Thesis Writing Guide/Writing

Before you write

Citation

• If available, cite conference or journal articles zitieren, not (arXiv) preprints
  • If you cite a preprint, write it in your text that "according to the preprint ... by ..."
• If available, use DOIs, not URLs
  • never use both - if you have a DOI, you can delete the URL from the BibTeX

In recent years, a concept of "predatory journals" has become more important. As a bachelor/master student, you are not expected to be able to differentiate them from "real" journals, but if you have a bad feeling, feel free to research the journal and publisher. You can always ask your supervisor for help as well.

If you need space

Usually, you don't need to worry about space in a bachelor/master/doctor thesis. If, however, you submit your work as a paper, or are otherwise restricted to a certain set of pages, here are a few hints for further cleanup:

• if the note says "note = {publisher: ...}" - you can replace it with "publisher = ..."
  • a simple search & replace with note = {publisher: and publisher = { should do the trick most of the time, unless there is something like "number: ..." in between.
• If there are more than 4 authors, replace the 4th and all following with "others"
  • author = {First, A and Second, B and Third, C and Fourth, D and Fifth, E and ...}
    becomes
    author = {First, A and Second, B and Third, C and others}

While you write

Pictures

Never copy-paste a drawing that you could re-create. Always cite where you derived an image from.

SVG > PDF > PNG https://www.drawio.com/doc/faq/svg-export-text-problems

Captions

Imagine you're curating a museum. Some poeple will only read the small sign beneath every picture and move on. Write short, descriptive captions that tell the viewers everything they need to know. Some readers will go "window-shopping", i.e. only view images, tables and their captions. Make sure your thesis is at least somewhat comprehensive with only those tools. Details can go into the fulltext, but the images and captions by themselves should be understandable already.

In short: Give ~ 3 lines of short, pointient description of what is shown and what is noteworthy. Be descriptive, what is shown, and keep the "why" and "how" for the long-form text.

Introduction

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 1: Introduction

Mandatory chapter, almost entirely derived from your assessment (see Thesis Writing Guide/Introduction#Formalize an assignment).

Background

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 2: Background

Anything that could be interesting for this thesis guide. Even if it might not end up being used, it should be here.

Related Work

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 3: Related Work

Approach

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 4: Approach

Implementation

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 5: Implementation

Evaluation

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 6: Evaluation

Results

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 7: Results

Discussion

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 8: Discussion

Future Work

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 9: Future Work

Conclusion

Main article: Thesis Writing Guide/Chapter 10: Conclusion

Lessons Learned: Writing

Dear reader, this is your time to shine!

Contribute your own lessons learned, add helpful hints and mistakes made so that others may learn from it.
Just click "edit" and add your own subsection!

Don't Procrastinate too long

If you push writing too far to the end of your thesis, you won't remember anymore what you did in week one. Start writing your master thesis in the first days. Anything is much better than nothing!

Scientific word choice is complicated

Structuring your ideas and using scientific terms is hard. Especially if English isn't your first language, you may not find the right words, but even a native speaker will have to re-learn a lot of words. "Significantly better" has a completely different meaning in science, compared to everyday usage.

In general:

• avoid adjectives, unless your citing them
• write what works for you, and ask your supervisor to give you feedback
• especially if you're missing a specific word, just mark BIG, BOLD AND RED AS TODO and just ask your supervisor

You will be a much better writer after your thesis, and that's good - you're learning, that's what all of this is for.

Take a walk

Often times, you can fix a writes block just by going outside and walk around for 20 minutes. Go for a walk often, it'll pay of one way or the other. In fact, after you read this, fix what you're doing right and then take a walk, feel for yourself :)

Think in headlines

You know everything that's going on, readers don't. When you write, start big and easy to understand. Then go into the next level of detail, complete that. Then the next level.

If you start on the highest detail level, nobody can follow and you will loose the reader immedieatly. Give them a bigger headline, a bigger picture first, then fill that in with more detail.