Hi

I am just starting writing up my thesis and I am wondering if anyone could suggest any good resources that make this process a bit easier? In particular, I am looking for useful phrases that I can use in my text. Thesis is going to be science based.

Thanks for helpful tips

Spend more time in literature review. By that alone without you even realising it, you will happens to end up writing with similar trends. Science expects facts and not beautiful wish washy thoughts to be included in your writings. PhD deals with originality, thus kindly don't bother to cut and paste, not worth it. Happy researching.
Cheers ;-)

I found Patrick Dunleavy's book 'Authoring a PhD' really useful to begin with as it gives some quite specific advice about structuring a thesis right down to sentence level. I personally haven't followed his advice to the rule but his suggestions certainly helped me to work out how I was going to approach my own thesis structure / writing at at a stage when it seemed quite overwhelming!

For a less prescriptive apporach, I think Rowena Murray's 'How to Write a Thesis' is useful, and I've tended to dip into this book later in my thesis-writing process.

Also, loads of people here swear by Joan Bolker's 'Writing your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day' which includes lots of useful exercises to get you writing in case that's what you need too.

As for phrases, I agree with the previous poster that specific terminology will come through the literature/context for your research, but there is some advice about general expressions / phrasing in the books I've suggested and Manchester University has also put together some webpages with suggestions:

http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

Somebody on this forum directed me towards the Manchester site last year (thanks, whoever you were!) I feel it's geared towards science writing (I'm in Art and Design) so it might be a good one for you to have a look at.

I've also got some books about academic writing sitting on my shelf which I bought around Christmas, but to be honest I've been too busy writing to actually read them yet! Maybe when I get a few minutes I'll have a look in case there's anything that will be useful as I complete my final drafts.

Good luck with your writing!