For quite some time now my supervisor and I have been working on a model of my Introduction and Conclusion being 10,000 words and then my main three chapters being 15,000 words. I've now pretty much finished my main three chapters, I have a full draft of the introduction and so I want to start on the conclusion.

However, when I've looked at guidance on writing conclusions they all seem to suggest that what I should be doing is not introducing any new material, but summarising what I've found in my main chapters, acknowledging what the original contribution is, and then discussing further avenues for work... and this should therefore be shorter than 10,000 words.

I was planning on doing the above, but also taking a broader historical perspective on some of the smaller themes I've identified... which I think kind of counts as 'new material'...

I'm stuck! I don't really know how to proceed, how to write a big conclusion like that, and I worry that if the examiners won't like it I'll get major corrections... I haven't written a single word today and I only wrote 268 yesterday. I have to write at least 500 a day or I'll not submit. HELP! :/

p.s. I'm in Music department doing a PhD on a gender and cultural studies related topic, so anyone who has examples of music/literature/gender/cultural studies theses with long conclusions, I'd REALLY appreciate hearing about them!!!

No new material in conc! Unless it looks at the hypothetical future.

Agree, that's a conclusion.



Disagree, depending on what material you have to discuss it could be this long.

I don't think 'taking a broader historical perspective' counts as new material really, because it's a just a synthesis of your ideas. Plus, it's not necessarily a conclusion chapter, more like a discussion chapter, so reading about what to write to in a conclusion might not be accurate.

I don't think you would get major corrections to rewrite a conclusion/discussion chapter. They are usually quite quick to write.

But I'm in the Sciences so it might be different (but mine is about 10,000 words).

i am in literature and you could throw in the historical perspective in the introduction and show off there how well read you are, in any event that's what i've been told to do.
no new material in conclusions, i agree, except in that bit where you mention further questions to be explored in the future and so on...
my conclusion is shorter than 10k, about 3k, but i also have little conclusions after each chapter. so those and the final conclusions are around 7 or 8 k in total with the introduction being around 5k (i have an 80k wordlimit for the whole lot).

ToL thanks - that's helpful. I did think that might not count as new. I just can't see what I've got to summarise being 10,000, but perhaps I'm just being too focused with my language! I should waffle more ;) I'm glad it wouldn't be major corrections, that's good to know

Windowsill - I've already got an introductory historical bit, about 3,000 words in my intro, but I can't really talk about what I want to talk about until they've read the main chapters, hence why I wanted to put it in the conclusion...so I think it's kind of like bookends, neatly tying up the work!