More thesis writing tips from someone who just finished writing their thesis
I have already made a couple of thesis related posts in these past months: thesis writing tips from someone who is currently writing their thesis, my thesis notebook, my process for writing a chapter of my thesis. After finishing my thesis here are some more tips and useful things that came to mind! (If you are interested I documented the process of my work in specific daily posts all tagged as #thesis diary).
ask all the more technical information ahead of time, margins, font, size, the way the footnotes should be written, how you are supposed to include quotes in the text, everything. The early you know about this stuff the better because it will be less likely for you to miss something when fixing the final version.
copying all the chapters in one single file will cause problems, be aware of it.
I personally wrote individual chapters on different files in order to then send them to my professor. I ended up having to rewrite the whole thing in one file cause by just copying and pasting it the file got messed up and didn't show both the footnotes and the page number. I would recommend maybe writing everything in a document with all the correct settings and then copying single chapters in different files to send to professors. That way you shouldn't have my problem. Or simply calculate more time to rewrite everything, that could also be a tecnique to make sure the texts works as a whole.
if you have long chapters that touch multiple subjects make sure you have a list with the order of everything in the chapter so that if you have to add new information regarding something you won't have to reread the whole thing just to look for the paragraph you need. I would have needed something like this at the very end but I unfortunately did not have anything like it.
rembember that people reading your thesis don't know as much as you do on the subject you are writing about. This means that you probably have more material than you think you do, because you'll need to explain even what you think are basic facts of the subject, and that you need to repeat certain informations more than once. If you are talking about someone don't assume people will remember about when you first introduced them 20 pages ago, add a brief line to remind everyone who they are.
highlighters and colourful tabs are your best friends when organizing what piece of information goes in which chapter. I personally did a big rereading of all my notes with different highlighters in hand, I associated a colour to each chapter and then just marked all the information I wanted to include with the right colour.
before starting with a chapter create a big brain dump even if you have more or less a good idea of what to include, often you get even more interesting ideas that you can add.
having someone to help with rereading everything can be super helpful. I was personally very grateful to my family cause having them reread the stuff I wrote helped me find so many typos and mistakes I made like repetitions of words I had not seen. When you know what you are about to read you can often skip errors you made.
fiding titles for the thesis and for chapters is a nightmare. I struggled so much cause I had no idea where to start. What you want to do is individuate key words that can represent what is included in the chapter and work from there.
if you write a thesis that includes a research you personally did in the conclusion make sure to add prompts for further researches that could be made on the subject, that is always a nice addition to make.
you will rewrite things a million times, be aware of it from the start, and accept it as your fate.
synonyms, look for synonyms when writing. If you are anything like me you tend to use some few words more than others, but with this type of writing it is necessary to vary your vocabulary. Plus when looking for synonyms you might find words that work much better that what you had in mind.
you will find yourself struggling with writing certain sentences. Sometimes you have the informations but you sentence just does not work, it can be too long, too wordy, too confused. When that happens deleated it. Think of the key words of the sentence and what you want to say and try to write it down in a completly different manner than before, sometimes that can help with finding the right set of words.
you will have to write a bibliography, my advice is to store all the sources you use in one file as soon as you have used them in the thesis. This way you'll make sure you don't forget any. Then make sure you have written them all in the same style, and after having them in alphabetical order you are good to go. (pro tip: if you're graduating in history make sure to separate the primary sources from the secondary sources, that will look even more professional, plus if you like me had to work with particular sources like hadwritten ones make sure you specify it)
do your best to highlight your original work, your hypothesis, your thoughts, the difficult stuff you did for the research (like in my case working with handwritten sources). It is very important even if you use an impersonal tone while writing (which tbh is much better for a thesis).
you have doubts on something? Something cannot be said for certain? You had a specific question you wanted to reseach but didn't find much? Write about it. Say there is an hypothesis but it's not clear and explain the reasons why (both why you have a certain idea and why it cannot be said for sure). Say you looked for informations regarding something but you found none, or very little. Those are all precious informations for a reseach even if it doesn't look like so right away.
it's also important to analyze sources that have previously researched the subject you are talking about. Include that, talking about the sources you used as well as the previous researches that have been done is fundamental, and elevates your work.
These are all the tips and advices that came to mind at the moment. I am sure I am forgetting about something, because there is so much that can be said on this subject. I really hope this was somewhat helpful, especially alongside my other posts. Here's also a link to my masterlist of studying tips post just in case.
