Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
harder it will be. Delay increases the time between having ideas and having to write
about them, increases the pressure to read papers to be discussed, and reduces the
number of experiments that can be thoroughly described. Completing your reading,
for example, is a poor reason to defer writing, because reading is never complete;
and in any case, the best way to develop your understanding of other papers is to
write about them.
The writing defines the research, and the one cannot proceed without the other.
Writing is a stimulus to research, suggesting fresh ideas and clarifying vague concepts
and misunderstandings; and development of the presentation of the results oftens
suggest the form the proofs or experiments should take. Gaps in the research may
not be apparent until it has been at least preliminarily described. Research is also
a stimulus to writing—fine points are quickly forgotten once the work is complete.
Don't expect the writing to progress steadily, but do expect progress overall. If the
writing seems to have stalled, it is time to put other tasks aside for a while.
A thesis is typically completed over a much longer time than is a paper, but the
guidance on writing is the same: the real start of the work is when the writing has
begun. Being disciplined about writing is even more important than for a paper,
because over a period of years early work will be forgotten if it isn't captured in an
organized way.
However, the task of writing a thesis can be broken into manageable stages. In a
Ph.D., each chapter can be as rich as a paper, and each is likely to bewritten separately.
Drafting of the technical chapters that contain the contribution tends to be relatively
easy (even though the research that underlies these chapters may have consumed
years of work), in part because you have been immersed in this material and will
find that you have plenty to say about it. The most difficult chapter is usually the
background and literature review. The volume of careful reading can be an obstacle,
as is the need to write succinctly and fairly about other people's work. If you finish
the background first, it will seem as if the main task of writing the thesis is complete.
The introduction can be surprisingly challenging: achievement of a conversa-
tional, natural writing style can take many revisions. But this is where the examiner
meets you for the first time and, as for any initial meeting, it is important to make a
good impression.
From Draft to Submission
There are many approaches to the process of assembling a technical paper. The
technique I use for composing is to brainstorm, writing down in point form what
has been learnt, what has been achieved, and what the results are. The next step is
to prepare a skeleton, choosing results to emphasize and discarding material that on
reflection seems irrelevant, and then work out a logical sequence of sections that
leads the reader naturally to the results.
A useful discipline is to choose the section titles before writing any text, because if
material to be included doesn't seem to belong in any section then the paper's structure
