If you are interested in this question, you’ve decided to pursue the studying process and upgrade your Master’s degree one level more. That’s a bold move and you can consider yourself tougher than John McClane. Writing your dissertation for the first time seemed like a prolonged agony but this time, everything will be different. Well, not really. You will still have to spend an incredible amount of time doing research and organizing your thoughts to get a substantial and well-structured paper. But now you’ll be familiar with the process and find it easier to plan your time in a more effective way.
Things You Should Know About Writing a PhD dissertation
How to Write a Doctoral Dissertation
Be specific
It’s not a descriptive essay so using numerous adjectives won’t be necessary. Using vague adverbs can also cause some misunderstanding. You are writing about scientific facts and they need to be precise. Including words like “quickly” or “slowly” doesn’t say anything specific about the process. It’s crucial for scholars to know how quick and how slow something happens.
Forget about chronological order
There is no sense in writing your doctoral dissertation in a chronological order. Work on the sections you find to be easier or have recently found the relevant information for. You’ll cope with them twice faster while the data is fresh and you remember all the details. And leave the introduction and conclusion to be the last chapters you write. There has to be a logical correlation between them and it’s easier to write both of the sections at once.
Don’t ignore questions with no answers
There will be questions on your topic you can’t answer in the paper. In no case should you omit them. Leave them for the last chapter where you describe the suggestions for further investigation. Ignoring these questions will make you look bad in the eyes of your committee.
Pay attention to referencing
The first thing you need to do is to learn about the guidelines and preferences of your university as to the references in a PhD thesis. One more point to keep an eye on is making sure you mention all the sources in the bibliography.
Get your own printer
Proofreading is an essential part of your writing process. To make it less stressful, buy a printer (if you don’t have one already) and proofread your dissertation when it’s on paper. It gives you a great opportunity to leave your regular place of work.
Check your dissertation
You definitely have checked the individual chapters and discussed them with your advisor. But it’s also important to make sure all of them add up to a unified piece of academic writing. Check if the chapters work together and are logically correlated.
How to Write a Doctoral Dissertation