status quo will always seem preferable. Instead consider its
strengths and weakness compared with a large number of pos-
sible alternative wordings (say, ten or twelve), each triggering
different combinations of thematics or major concepts. Even
where you are happy about what the key word elements in your
title will be, try juggling around how they are combined.
In the social sciences if your thesis is concerned with reason-
ably current events you must make an explicit decision about
the cut-off date when your story ends, and stick with it, writing
the whole thesis in the past tense. Trying to finish a thesis
about events that are still going on or are not yet capable of
being evaluated is an effort doomed to failure, a genuine ‘never-
ending story’. With any empirical research covering an over-
time period it is normally a good idea to include the date limits
of the analysis somewhere in the thesis title. Try to pick start
and end dates for your research which you can justify on ana-
lytic or theoretical grounds, as critical, important or ‘natural’
breakpoints.
The abstract
The final version of your abstract comes immediately after the
title page in the bound version of your thesis. It consists of an
especially intensive summary in around 300 words of what the
thesis is about. The abstract is a key opportunity for you to set
out the core of your argument in a helpful way for readers. Later
on when your thesis sits in the university’s library, the title and
the abstract will also be the primary elements advertising its
contents to the outside world, and the only information
included in Internet bibliographies or published directories of
PhD research. People deciding whether to try and secure sight
of a copy of your thesis via inter-library loans will rely heavily
on the abstract. So it is well worth taking the time and trouble
to write it well. In practice most PhD abstracts are very badly
written. Often authors devote more words to summarizing the
previous state of the literature or the routine methods which
they have used than to explaining their own substantive argu-
ments, key findings or new propositions. Although abstracts
are the culmination of a long process of research, students
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