Writing Your Dissertation One Paragraph at a Time

This pamphlet provides you with the skills to write your dissertation in a methodical and timely manner. It is constructed from personal reflections on my own writing, and on that of research students who have attended my writing clinics over the years. It combines useful concepts with a series of exercises that achieve goals. The first main concept is that of the thesis. This word is often used to describe a document but in its primary meaning, a thesis is a statement, a proposition. If the statement is in doubt then it is a hypothesis. You will defend your thesis in a document, a dissertation. Your first goal will be to identify your thesis. Your second goal will be to produce a skeleton of your dissertation.