Hi all,

I'm finishing off the writing up and hoping to submit in less than 2 weeks - the thesis is almost complete but I'm worried about my literature review chapter. The entire thesis is under the word limit (around 60k when the limit is 80k), but my literature review seems long. My supervisor suggested aiming for around 50-55 pages (which is about 15,000 words including figures etc). Mine is at 58 pages, but my problem is that once I amend the border size for binding, it will be more like 65 pages... is this far too long? Will this just annoy the examiners? All my other chapters are pretty concise, and I could just be worrying too much about this. My supervisor has said he doesn't want to see anything else now before I submit so I feel like I'm hounding him if I ask anything now. Any advice on this would be massively appreciated! Sorry if this post seems jumbled, I'm feeling a bit panicky about submission today!

Thanks,
Tulip

not sure if that helps, mine is about 10k for an 80k thesis (about 100k in total with footnotes). i felt this was a bit on the short side, but i also have a topic that had very little previous literature (i am in humanities). if you are worried about the length you could put some of the information into footnotes. then it's still mentioned, but the wordcount is lower. although maybe this is not a good idea bc your wordcount is not very high in general? in any event i wouldn't be worried too much about it, bc the literaturereview shows your good background knowledge. and the 58 aren't too far off from the suggested 50-55 pages and in the final formatting everything looks longer anyway. i don't think it's a huge problem, but then you never know with academics... maybe ask someone else in the department if your supervisor isn't willing to suggest anything, or look at previous theses that have been submitted in your area at your uni for comparison?

15,000 good for (an HSS) lit review- don't worry about binding increasing the siza as it is accounted for on a pro-rata scale.

That's fine I think, especially if your other chapters are concise. The examiners can always skip it if they get bored!

ToL, I hear that's the main reason they give minor corrections?!

I've never heard that in the sciences, I think it's better for the lr to be comprehensive - I've heard more often that ppl are asked to include things rather than remove.

Hi everyone,

Thank you for the posts - these have made me feel a bit less anxious about this chapter. I think I'll go with the comprehensive approach and keep it this length then, since I don't really have time to reduce it anyway before I submit.

Out of interest, when you say the lit review is the main reason for corrections given at the viva, does this usually just mean minors/majors or have you known of people to need to resubmit on the basis of their literature review alone? At my university, the time period for minor and major corrections is the same (12 weeks), so I'm more concerned about trying to limit the possibility of a resubmission verdict, especially since my new job requires the PhD!

Thanks for your comments!

Tulip