Hello

I am in my third year and I need to get some advice what is the best way to organise the thesis writing.

1. At the moment, I am writing each chapter in a separate word document instead of combining them all together in a big document as it's rather heavy if I do that (it takes ages to load). Can I confirm this approach is OK or would it be better to combine everything in one document now? I assume I just have to make sure the footnote, figure, table and page numbers are in correct order in each document which I will combine them into pdf when they are complete. Should I put all of them in Word eventually? I imagine that would be a really heavy word file.

2. The order of my writing process is Lit Review, Empirical Chapters (Experiments), Conclusions, Introduction, Overview, Reference, Appendices, Table of Content, Figure and Table Lists. Is that in a weird order? I just thought it would be easier to write Introduction at the end depending on the argument that I will be presenting in the conclusion.

3. Can I copy and paste certain sections from my publication to my thesis? I have written up some publication manuscripts with my supervisor and I'm not sure how much content I can take from there. Is that considered as self-plagiarism?

4. Is there any better way of organising references? At the moment, I am compiling the reference whilst I'm writing, but I have to admit that it does interrupt the flow of the writing. But I'm worry if I don't do it "properly" now, I might lost the reference source eventually. Any suggestion what is the best way of organising reference? I'm using Zotera

5. How long does it take to 'tidy up" the thesis after finishing the main writing (excluding references, appendices, table of content etc). I just want to have a rough idea how much time I should put away for this bit.

6. Any other advice how to make a write-up year slightly easier!!

Thanks in advance

Hi Human

RE: some of your questions:

1. - separate word docs is the way I did things UNTIL I had the whole thesis written. Then I combined it into one. Make sure you keep backups of this and the individual chapters, just in case. Coming close to submission, my supv wanted to see the whole thing, not just individual chapters. Page numbers can be a total pain (lots of questions over time here on the forum about those!). You will probably need to put in section breaks and page breaks - youtube is useful for this. However, it is possible to merge separate pdfs. Google this, it's quite easy.

2. Write it in any order that makes sense to you - just as long as it's in the correct order come submission! It is useful though at some stage to have it in the correct order. You will need to proof it for continuity, contradiction etc. I think you can only spot these when it flows from page 1 to x.

3. Don't know, I'm afraid. Recent post on the forum about this very topic.

4. Zotero is fine as far as I know. At this stage I think it's too late to change. Bear in mind that checking references takes time so make sure you schedule in time for that.

5. Depends on how organised a writer you are. However, it does take time!

6. Not really - I found my write up year pretty stressful (sorry!) and although heretofore was good at proofing, stress caused me to miss some really silly errors and they slipped through. If you have time, you need a break from when it's ready (even just one or two days) and then revisit it to clean proof. Sadly, time constraints usually mean people don't have such luxuries but if you can, do.

Good luck with it


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