Statements of theorems etc should be as self-contained as possible. Under this constraint, the shorter ones are the most powerful, i.e. pack the most punch. A `punchy' theorem can be achieved by properly setting up the relevant background in the preamble and keeping background material out of the statement itself (as much as possible that is consistent with being self-contained notationally). The statement itself should be boiled down to the part that is really new and important. Beware of pronouns like 'this' and 'it'. Is it absolutely clear and unambiguous what they refer back to? You may know what you had in mind but will the reader? And don't use 'this' for 'the present'. This should recall to the reader why the kind of result mentioned already in the abstract would be interesting and important. It also tells the reader what you think is the motivation, so that if he or she agrees with the way you are looking at the field, there's some probability that the paper will be useful for them. Keep it as down to earth as possible. A conceptual sandwich is where you begin with one idea, move on to another, and then move back to the first one. This can happen at all scales: within a paragraph, within a section or in the overall layout of the paper. It indicates poor organisation and should be avoided. Can you move the middle of the sandwich to the top or the bottom, thereby pooling together the two related topic? The more general topic should usually come first, with the more specific sub-topic following, unless you deliberately want to be pedagogical. The idea of avoiding a sandwich is that when you bring up a topic, say all that you will want to say about it in the near future, before moving on to further questions arising from it. Chopping and changing uses up the reader's energy. This should include technical remarks on notation to be used and basic references such as books for conventions. You can recall in this section for clarity things that you should be ashamed to publish in the later sections. If a lot of machinery which you did not invent is to be used, this is the place to develop it or give references. Remember, however, that you are not writing a thesis here: your goal is not to redo the work of persons A thesis degree, B, C (which you may well have done in your notes while reading them i love writing essays, but that's tough). The goal is rather to make enough concise references or explanations so that exactly how you intend things to be defined, which conventions exactly you are using etc are all completely clear. Find ways to state cut-and-dry and precise definitions that the reader will be able to refer back to when reading the paper, without digressions or story-telling. In other words, some of the stuff you want to put down is all part of the beautiful logical picture, but that's too bad. Unless you personally have something new and worthwhile to say about it good college acceptance essays, you have no business to be recalling it here (maybe in the intro with citations as motivation) and also should not be building it in mixed with your own results. As well as the logically-dictated tendency to repeat, we all have a human weakness to think that what we spent hours figuring out for ourselves is partly ours. This is a demon to be resisted. Previous work is previous work and don't be too proud to say you are using it hospitality essay, and whose it is you are using. You should ask yourself how would you feel if somebody developed your work and integrated it into theirs without being clear about your contribution. Every assertion should have a clear validation status. By this I mean that it should be clear to the reader from context or from signals in the syntax exactly how the reader is supposed to know that the assertion is correct. Is it (i) supposed to be self-evident from what was just said (ii) supposed to follow from something said a while back (give a signal to where) (iii) a well-known fact that the reader should know anyway (iv) a fact proven elsewhere by somebody else which you had cited a while back (cite them again `on the dot' if there is any possibility of ambiguity). (v) a fact that you will be justify later (give the forward reference), etc. Check that all symbols and terminology are defined to some extent before they are used. This can be done in a formal definition or more informally. One technique in mathematical work is to put the term for an important concept in a different font when its usage is being specified for the first time. This is especially important in the Preliminaries section, but applies elsewhere also. On a smaller scale, make sure that any symbols are quietly specified so that it is clear what they denote. Don't assume that your notation is obvious or standard, since others could have grown up with different conventions. Reproduced by kind permission of Professor Shahn Majid, Professor of Mathematics, School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London Bad writing often goes hand-in-hand with murky thinking, so by writing clearly you are forced to clarify your understanding also. Thinking about layout, ordering of sentences and even simple things like punctuation are very important and can have a surprisingly good effect on your own understanding of the material. This should be brief but not simply a list. State the goal and main achievement of each section. Make it into a story whereby each section is logically a precursor to the next section. Finally you get to explain your new results. Each section should begin with a recall of the goal and strategy of the section in case the reader forgot. Each section should have a main achievement. The end of the section is a good place to put any informal remarks. Anything you want to claim, assert or conjecture but which you haven't thought through formally to make a theorem, can appear here. Things are easily forgiven at the ends of sections if the section already had good results in it. I set myself a target of 3 months, broken down into targets for each chapter. This would give me about 3 months in reserve before the final absolute deadline. Hi, To the other readers starting out, go get ’em! It is possible!! Thanks Sir for your writeup, how can i describe my data in thesis, i have no idea about that “The unreconstructed Si(111) surface”. This took a very long time to draw and make sure the diagram was accurate. Amir Riyaz Khan says Wanna help me read my (hopefully) final draft? I had a final submission date (at the end of my 4th year), but my research was still a bit chaotic. It wasn’t focused on finishing. I can’t give you motivation custom college essays for sale, but I don’t think that’s what you need anyway; you just need to be decisive. Hi James, Hi James, Thanks for the wonderful advice. I was on verge of giving up after spending 4 loooong years. At least I am happy to know I am not the only one. My guide is very particular for simulation based results but my thesis is completely based on mathematically calculated results. I am stuck between these two because to set up a simulation model will take up another year and I am not at all willing to waste further time. Any advice. Thanks for the helpful thoughts. I have to defend my dissertation in five months but i feel i am nowhere with lots of paradoxical sets of data and theories in my mind. The most difficult part is that i am writing this social science thesis in English as my second language. I am not confident at all about the clarity and meaningfulness of my writing. It is frustrating and takes huge time and energy to focus on my subject and at the same time avoid any ambiguity in my writing. Any comments or thoughts how i can manage such chaotic situation? I’m just two months into my PhD and i find this quite motivating. Good job in finishing your thesis. Hopefully, the tips i took of from your blog will help me. Best wishes. I’m not a proofreader! I focused only on the very best literature, saving myself a huge amount of time. It also had the result of associating my work with the very best in the field. James Hayton says Bella Rose says Still, though, the thesis would be a little thin. So I took on a side project based on another student’s research, which could produce some results quickly. And sometimes there just isn’t a figure that illustrates exactly what you want to say. The figures are as important as the words, so it’s worth spending the time on them I, like you in the summer of 2006, have also finished all my primary research. I have just started on the literature review. My question is: Had you also read everything you planned on reading before you began writing? In past essays and dissertations in my life, I had always written while reading. Now though, I feel the reading has to be so thorough, so I’m reading and note-taking and categorizing the documents I read, before writing the Literature review section. Am I right in doing this? Or am I wasting my time by reading and THEN writing? Even though I have already chosen my topic, I am doing exploratory reading at this stage. After gathering a deeper understanding of my topic, I would like to refine the chapters of my thesis. I will then do deep research per chapter before finally writing each chapter. Otherwise, I feel it will be too overhelming. Any thoughts? Now I know I’m not alone, now I got only 1 month to finish my draft, 2 month to refill anything that is not sufficient to my supervisor and my final deadline is the end of this year. Wish me luck. Sir, you simply rock ! James Hayton says What do you have that you know is good? This must form your core content. The problem you have with calculating, writing and recalculating is that you’re trying to do both at the same time. FORGET about writing cheap papers for sale, just sit and think about what your calculation means. If you go straight to writing, you are skipping a crucial step in the analysis. James Hayton says I decided to work at home, not at the office, because there would be fewer distractions. Loved your website! thank you! i need to finish my phd in 6 months! lol Well you would need to register as a PhD candidate with a university to be eligible, but my question would be why do you need one? It sounds like you’ve already gone way beyond PhD level in your career! lol, I’m in the same position and my thesis is due in 3 days, and my results don’t look beautiful. I hate looking at it. Was thinking of “manipulating” some data and have no plans to publish my work. just for the sake of completion! I hope everything goes well PhD in physics is worth quite a lot actually. Maybe you had a bad experience, doesn’t mean you can apply a sweeping generalisation to others, especially out of context here since I didn’t mention being stressed during my write up. And whether you finish on time (i.e. before summer) is down to you. If you cut back on other commitments, and can write consistently every day essay stories about love, then of course it’s possible. On the other hand, who cares if the department are happy? If you are happy to spend the extra months working written reports, and you think it’s the only way, then do it! Again, you just have to decide. But either way you’ve go to stop gathering new material at some point and go with what you have. Oops improve critical thinking skills, ahem, I meant: “Maybe I won’t know how much will need to be REwritten…” ? It would be nice if you also had a blog describing how to fast track through the experimental(testing phase)or how to design and initiate experiments efficiently and quickly. My self in the 4th year of PhD in Cancer therapeutics still struggling for some lab works. Planning to write daily atleast the review of literature and some introduction and the chapters will be my papers published. But not getting focussed yet on writing work. Wasting time in gadgets etc. Now I think that I must write atleast 3 A4 size pages daily with no plagiarism and decent english. May Allah help me in that….Aameen. I am guilty over disappearing from my supervisor..I am already at my 5th year of my phd and happen to report back to duty in the same faculty as my SV (FYI, i am already an academician thru’ my clinical Master) but in different dept. I still have the final chunk of my labwork part need to be done and now avoiding him as I feel that I did not progress much due to my teaching commitment. FYI, I have lost interest in my Phd work since I got so many rejections of the manuscript I sent for publication and to think there is no novelty of the work since the plant that I chose for my study has been deeply researched by others. Also, partly I am blaming my SV for not forecasting such things to happen in my study and he does not even want to read any draft of my manuscript. The only thing he read so far is my ppt slides I prepared for my defence and he showed very little interest in my project. I feel abandoned and this drive me farther from him. Please advise. I am on the verge of giving up. I took painstaking care over the clarity of the writing, the diagrams and the overall look of the thesis. With 5 months left you have to be ruthlessly decisive. Perhaps I understand the logic behind this usual advice of shitty first draft. I guess it wishes to push the student/ writer out of the so-called writer’s block. Honestly, even I have gone through it. But now in the last year of my PhD example of good essay plan, I feel that the reasons for that block were deeper than just an urge of writing ‘perfect’… Actually those were insufficiency of the actual research (data and analysis), stress/ nervous breakdown etc. So, now I feel that if I can tackle those things first, and then write help with law essay writing, I am less prone to procrastinate and my usual inclination (I do not want to say ‘obsession’!) to write careful first drafts eventually saves quite a lot of time and energy for revisions. And after reading your post, I can even let go of my guilt! Thank you. kicking off a phd soon…a single mother too and would be working pt (cannot do ft with 2 kids). All the stuff about not being able to finish was getting to me but this post is encouraging…and then your about being a single mother working ft and pursuing a phd…makes me feel better. And with your expertise, do you think I will be able to finish or shall I start pushing for summer? Thank you for this excellent article. This means I was constantly re-reading and revising what I’ve just written, but also means that when I submitted something to my supervisor it needed very few revisions and saved months, simply by getting as close to “right” as I could the first time round. so, what can I do for my bad data then? my supervisor is very useless and I have to do the whole thing. I’m in the verge of depression right now. I did perform my main objective (to perform and execute a method) but the results do not look good. What can you advise me then? thanks so much Wow, so so motivating and inspiring doctor Word or LaTeX… honestly, it really doesn’t matter that much. I would never go back to Word having used LaTeX for my 1st year report, but the most important thing is to just make a decision and stick to it. I am so glad to find that last tip on the ‘first draft’. I too spend a lot of time and energy in re-reading and revising my first draft with the intent that it should need least revisions from my reviewer and should have least trouble for my sympathetic reader (friends/ guide). But all the writing advice focuses so much upon ‘just-produce-the-first-however-shitty-draft’, that it used to make me feel guilty. I would not assert that my ‘first drafts’ are perfect, ready-to-publish; but at the same time I feel preparing the final manuscript becomes much easier when I have done your best to maintain coherency, style, and quality in my first drafts. I know many people study their PhD part-time over a 6 year period. My concern is my topic is constantly evolving, and I worry that if I take that route, by the time I finish, my research “gap” will have been filled and my contribution to academic thought will no longer be relevant. Do you have any advice in this regard? I feel so wick and desperate.I finished my master courses I still have my thesis.It has been since last fall that I have registered for my thesis and till now I barely wrote the introduction.I should submit my thesis in January 2014 and I am still not ready for it.I couldn’t concentrate, I am pregnant now for already 6 weeks and I am afraid to loose my master degree because of my thesis .The environment where I life doesn’t help me to study.Since I got married I came to Saudi Arabia and it’s being so hard for me to find the good ambiance to sit and study for hours As I used to do in my BA and MA .I am blaming myself so much which is creating a feel of sadness from inside because I was never the same . The two most important parts of the day are the beginning and end. It’s important to build momentum early, and have a routine for ending the day too. Your advice seems mostly geared at writing afresh (which is why I wish I had read it sooner!). What would your advice be to someone in my position? I have a thesis written (bar a conclusion which is in note form), I am forming ideas of how the thesis can be transformed but the endeavour is depressing. It’s much easier to write from scratch than to edit something that is dreadful. Yeah, sometimes that will work… but sometimes the quality of the image in the pdf sucks. I wouldn’t use paintbrush though if there is any decent alternative! I had to decide not to do certain things, and focus with energy and determination on others.
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