Common Dissertation Issues

Dissertation candidates are always looking for the means to improve their dissertations, seeking the much-desired “Doctoral” degree. Often, the problems holding their dissertations back from being accepted are simple grammatical difficulties.

Adverbs and Adjectives

The first group is adverbs and adjectives. Adverbs modify other words by explaining how, where and when. Adjectives modify nouns with descriptions. Writers should attempt to be as precise as possible, using strong words instead of adverbs. Adjectives should be used following two conditions: appropriateness and necessity. If adjectives are inserted strictly to expand the word count of an article, odds are they are being used inappropriately and unnecessarily.

Time References

The dissertation writer should be painfully aware of the problems time references can cause. To put it simply, today is tomorrow’s yesterday. Using phrases like “earlier this year” or “in the last decade” are time sensitive. Ten years from now, they will no longer represent the time period they do when written. Future tense phrases can be equally hazardous. Saying that an event or condition will happen “soon” tells the audience little. In the writing of a dissertation, specific temporal identifications should be used, such as “in the spring of 2007” or “by the year 2012” to establish a clear time reference that will outlast the passage of time.

Negating a Sentence

Negation of a statement should be established early in the sentence. This ensures the understanding of the statements negative connotation. An example would be “no politicians supported the ill-conceived bill after the debate” rather than “after the debate, the ill-conceived bill was supported by no one.”

This and That

The use of these two words causes many a dissertation reviewer to cringe. They too are considered vague references to previously mentioned objects. They could refer to the subject or condition in the previous sentence only, the subject or condition of the entire previous paragraph, or the subject or condition of an entire previous section. Additionally, the phrases created by these two words can be interpreted as either concrete or abstract, referencing a particular incident of a condition or the general concept the incident evidences.

Colloquialisms

The English language is an ever-changing beast. Phrases that were considered acceptable fifty years ago are today looked upon as archaic. Colloquialisms are also considered vague references to numeric or conditional values as mentioned above and should be equally avoided.