Authoring a PhD Thesis How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation by Patrick Dunleavy

The idea here is to surface a different way of organizing things, a different sequence of ideas. Once you have specified the sec ...

with the reshaped version – even when they previously felt dis- satisfied with their text but pessimistic about finding any bett ...

at a randomly chosen point in the chapter and ask readers to explain what the structure of the argument is and how far they have ...

But it can be helpful to review some fairly commonsense issues around the writing process, and to do what you can to make creati ...

on below the existing joined-up text, in the rough sequence you want the unwritten sections to follow. Then as you write up new ...

regularly when typing (at least every 15 minutes). Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is now something of an occupational disease fo ...

bits of text, then writing the whole thesis twice over should only take 160 days. And at 2000 words a day the time involved shri ...

The whole calamity of man comes from one single thing, that he [or she] cannot keep quiet in a room. Blaise Pascal^21 Our thinki ...

last session’s raw text try to bear in mind the extent to which you will normally be able to edit, revise, upgrade and remodel y ...

But the off-putting and obsessional character of the doctorate in general, especially when a ‘big book’ thesis is involved, prob ...

consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying, an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the underg ...

Handling Attention Points: Data, Charts and Graphics Standards of what counts as good presentation in reports are not static. Th ...

a poster session in a crowded conference venue. On these occa- sions people focus a lot of attention on your presentation slides ...

At this point two groups of readers may be wondering about skipping ahead to the next chapter, but they should perhaps reconside ...

know in order to accept the conclusions of my analysis?’ Then set out to provide information that meets exactly these needs, no ...

The ‘need to know’ criterion should also play a key role in helping you decide what level of reportage is appropriate, the right ...

Internet. A very naïve analyst will compute (579*100)/1021 and report that 56.71 per cent of respondents have tried Web surfing. ...

have little value-added, and if they are included readers may find them disappointing. The ‘need to know’ criterion also implies ...

◆ Very brief details of the sources for data are normally useful. They are given in a special source note immediately under tabl ...

exhibits are always properly handled with an appropriate soft- ware package – either a sophisticated word processor, or a spread ...