch on November 12, 2007.