Oh my, I have just finished addressing comments for the fifth draft chapter and am now facing writing chapter 6. Chapter 7 is the discussion which I am least looking forward to so am saving it til last! I am feeling good about the progress as I have til May 2011, but it still seems so enormous. I will have editing to do, formatting, adding in graphs to the final and that seems as though it will take forever. Then I have the concerns of whether I have enough references that are relevant to the area and have I included all that is relevant?

I have almost accomplished the word limit and have little left to write so why does it all seem so daunting still? Realistically how long does the final editing and prep take? I am so close to having it written and now I would just like to get it submitted! Anyone else found this part a hard slog as I would love to hear some words of wisdom right now?

Thanks for reading my rant!:$

The end part feels like the hardest to me. In terms of the content and the writing. I actually found it easier to do my final discussion chapter before I went through and drafted the others again because then I knew what sort of target and tone I was aiming for with the rest.

The actual prep and formating I've found really satisfying, because any progress you make is really apparent, and you're still working on your thesis but not working *directly* on your thesis. I've been using LyX so once you've worked out how to use it (maybe 30 mins of going through a tutorial) it's actually really quick. I had everything on word before, a seperate .doc for each chapter but I think using word to compile it all into one consistently formatted document would have been a chore. With LyX I had a full, rather beautiful and almost 'real' looking pdf of the thesis in a couple of days. It would depend on how many graphs, figures, formulae etc you had to add though.

Thank you Peljam, I have asked my supervisor about using the LyX software for the thesis or if the uni suggests any others!  I have alot of graphs to add in but may do them on a separate page after the text so the examiners do not have to flick through to the back of the thesis. I think the 'wrap-around' text option may get very awkward to do in Word with so many to add lol.  I also have each chapter written in a Word doc so have been slotting them into the large thesis word doc once I have addressed feedback comments. I am looking forward to the editing stage as at least it is almost done by then, and am glad to hear that it doesn't progress as slowly as I had imagined.  Did you used the LyX software for a science/experiment based thesis?

Thanks again!

I was a very part-time student, lucky to manage 5 hours total a week in the last few years of my 6-year part-time PhD.

I managed the final revisions and proper writing of my conclusions chapter in the last 4 months. So you can do it too!

I used Word and had separate files for all my chapters until near the end. It just took an hour or two to reformat everything into a single file. It really isn't that big a task. I'd be wary of switching to a different typesetting system at such a late stage of your PhD.

Also when you write your final chapter the best advice my supervisor gave me was to think "so what?" i.e. what have I found. So there was a bit of recapping, but mainly I was pulling out the big results, and thinking about big questions which ran across all my previous thematic chapters.

Good luck!

Thank you Bilbobaggins, I too am part-time so am looking forward to the end of six years lol. My three babies employ me during the day (for free!!) and then in the evening I am sitting at my laptop typing away while hubby puts his feet up. I try to get a couple of hours each evening and then a wednesday afternoon when the babies go into nursery. I guess I get realistically 15-17 hours a week. I started the 'real' write-up about May time so have acheived a lot in just a few months.

I am inspired by the fact you did use Word without too much problem, I have had to switch to the latest Word which was such a trauma so I am worried about the thesis not being easy to do in Word. Did you put graphs in with wrap-around text for each chapter or some other way?

I am feeling better about this last formatting not being too bad and slow given the experiences shared by yourself and Peljam!

Ah another part-time student. Good luck for the final stretch and well done for sticking it out over 6 years!

I used an ancient version of Word, Word X for the Mac which was released, I think, in 2000. I had a lot of charts and graphs and other illustrations and tables. I didn't use wrap-around text for them, but just had them as stand-alone items. That worked well.

I manually did all my captions though. I started doing them using Word's caption facility, but it wasn't working very well after I while, so I did them by hand, including renumbering them at the final stage, and manually entering page numbers into the table of contents. But even that wasn't a big job.

I'm using Word 2010 to write up my thesis. On the whole, it's not too bad but it does have some annoying bug bears. For instance, the whole page landscape and portrait formats. If you're doing a table in landscape, you can't just (to the best of my knowledge) make on particular page landscape. You have to turn them all into landscape format from that page forwards and then, on the page after, set it all to portrait again - ad infinitum. Page margins can be a pain, as can justifying the text. I almost wish I'd learnt how to use LateX back in the early days - it may have made my life simpler.

Hi W.

Not sure if i read your post correctly, plus I'm using Word 2007 so hope this applies.

But if so.. and if so ... then you can apply section breaks in W7, and then make one section landscape, then following that landscape page make another section break and return that section onwards to portrait.

Do a help in Word10 and have a quick read see if it applies.

As for headers and footers on the landscape etc.. nightmare city. i've googled til i can google no more on that one. Its hit and miss.

HTH. Chuff

Thank you, Chuff. I'll check that out.(up)