Tips For Dissertation Writing!

antoniomontana

I just finished my dissertation a few weeks ago, relaxed a lot early on and left it late so was working all night and day near the end but made it.
For references Word 2007 has a built in citation program which was very helpful, as for the content itself you'll find you pick new things up as you write so its forever changing and improving.
It does feel great when you finish!

foreign_correspondent

I cannot for the life of me figure out those citation manager programmes!! i a using staroffice and I think it has one too, but it is beyond me

bestpud

antoniomontana wrote: »

I just finished my dissertation a few weeks ago, relaxed a lot early on and left it late so was working all night and day near the end but made it.
For references Word 2007 has a built in citation program which was very helpful, as for the content itself you'll find you pick new things up as you write so its forever changing and improving.
It does feel great when you finish!

Is that something new to word? Or do you mean foot notes? It would be great if word 2007 can deal with Harvard referencing - may have to invest in a copy if it does!

Oh and well done for getting yours finished.

I'm just starting mine (undergrad) and I can see myself doing the same as you and rushing last minute - I never seem to learn!

antoniomontana

bestpud wrote: »

Is that something new to word? Or do you mean foot notes? It would be great if word 2007 can deal with Harvard referencing - may have to invest in a copy if it does!

Oh and well done for getting yours finished.

I'm just starting mine (undergrad) and I can see myself doing the same as you and rushing last minute - I never seem to learn!

I think the citation feature (totally separate to foot notes) in Word 2007 is new because I couldn't find it anywhere in Word XP.
Although I had to use Harvard referencing in my dissertation, Word 2007 doesn't specifically have that style, it does have APA however which is extremely similar so I used that and manually refined the references bit after I finished (didn't take too long as most of the layout was perfect as was the inline citation part).

you can also use this workaround: (http://www.orthomy.com/2007/04/word-2007-citations.html)

bestpud

Thanks, that's useful to know - would help me loads. May have to look into updating word methinks.

DdraigGoch

Might be an idea to disable the links in the above post.... or remove them entirely....

Superheavy

Flippin heck...spammers out in force at the moment....

Swirlywurly

This is a great thread guys, i may be starting a masters in oct and haven't done a dissertation before so i'm really worried about the prosepct of that!

Jolaaled

pug_in_a_bed wrote: »

I'm soon to begin writing my thesis for my masters degree and am feeling very apprehensive, esp. as i didn't do one for my undergrad degree.

does anyone have any tips on structuring the thing,

I've just very recently finished writing up my Master diss (18K words). This is what i found most useful/important:

Get as may papers on your hard drive, as PDF files and store in one folder. Then you will be able to search that folder for particular key words, using the Adobe search facility..you can then use ideas and references to back up a particular idea that you're critique-ing, from a number of relevant papers. (Wish i'd known this at the start of my studies!).

Use the PDF papers' own bibliography to help populate yours: you can copy and paste the references into your own document, usually.

Help to organise your own thoughts and ideas by trying to verbally convey these to a willing listener...even if it's the cat! This is great at helping to condense and clarify key points and highlight your gaps in logical thinking.

Write..back up....write...back up....write...etc!

Good luck