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How to Write a Thesis | 
 enlarge | Author: Rowena Murray
Publisher: Open University Press
Category: Book
List Price: £18.99
Buy New: £11.00
You Save: £7.99 (42%)
New (31) Used (8) from £11.00
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 48373
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0335219683
Dewey Decimal Number: 808.042
EAN: 9780335219681
ASIN: 0335219683
Publication Date: June 1, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Unwanted gift
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Not just for PhDs - a must have for any dissertation July 31, 2007
A. Tatton (stoke newington)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This really is probably worth more than its weight in gold, especially because gold is quite cheap at the moment. And it doesn't weigh much. But it certainly gets you writing and just like points mean prizes, more writing means less work to do from now on. It's absolutely packed with practical tips and motivational pointers to get you going and get your project/dissertation/thesis in. Like on page 168, 'finish today's writing session by defining tomorrow's'. And the eight point worklist of a draft structure for a thesis on page 188. Great on freewriting and generative writing. Ideally I would like more on filing, document management and the mechanics of research, but I suppose I would need books on how to file, manage documents and research!
do not waste your time with other books, this is great June 23, 2006
Claire Cooper
2 out of 6 found this review helpful
I wasted a lot of time and money searching for books to help me write better. This book i practical and WILL be your holy grail to a phD if you have problems in writing, structure and are lost in the process. BUY IT!
Invaluable November 8, 2005
Dr. Guy B. Gratton (UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I discovered this book about a year before submitting my thesis from an 8-year part-time PhD. It helped enormously in getting my ideas together and making the final product useful. This was particularly the case for me as an "external" since I'd long been away from the academic style of writing and although it's clearly got a bit of a humanities bias, this didn't really disturb me as an aerospace engineer. Anybody who is doing a research degree, BUY THIS, more importantly buy it BEFORE you start work on your thesis not towards the end. It will save you enormous amounts of aggro and is a brilliantly useful volume. This will be required reading for any PhD students that I find myself supervising in the future.
 Not for the science and engineering people. March 7, 2004
I. M. Carr (UK)
36 out of 40 found this review helpful
Most universities will have two types of courses on thesis writing, one for the Humanities and one for the Sciences. This is because the structure of these PhDs is very different and a course that covers both types is not realistic. This book is for the humanities and only pays lip service to the scientific thesis.
For example it states that you may have a chapter titled Methods; in all practical PhD's you “will” have a Materials and Method section. The way this section is written is very different from the Introduction and Discussion, in that it is very stylised, concise, and may consist of page after page of recipes. Writing the Methods section in a concise and logical manor can also be a problem, again this was not discussed. Similarly, presenting only experimental data in the Results section requires a style of its own. The Results chapter is the main “make or break” section of a scientific thesis and so needs more than a passing comment. This section relies heavily on figures and tables neither of which gets covered at all in the book.
The book does not even mention the possibility that some one else publishes your work or the basic theory of your thesis is disproved during your PhD studies. I personal have seen this on numerous occasions. This does not kill the project but does require special consideration when writing the thesis. It may result in a different end point than originally intended or in extreme circumstances, two unrelated halves.
It also does not mention negative results; a thesis may contain a section on expressing a protein that you never managed to express. This should not be omitted from the final thesis, but included to demonstrate how you approached a difficult problem and attempted to solve it. It’s nice to win all the time but not very likely.
In summary this book is for the production of a discursive thesis which is based on presenting and supporting an opinion and not a scientific thesis based on explaining experimental data.
How to write a good PhD thesis December 2, 2002
Ali Shiri
21 out of 26 found this review helpful
I am a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and am in the third year of my studies. I have published a number of papers based on my PhD research. However, when I read the Rowena Murray's book entitled "how to write a thesis", I realised there are so many tips and techniques I need to know if I want to enhance my PhD thesis. The book is one of the most helpful works I have ever read in my PhD life. It provides an all-embracing while easy-to-understand account of writing tasks PhD students require to experience to present their theses in a well-structured and nice manner. Rowena provides the reader with tips and techniques to overcome the "academic wirting phobia" such techniques as "free writing" and "generative writing". The text is largley enhanced by the examples from the author's longstanding experience in teaching thesis writing workshops and courses. No matter what your research area is and in what year of PhD you are, I beleive this book should be read by all PhD students and supervisors as it provides a useful framework for writing PhD thesis from the very early stage to the completion. I should finally say that this is a great "thesis-saving" work.Ali Shiri, University of Strathclyde
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