How-to-Write-a-Better-Thesis

Writing Tools
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Using a style means that, once you have established a pattern, you can easily
stick to it and the reader will get the same message every time. For example, main
section headings, wherever they appear in your document, will always be in the
same typeface (font) and of the same size. They should always be preceded by the
same space separation from preceding text, and always be followed by the same
space separation. If the style you choose is clearly different from that of other headings,
the reader will quickly understand ‘We are starting a new main section’ or
‘This is a sub-section within the section’. This is especially true if you use a style
that is familiar to most readers in the field.
A thesis consists of several different parts that need to be tied together with a set
of conventions. Without a standard format across the entire document, the work will
appear random and unprofessional. For example, you should put all chapter headings
on a new page, using the same style; that is, the same font and paragraphing.
You should give all major section headings a style that is different from that of the
chapter headings. Captions to figures should all have the same style, but be different
again from section headings and different from the main text. All new paragraphs
should begin with the same indentation (except for the first paragraph after a heading,
which may have no indent at all), and so on. All this will help your readers to
navigate their way through your thesis. This styling is provided with templates,
which govern the appearance and numbering of every element of a document.
Before you start writing your report or thesis, you should think about its format
and devise styles and formatting rules that are appropriate for your field of study.
Begin as you mean to continue. Introduce rules as necessary, and be aware that too
much complexity can work against you. For example, avoid deep structures—is it
really necessary to have paragraphs with numbers like 3.1.2.1a(iii)? Once you have
a style, any element of the document can be put in that format, and you are on your
way to producing a professional-looking thesis. While you may have had little previous
exposure to creation or use of styles, in my view templates are the single most
important feature of a word processor, and you must learn how to use them properly.
After creating a style, you can generate a thesis structure, with a few empty
chapters and perhaps some subheadings and so on. You can then use the style to
generate a table of contents, and begin to get a sense of how the final thesis will appear.
As you proceed, you will use the table of contents, or other outline tools, to get
a sense of the current structure of the thesis and where it may need revision—extra
chapters, moving of material from one section to the next, changing how headings
relate to each other in the hierarchy, and so on.
Writing Tools
Most word-processing programs include a facility for checking spelling. It checks
every word you have typed against a dictionary built into the program. Do not ignore
it! 1 Few people are infallible spellers or proofreaders and it is only rational to
1
It’s been argued that spell-checkers make authors lazy, and that writers at any level with access to
a spell-checker make more mistakes than those without. I suspect that this is a case where average