Authoring a PhD Thesis: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation
Patrick Dunleavy
Language: English
Pages: 297
ISBN: 1403905843
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
set of materials undirected to a clear question. They must not promise what they cannot deliver, or claim to achieve what they have not established. An equally common problem is that the question asked in a dissertation and the answer provided may not connect in any discernible way. The author may be convinced that they are doing X, but to the readers it seems as if they are doing Y, a significantly different enterprise. Or the question may be so broad that the answer the student provides relates
single screenful, consider whether it should be split up. Where a paragraph occupies only a small part of your screen, ask yourself whether it should be merged with the paragraph before or after it. Never leave very short (one- or two-sentence) paragraphs hanging around, because they are disruptive of the overall flow of the text. Always integrate them into one or other of their neighbours. The sequence of material within paragraphs should generally follow the Topic, Body, Wrap formula. The
fragments you have to work with. Howard Becker 6 The major myth of the authoring process is the critical character of breaking fresh ground, filling a blank screen or a blank page de novo. An essential antidote is to recognize that this is only a first stage in authoring, and not necessarily the key one for the development of your argument. Authoring is a multi-stage process and, as the quote from James Thurber above makes clear, there are divergent rationales to go with these different
journal articles. And so your dissertation will still be four, five or even six times more text than a full paper. It may be equivalent in length to four years’ academic research output in your later career, but all wrapped up together in a single pair of 1 2 ◆ A U T H O R I N G A P H D covers. So the simplest reason why it is important to think systematically about how to author a doctorate is that producing this much joined-up text for the first time is unavoidably difficult. The longer the
In earlier chapters I have touched on many different logistical issues which if left unaddressed can cause you days or weeks of delay at the final version stage. These issues are time-bombs, which may lie apparently dormant only to explode under your feet as you rush to complete. Poor style, long sentences, complex grammar, padded writing and repetitions left alone at an earlier stage all have to be fixed. Hard-to-justify research ‘methods’ or odd choices of research strategy can require complex