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1. o e e e 4 5 One Paragraph Each Day o o The Three Draft Model Di r UTA E O TO J2 AA A TN 5 37 Motivation Aa sa da ae ee gras Editing as Systematic Reading Gila Sounds an a A Se ee A a aa G 0 27 Structure Sig Sea ee Sa ee oo ee eee ee ee 6 3 Presentation 444 eee soe ene eendae ee ne ced G 4 LOGIC ck ee a a se ee O e ee a 6 5 Brevity aa ee ae ee BREA ew e A 6 6 First Impressions 6 ack ew oe ee A OW ED e de de eg 6 7 o Displays an asa a ea 6 8 Keywords A E E AG ob oe vain Gud ot Ee ee 1 Topic Thesis and Title The first step in a research program is to decide upon the topic This is enough to begin your review of the literature For example my topic here is Techniques for Writing Dissertations Exercise 1 1 Write down your topic The second step is to decide upon a thesis For example mine is There is a general method for producing a dissertation in technical fields which can operate at the level of paragraphs Exercise 1 2 Write down your thesis The topic and thesis can be combined to produce the title of your disserta tion For example Techniques for Writing Dissertations There is a general method for producing a dissertation in technical fields which can operate at the level of paragraphs Well my title is ugly but it does the job Exercise 1 3 Write down your title By trimming the less important words the title can be reduced to something more elegan2. It is commonly addressed to superiors Explanation is for a technical report the body of document a justifica tion It tells the whole story It is typically given as a narrative It provides motivation approach related work literature survey dead ends alternative explanations It should be detailed sophisticated may assume a knowledgeable reader comprehensive It is especially addressed to equals Implementation is for a detailed account of process mechanisms instruc tion to implementers executors It is good for a user manual or appendix Repetition is normal It provides concrete description copious examples and exercises minimal theory or motivation It is especially addressed to inferiors Exercise 4 1 What sort of document is this pamphlet 4 2 Ordering the Material Your understanding of the material forms some sort of graph of concepts or concept map However your report must present the information in a linear order one sentence following another So you must choose It is important that the order be chosen to aid the reader not the writer There are many ways to do this Here are six ways illustrated using my own research work You are not expected to understand the meanings but you should be able to understand the order known unknown The relational data model has been very successful as a means of storing and manipulating large data sets Object orientation has been very successful as a computational par
3. as you go along to get them right Editing refers to a process separate from writing where the goal is to check text rather than produce text To encourage this mark up your text with blue handwriting not using a keyboard Begin by focusing on identifying the problems rather than solving them Otherwise it is easy to get bogged down This section is written in the expectation that you now have a chapter ready to edit The golden rule of editing is that no sentence should require a second reading Your readers are not expecting to have to go backwards and re read things So keep the grammar simple and don t be afraid to repeat things if this is important No sentence should require a second reading Exercise 6 1 Examine each sentence in your longest paragraph Can it be understood on one reading The core technique for editing is to read in as many different ways as possible The common development of a writer proceeds in several stages First there is no editing but then some reader finds a typo in the title or some other glaring error which is a shock so the writer starts to second guess themselves by re reading over and over However it seems that no matter how many times the text is re read others still find basic errors This leads of a vicious spiral of late nights followed by embarrassed mornings Surprisingly a re read in the morning by the author often exposes errors that were completely overlooked the night before Th
4. ideas together The method advocated here leads to well structured paragraphs with clear topics The heart of the method is to start from the thesis and develop its defence by a measured process of expansion in which the same patterns and structures recur as more detail is added It can be applied from the first day of your research there is no need to wait The result of this process should be a first draft of your dissertation This is the hardest part Then further revision will make it clearer and more engaging While the main focus of this pamphlet is to draft the opening chapter of your dissertation there is much additional material This could be captured in a paragraph but a full table of contents provides more information and shows the spine of the work as illustrated on the following page Contents 1 2 Topic Thesis and Title The Dissertation Introductory Paragraphs 3 1 Explaining the Title o 32 Background eii a a oh See ee aed as 319 ATEO ee SA do ri ee ag IA Objectives oii he A ee a A i Be A 9 01 OISMICANGE 44 La RR Geo A ee aed 3 0 Approack gg ek Ok ahs Be eee 2 a OA eo Se Bee IL Results e Ge Bd ea Sa pagent SOE ws le 3 8 Structure of the Dissertation 0 Finish Your Chapters 4 1 The Purpose of a Chapter 0204 4 2 Ordering the Material o o a 4 3 Writing Time is Quadratic 2 4 4 One Chapter each Semester
5. much detail in the front matter as possible especially your intended submission date You will not finish your studies by accident It takes a serious effort and commitment so make the commitment now Exercise 2 3 Create a chapter called Literature Review and include all your notes on papers you have read All of them Exercise 2 4 Create a proper bibliography to go with your notes so that all the citations are perfect Hint they might be perfect if you copy them from the publishers web sites Exercise 2 5 Use the following chapter headings as placeholders Add subsec tion headings where these are known Include any other notes or papers you have written as appropriate e Introduction Literature Review e Approach e Results e Conclusions Sooner or later you will change these titles to be more descriptive Also it is common to have two chapters of background methods or results The table of contents provides a one page snapshot of your structure and progress Take another look at the table of contents for this document Exercise 2 6 Look at the table of contents of your dissertation How well does it describe your progress Exercise 2 7 Swap skeletons with another student Give them written feedback Identify three things that they have done well and three that could be improved Reviewing the work of others is a central part of scholarly life Among other things it helps you gain perspective on your own work 3
6. that you have 6 chapters each of which has 100 paragraphs Let a paraminute be the time it takes to write a paragraph If you organise by paragraphs then the time taken will be about 180 000 paraminutes However if you organise by chapters then it will take only 21 chapters worth of time In turn each chapter takes 5 000 paraminutes for a net cost of 105 000 paraminutes for the whole draft That is it takes about two thirds longer to write by paragraphs instead of writing by chapters The moral is that when writing your first proper draft you should complete whole chapters rather than write random paragraphs from many chapters Exercise 4 4 How many chapters of your dissertation are in a complete draft If the answer is zero how many sections are in a complete draft 4 4 One Chapter each Semester Here is some more arithmetic To finish a dissertation in three years requires an average of one chapter per semester One way is to write them in the following order Literature Review Introduction Approach Results Conclusions 4 5 One Paragraph Each Day In turn if a chapter has 100 paragraphs and a semester has 100 days then you need to average a paragraph each day Exercise 4 5 What is your average output of paragraphs per working day 10 5 The Three Draft Model You will probably write many drafts but there are three major milestones 5 1 Truth The first draft is written for you It can be a journal if you wish Wil
7. then use the key words cost market penetration and product differenti ation throughout Don t change to price market acceptance and product recognition Keep the number of keywords small and use them as often as possible Exercise 6 12 Track all synonyms for keywords that are being used in the text Have they all been explained Check that all keywords appear in the text on the significance and the approach etc 16
8. yourself a pat on the back You have produced your first draft 5 2 Clarity The second draft is written for your ideal reader This is likely to be your supervisor but may be some other professor you admire Now the goal is to make all the statements clear to your ideal while maintaining their truth All unexplained words approaches or attitudes must be explained The goal is to communicate Exercise 5 3 Find the first obscure sentence in your current draft Now get your supervisor to find it Again do not expect praise from your supervisor The best you can hope for is something like I get it now but it is a bit dull Congratulations you have completed the second draft 11 5 3 Motivation The third draft is written for a wider audience e g for your examiners a con ference or journal The goal is to motivate the readers to keep reading The better you know them the easier it is What is their motivation What do they know already What do they want Usually they want to know many things Why have you done this work Why should they care Why did you approach the work in the way you did is it obvious or did you give up on a simpler approach Inserting the motivation must be done without sacrificing truth or clarity Many writers don t really consider their readers much I test this by asking the following question What is the difference between an introduction and a conclusion The most common answers are that
9. Introductory Paragraphs Each subsection below is devoted to one section of Chapter 1 of your dissertation By completing the first twenty plus exercises you will have a first draft of chapter one of your dissertation In turn this determines the structure of the chapters that will follow 3 1 Explaining the Title Your very first obligation to the reader is to ensure that they understand what the title means Exercise 3 1 Write down all of the keywords that appear in your title Exercise 3 2 Write down any keywords that do not appear in your title Con sider changing the title to accommodate these key words or justify their omis sion Exercise 3 3 For each keyword write a paragraph that defines it Scholarly references are optional Exercise 3 4 Combine the paragraphs above to form a coherent draft of Sec tion 1 1 Check that this still explains what the title means Add citations throughout 3 2 Background Exercise 3 5 For each seminal paper write a paragraph that describes the ex tent to which it contributes to establishing the thesis Mention related work here too 33 Aims The aims should describe achievements that should arise from successful re search They elaborate the consequences of the thesis For example 1 To de mystify the process of writing a dissertation 2 To identify activities that aid construction of a dissertation 3 To promote critical thinking by encouraging reflection by students upon thei
10. Writing Your Dissertation One Paragraph at a Time Barry Jay September 10 2012 Preface This pamphlet provides you with the skills to write your dissertation in a me thodical and timely manner It is constructed from personal reflections on my own writing and on that of research students who have attended my writing clinics over the years It combines useful concepts with a series of exercises that achieve goals The first main concept is that of the thesis This word is often used to describe a document but in its primary meaning a thesis is a statement a proposition If the statement is in doubt then it is a hypothesis You will de fend your thesis in a document a dissertation Your first goal will be to identify your thesis Your second goal will be to produce a skeleton of your dissertation If everything is perfectly clear in your mind then each of these two goals can be met in a single session However if your research is just beginning then it may take you a year No matter how long they take each and every exercise is designed to bring your submission date closer Although we will consider all levels of structure from word to sentence to paragraph to section to chapter the focus will be on paragraphs A paragraph is a collection of sentences that address a common topic Each key idea concept or phrase in your dissertation should get at least one paragraph if not a section or chapter Too often students try to introduce several
11. adigm Now the desire to support web services has created interest in programming with XML data structures too A key challenge is how to combine all three of these into a unified system Each approach has a different view of what data is so let us try to identify the core properties of data common to all three old new Many type systems have been developed to support both object orientation and type variable quantification One of the earliest was the system F lt by Luca Cardelli in which type variables are given upper bounds in types For example the position method for points can be given the type VX lt Point X float More recently both Java and C have introduced support for type variables simple complex Here is a type system T u X C TT ATT Now add sub typing to model classes Now add choice types T amp T to model method specialisation general specific One dimension of expressive power in programming is the nature of the parameters that are allowed e g pointers functions or objects Pattern calculus is able to pass patterns as parameters specific general Consider the problem of adding two things One can imagine one rule for integers another for floats and yet another for a pair of integers and floats Of course there is a general approach which is to add corresponding entries in data structures that have the same shape This is possible in pattern calculus since shapes can be represented as pat
12. e problem is very simple actually Each repetition simply reinforces the impression gained from the previous reading A new reader or a refreshed author reads in a new way and so sees different issues The expensive solution is to hire a bunch of fresh readers Cheaper and quicker is to adopt a new approach to editing Each reading should be different The rest of this section will consider different ways of reading for sound structure etc 6 1 Sound I assume that you have been using your hands to type up your thoughts and your eyes to read the results If so then reading aloud is the simplest way to shake things up If by chance you have been dictating your thoughts then try reading silently with your eyes The point is that the motor cortex that controls your hands and the visual cortex that processes vision are well connected to some parts of your brain 13 but not others Conversely the motor cortex that controls speech and the auditory cortex that processes hearing are connected differently So you will notice different things when you read differently In particular speech is social while silent reading is not so reading aloud is inherently more social than silent reading Exercise 6 2 Read your chapter aloud Mark each sentence where you stumble or run out of breath Simplify the grammar where you stumble Shorten the sentences where you run out of breath 6 2 Structure e Does the reader know in advance wha
13. l you understand it tomorrow next week next year Are all the statements true Exercise 5 1 Find the first false sentence in your current draft Now get your supervisor to find it Technical writing is built from propositions i e sentences that are either true or false Propositions and truth are extremely unfashionable in the humanities and among those who study texts Their skepticism is understandable but technical writing about mathematical proofs or experimental results or safety instructions cannot survive such scrutiny We are like bankers asked to explain what money is We may not be able to define it but we cannot do business without it We are in the truth business exchanging truths for mutual benefit This point of view has many consequences Most importantly if a proposi tion can be simplified while remaining true then the simpler statement is usually preferable and often stronger Alternatively if the simplified statement turns out to be false then there is a clear motivation for making it more complicated This is the deletion test Exercise 5 2 Apply the deletion test to your longest sentence Upon presenting a draft to your supervisor it is usual to argue about the contents If you lose the argument then the first draft is not finished If you win the argument do not expect praise from your supervisor The best you can hope for is something like Well okay but it is not very clear When you hear this give
14. ons if auxiliary phrases and clauses are removed 15 6 6 First Impressions No matter how big or small it is the first page determines the first impression of your reader After all the reader must choose between turning the page and discarding the document so they have to evaluate at this point This has many consequences Here is one There must be zero errors on the first page As a reader I expect the first page to be the best page of all so an error there means that every page has on average more than one error I don t want to read documents like that 1 don t buy books where the blurb has poor grammar or a mixed metaphor Exercise 6 9 Edit your first page three times on three separate days Now get a critic to read it 6 7 Displays Does the table of contents tell the story Exercise 6 10 Modify your section headings so that they better tell the story Check to see if there are keywords in the headings that are not in your original list The displays include figures tables graphs and equations They should tell the story in the same way that a comic book does in pictures supported by words the captions Exercise 6 11 Check your displays to see if they tell the story accurately 6 8 Keywords Key words and symbols can be used to cross link the sections For example If in the introduction you write There are three main issues in e commerce for SMEs cost market penetration product differentiation
15. r writing Exercise 3 6 State three aims that elaborate the consequences of your thesis 3 4 Objectives While the aims are aspirational the objectives form the contract between the researcher and the other stakeholders They specify the deliverables While it may be arguable whether the aims have been reached or not it should be clear whether the objectives have been met or not For example 1 To produce a pamphlet outlining techniques that are useful in writing a dissertation 2 To develop techniques for writing that operate at the level of paragraphs 3 To develop techniques in which reflection is integral to the writing process Actually my aims and objectives are not very well expressed The centrality of paragraphs has not been captured Exercise 3 7 State three objectives that elaborate the consequences of your the sis 3 5 Significance The significance comes in two parts First why are the aims important e Who cares if the aims are realised or not e How will they benefit It is not enough to say that more knowledge will result It may seem hard to you to produce new knowledge but actually it is quite simple Just write down what you had for breakfast Exercise 3 8 Write a paragraph explaining who benefits from your research Exercise 3 9 For each aim write a paragraph explaining why they benefit from this aim Second how will the objectives contribute to achieving the aims It is unusual for the objective
16. s to exactly meet the aims For example identifying the mechanism of infection is not the same as producing immunity but it is an important if not necessary step along the way Exercise 3 10 For each objective write a paragraph explaining how it con tributes to reaching the aim 3 6 Approach How will you achieve your objectives Please don t say that your will study or research or investigate your topic We know this already You should use one or two standard methods to achieve your objectives What are they Who invented them How will you adapt them to your circumstances Exercise 3 11 For each method you will use write four paragraphs explaining the general method how you will specialise it the biggest risk of failure how you will know you succeeded For example my method is to write a pamphlet The pamphlet form was popular in early modern Europe especially before the development of newspa pers The best current equivalent is to write a weblog or blog A pamphlet is allowed perhaps expected to be opinionated It should favour clarity over ac curacy Keep it simple stupid In this it is the opposite of a balanced scholarly work The pamphlet form has been adapted here to become half opinion half instruction manual The latter is characterised by use of the imperative do this do that and exercises for the reader The biggest risk is that techniques developed for students in information technology
17. t My revised title is Writing Your Dissertation One Paragraph at a Time Exercise 1 4 Revise your work in the exercises above If you had a thesis already the exercises in this section should have taken you less than an hour Ask yourself do you understand your research a little better already In the exercises that follow you will develop the title into keywords para graphs sections and chapters Along the way it is likely that you will want to write about other things too For example suppose that I produce a paragraph about technical writing Then technical may be promoted to be a keyword As keywords should come from the title I may end up changing the title to Writing Your Technical Dissertation If you end up changing your title that s okay but then revise all of your answers to the exercises 2 The Dissertation Start as you mean to finish Consult with your supervisor to choose a style file for your dissertation bibliographic tools etc My advice is to copy your supervisor s style as much as possible The main reason is that you may well write a paper with them one day and we all know whose style will prevail then This can be elevated to a general principle Be ready to collaborate Exercise 2 1 Ask your supervisor for a copy of their bibliographic database It is much quicker than building your own from scratch and makes life simpler too Exercise 2 2 Create the skeleton of your dissertation filling in as
18. t the structure is Of the disserta tion Of the chapter Of the paragraph e Is the agreed structure followed e Are the promises made in the introduction kept Exercise 6 3 Read your chapter through paying sole attention to the descrip tion of the structure 6 3 Presentation Are there any awkward page breaks or figures that do not float correctly Exercise 6 4 Do a visual check of page layout Eliminate any ugliness By the way if your word processor makes this hard consider changing it 6 4 Logic Your dissertation defends or presents an argument for your thesis Is the nature of the argument clear Check the following items e All terms and acronyms should be introduced e Flag all forward references e Check all implications because hence since e Focus on facts not value judgments e Criticise documents not people e Avoid negatives Use positive statements e Passive voice is boring Avoid the passive voice e Always monitor quantifiers 14 e Never say never e Dot points should all have the same grammar e Avoid use of first person unless it is relevant 6 5 Brevity Short statements are easier to understand and usually more powerful Try to cut out any words that are passengers Often the first draft is a stream of consciousness report in which we write down our thoughts as they come without reflection This is natural and good However the goal is to capture o
19. terns problem gt solution Why are there so many programming styles After all hardware is able to converge on a small number of architectures all based on a single paradigm and yet the number of programming styles continues to increase One answer to this is that most languages emphasise either data structures e g query languages or functionality e g functional languages or some compromise e g object orientation The pattern calculus is a new foundation for programming in which both data structures and functionality are given their due by making pattern matching the focus of computation Exercise 4 2 Identify all the structure words in the examples above Exercise 4 3 Identify all the structure words in your chapter How often does the structure change Are these changes flagged by structure words 4 3 Writing Time is Quadratic The time it takes to write some number of sections is usually proportional to the square of that number as the writing process proceeds as follows Write Section 1 Revise Section 1 Write Section 2 Revise Section 1 Revise Section 2 Write Section 3 Revise Section 1 Revise Section 2 Revise Section 3 Write Section 4 and so on The total time taken is 1 n n n 1 For example to draft six sections takes 21 units of time To draft 600 sections takes about 180 000 units of time Aside from being depressing this arithmetic has profound consequences for how you should organise your writing Suppose
20. the conclusion reveals the results dis cusses future work or adds new material of one sort or another In my opinion the subject matter is exactly the same state the results in the introduction mentioning future work is optional don t add new material in the conclusion This is puzzling only if you ignore the readers By reading your work they have changed Since they know more now than when they read the introduction you can speak to them in a more sophisticated way Conversely if their knowledge is unchanged then you have wasted their time In a sense the third draft is hardest Most novice researchers have pro duced written work for fifteen years or more and been repeatedly praised for it awarded higher marks than classmates perhaps received a university prize Remember however that all of your teachers were paid to read your work Exercise 5 4 List some people who have read your work for pleasure or profit rather than duty Now you have to learn a new skill to make people want to read so that they can benefit This is not done by self praise Describing your own work as vital or fascinating or important will not do You have to help the reader some to these conclusions Exercise 5 5 Find the first sentence in your current draft that imposes an opin ion on the reader Now get your supervisor to find it 12 6 Editing as Systematic Reading It is expected that you will rewrite sentences and paragraphs
21. ur best thoughts not the approximations to them For example I might write something like Reading aloud is a good way to begin editing Actually just reading in different ways is good You should read in as many different ways as possible Why Because each new way of reading gives you new insights into how your readers may look at it if you see what I mean First the phrase if you see what I mean can go In speech it acts as a question or at least an opportunity for the listener to respond but this is not possible in a written text As author I have to do my best to ensure that the reader does indeed see what I mean because I only get one shot at it Similarly the question Why can go Second the argument steps from reading aloud to reading differently but it is simpler to start with the general point of reading differently and then present the special case of reading aloud Here is a revised paragraph Reading in different ways e g by reading aloud is a good way to edit since each new way of reading gives more insights into your readers point of view Exercise 6 5 Identify all of the words and phrases that have been cut in passing from the original quotation to its revision Have any words been added Exercise 6 6 Check for rhetorical questions in your chapter Exercise 6 7 What happens to the truth of your assertions if qualifiers are removed Exercise 6 8 What happens to the truth of your asserti
22. will be inappropriate for students in other disciplines For example it would be unfortunate if a dissertation on the life and work of a poet were forced into this structure There are two measures of success One is that students like it and say they find it useful The other is that it reduces the time taken to complete degrees Note that I am not claiming that it will produce better dissertations but rather that the same quality can be achieved in less time 3 7 Results This section will be written after all the methods have been applied Exercise 3 12 Write up some paragraph headings for your results 3 8 Structure of the Dissertation This section explains the table of contents and the role of the various chapters in contributing to the defence of the thesis Exercise 3 13 Write a paragraph outlining the intended structure of the dis sertation by naming the chapters and the role that they play in establishing your thesis 4 Finish Your Chapters If you want to minimise your writing effort then get into the habit of writing whole chapters Finish one before getting serious about the next one 4 1 The Purpose of a Chapter Is your chapter or section for summation explanation or instruction Are you writing for superiors peers or inferiors Summation is for conclusions recommendations for action accounts of con sequences the executive summary conclusion or appeal for support It should be brief simple and focused
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