general rule is to produce a main text that is no more than
four-fifths of the permitted length. A formal words target
includes everything – all footnotes or endnotes, all appendices,
data tables, figures and diagrams. The only thing normally
excluded is the bibliography – an exhaustive alphabetical list-
ing of every book, paper, document or other source cited, which
every thesis must have in its closing pages. To be on the safe
side, therefore, write no more than 80 per cent of the permitted
number of words in your main text. An overall thesis constraint
of 100,000 words means that your main chapters should not
exceed 80,000 words. The 20,000-word difference here partly
gives you some space for the notes, appendices and other
supplementary materials. It also includes an insurance margin
of around 10,000 words in case some of your chapters prove
stubbornly longer than planned.
In terms of what happens to your research afterit is finished,
a main text of 80,000 words is also a lot better. At this length
your thesis may be potentially publishable in cut-down form as
a book, while one at the legal limit will be far too big (see
Chapter 9). The average academic book is around 70,000 words
long, and the closer you write to that kind of figure the less
revising work will be entailed in converting your thesis into a
monograph. Cutting (say) 100,000 words down to this length
may not seem too difficult a task. In fact, it means losing a third
of your work, and a cut of this magnitude could take several
months work to achieve.
There are not usually formal rules about the minimumlength
for a doctoral thesis. But informal lower limits often do apply.
Where universities follow the ‘big book’ thesis model, then aca-
demics generally interpret regulations specifying that a doctor-
ate must make a ‘substantive contribution to knowledge’ to
mean a pretty substantial tome. The one exception is disserta-
tions using some condensed form of expression, such as math-
ematical exposition or a very formal, technical way of
expressing arguments. But in these disciplines ‘big book’ theses
are now rarely used and shorter ‘papers model’ dissertations are
anyway the norm. Another consideration is that most universi-
ties in Europe and North America have a second-tier post-
graduate thesis qualification below the PhD level, for which
candidates do not need to undertake original research and
46 ◆AUTHORING A PHD