phd written out

Should I Write Ph.D. or PhD? (Complete Guide)

As some of you are probably aware, the kind of English used on my side of the pond (England) is sometimes a bit different to the English used in the land of burgers and Trump.

Some words are spelt differently. But others just have a few bits of grammar difference.

Today, I want to look at the difference between Ph.D. and PhD. We’ll look at which one is correct, what it stands for, and why it’s a bit odd that it stands for that.

Should I Write Ph.D. Or PhD?

It is correct to write both Ph.D. and PhD. Which one is best to use depends on where you are in the world. In Great Britain, they tend to use Ph.D. In the United States of America, they prefer to use Ph.D.

What Does Ph.D. Or PhD Stand For?

Let’s try to understand what Ph.D. stands for.

It stands for two things. And it doesn’t stand for one or the other, it stands for both of them at the same time.

The first thing is “Doctor of Philosophy” and the second is “Philosophiae Doctor”. As the eagle-eyed among you may have noticed, “Philosophiae” is not English. It’s in Latin.

This goes back to the days when the only people who needed university were high thinkers and philosophers.

Why Americans And Brits Disagree On Ph.D. Or PhD

This could help us to understand why Brits prefer PhD but Americans prefer Ph.D.

Perhaps, according to the Brits, it stands for “Philosophiae Doctor”. But, according to the Americans, it stands for “Doctor or Philosophy”.

After all, the Brits do have a habit of trying to sound smarter. But, whichever one you use, people on both sides should know what you’re saying.

Why Ph.D. Or PhD Is A Bit Strange

Now, I want you all to understand how strange it is to call anyone with a PhD a “doctor of Philosophy”.

Let’s say someone gets a Ph.D. in history.

Well, first of all, is she really a doctor? If you break your leg, she’s not the first person you’ll go to for help.

But not only that, she studied history, not philosophy. So, she’s called a doctor of philosophy despite not being a doctor and not having studied history.

Yet, for some reason, we still call her a “Doctor of philosophy”.

Where Does The Word “Doctor” Come From?

When most of us hear the word “Doctor”, we think of someone who makes us better when we’re sick. And there may be a few of you who think of a skinny man who travels through time in a Police Box.

But originally, “Doctor” was Latin for teacher. Through time, you were able to get a “PhD” in more things than just philosophy.

And, if you wanted to become what we think of as a “Doctor”, you would need to have a “doctorate” in medicine.

Technically, “Doctor” would be the wrong word. But it’s become so common, it’s managed to “common” itself enough to become the right word.

How To Get A Ph.D. Or PhD

Now I’m afraid you can’t just walk into a university and walk out with a PhD. There are steps you need to take before you get there.

First of all, you will need to do a Bachelor’s degree. This is the degree you do when you first enter university. There are some jobs where a bachelors is enough.

Let’s be honest here, most of the time you spend doing a bachelor is just having fun.

If you want to, you can then progress onto doing a master’s degree. This is a bit more high level, and you tend to need to work for it.

Once you have your bachelors you may decide to go on to get a PhD. If you go for this, you will be officially able to call yourself an intellectual.

What Kind Of Word Is Ph.D. Or PhD?

There are three ideas for what kind of word Ph.D. is. I’ll tell you all of them and let you make up your own mind.

A PhD is something you have. You work towards it, and once you’ve handed in all of your papers, you get a PhD.

A PhD is also something you are. If you have a PhD, you might say “I’m a PhD.”

It can also be a title, similar to “Sir” or “OBE”.

If your name is James Smith, and you are PhD, your name and title could be, Mr James Smith PhD.

How To Address Someone With A Ph.D. Or PhD

Talking of this man called James Smith, there are several ways to address and introduce him.

If you have a Ph.D., you are allowed to call yourself “Doctor” even if you don’t have a PhD in medicine. Therefore, if he wants, James could be called Dr Smith.
Maybe he doesn’t want to be confused for a medical doctor but still wants to show off his Ph.D. In that case, we can call him James Smith PhD.
But, like many with a Ph.D., he may not want to mention it unless it’s important. If he’s one of these people, we should just call him Mr Smith.

Ph.D. Or PhD Vs Doctorate

Asking “What’s the difference between a PhD and a doctorate?” is a bit like asking what the difference is between an apple and a fruit.

Just like an apple is a kind of fruit, a PhD is a kind of doctorate. However, it’s not the only doctorate there is.

Here are some forms of doctorate you may want to know.

Doctor of philosophy. But now also means Doctor of something there isn’t a doctorate for.

Doctorate in business.

Doctorate in engineering.

Doctorate in education

Doctor of medicine.

If you were wondering whether you should write “PhD” or “Ph.D.”, you can write either, both are grammatically correct, and both are very common terms that mean the same thing.

The only slight difference is that “PhD” is more common in England and “Ph.D.” is more common in America. This is perhaps because the British believe it stands for “philosophiae doctor” but Americans see it as “Doctor of Philosophy”.

But, no matter whether you use “PhD” or “Ph.D.”, to have one, you neither need to be a doctor nor study philosophy. All you need to do is stay in university for long enough to be able to get yourself a PhD. Then, you can become a PhD, and your title will be PhD.

You may also like: DSc Degree vs. PhD Degree – What’s the Difference? 9 Correct Ways to Write PhD Title on a Business Card

Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here .

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How to use the PhD title and all the little doctorate “rules”… use ph.d etc the correct way.

There are many conventions in the academic world that can make it difficult to navigate the philosophiae doctor title. The PhD title is awarded to those who have completed a doctoral degree but, not many people know how to use it once they have it.

It’s best to use PhD not Ph.D in most cases!

This article will go through everything you need to know about using the PhD title and when you can start using it.

The “rules” are relatively simple and can be broken as they are not officially set in stone – other than when you can officially call yourself a doctor.

There is no one correct answer but it may be misleading if you use the PhD title incorrectly. Here are the recommendations for effective communication for a PhD graduate.

It very much depends on the setting. Here are some examples of how I would use both the titles awarded to me after my PhD degree.

Situation	Preferred titles
Full formal university business	Dr Andrew Stapleton Ph.D, MChem
University emails	Dr Andy Stapleton
Speaking to a primary school class	Dr Andy
Emails to students I am lecturing	Dr Stapleton
How I wish to be called while teaching university classes	Andy

How do you Write PhD correctly after a name? Is it ph d or phd and ph.d? Abbreviation explained

It can be confusing to know exactly how to write PhD after your name as a person with a doctoral degree. Which bits are capitalised for a person with a doctoral degree? Is there a ‘.’ In the middle?

When writing a name with a PhD after it, the correct way to do so is to use “PhD” or “Ph.D. or Ph D”

Depending on the preference of the individual, either form can be used.

However, if the individual has a business card that states their degree in full, then the more formal “Doctor of Philosophy” should be used.

It is important to note that using “PhD” without any periods is incorrect; this abbreviation should only be used in informal contexts such as emails or text messages. I tend to use PhD in my YouTube videos and some people have pointed out that this is incorrect…

Following the individual’s preferred format will ensure that their name and credentials are properly represented.

Should you use Dr as well as PhD?

Some people like to use Dr and PhD in their official titles. There are a couple of important points that you need to know about markers and academic titles.

A person can have more than one marker in their name. For example my full title is Dr Andrew Stapleton, PhD, MChem.
The doctor title at the front can be used as a variant to the PhD at the end.

It can be a little bit ambiguous if I was to use Dr Andrew Stapleton, PhD as there are two markers. This could mean that I have two PhD’s, it could mean that I have a PhD and a medical doctorate, or it could just be that I want to use both the doctor and the PhD tags for the one degree.

However, in my experience, I still like to use both the title of doctor at the front and the PhD tag at the end of my name for official purposes.

Academics would rarely use the PhD suffix in everyday communication. They would much rather just use the doctor title.

What is the proper title for a PhD with a doctorate degree?

The proper title for a PhD is Doctor of Philosophy. However, some teachers and professors like to be referred to without their official title.

If you are not sure about how your professor, lecturer, or friend with a PhD wishes to be officially addressed you can ask them.

Most of the time, I like to refer to my colleagues with their doctor title for official purposes, but I do not include the type of doctoral degree at the end of their name. That is much better suited to a business card.

Your lecture may wish to be referred to as:

Dr [last name]
Dr [first name]

Asking them in the early stages of your relationship is the best way to work out which one they prefer.

If in doubt, always go for the more formal name and nomenclature.

When can you start to use your PhD title after your doctorate? As a PhD student? After your phd thesis?

When you have earned your PhD, you, as a person with a doctoral degree, can start using your title immediately. Although, it can be a little bit confusing as to when you have actually passed your PhD. Is it when you have submitted your dissertation for the advanced degree? Is it when you have received the comments back?

The University of Adelaide says that you can use it from your conferral date:

Students can be conferred on one of five dates during the year and for PhD students the conferral date will be the first available following the completion of all the academic requirements of your degree, including final thesis lodgement and the disbursement of any outstanding financial obligations to the University.

I started using my PhD title as soon as my confirmation letter arrived at my house. It was the first letter from the University that referred to me as Dr Stapleton. I was incredibly excited.

Generally, it is acceptable to use the title “Dr.” both professionally and socially but socially, people very rarely use it – at least in Australia. But you should never use it if you are a PhD student, PhD candidate or enrolled in a PhD program without a previous PhD qualification.

I do use it in professional settings but it always makes me feel a little bit awkward.

However, there may be some restrictions for certain settings . For example, if have a research degree resulting in a doctor title and you are working in a medical setting – some institutions do not like you to use Dr as it can confuse patients into thinking that you have a medical degree.

Instead, they ask that you use the PhD tag at the end of your name rather than the doctoral title for official and professional communications.

What is the correct way to write PhD?

When writing about someone’s PhD, the correct way is to write the term in full and capitalize each letter.

This should be done for all academic degrees, not just PhDs.

For example, it would be “Doctor of Philosophy” or “PhD” instead of “Ph.D.”, “Dr.”, or “DPhil”.

Additionally, it is common to mention the field of study in which the degree was earned if known, such as “Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematics”. It is also good practice to include the institution that granted the degree if it is a recognized one.

When writing about someone’s PhD, use proper capitalization and include relevant information like field of study and institution if known to ensure accuracy.

How do you put a PhD in a title?

Putting a PhD in a title is not as complicated as it may sound.

Generally speaking, the proper way to list a PhD in an academic or professional setting is by writing “Dr.” before the name, followed by the person’s full name and the appropriate abbreviations for their degree.

For example, if John Smith has earned a doctorate in psychology, his credentials would be listed as “Dr. John Smith, Ph.D.”

In some cases, such as when addressing someone formally in speech or on a business card, it may also be acceptable to list their credentials as “John Smith, Ph.D.”

Depending on context and personal preference, some people may also choose to list their higher degrees after their names by writing out the entire degree instead of just its abbreviation.

For example, John Smith could choose to write his full title as “John Smith, Doctor of Psychology”

However, I have not seen this in real academic life.

Should the font size of Ph.D. be the same as someone’s name?

The question of whether the font size of a Ph.D. should be the same as someone’s name is an interesting one.

On one hand, it could be argued that the Ph.D. deserves to be highlighted and therefore should be given a larger font size than someone’s name to denote its importance.

On the other, it could be argued that this would not be necessary or appropriate, and that treating everyone equally regardless of their title or degree is more important.

It depends on context and usage – if both names appear in the same document then they should likely have the same font size; however, if one appears in a formal setting such as a diploma or certificate, then it may make sense to give it a larger font size than someone’s name to emphasize its importance and significance.

Ph.Ds (or PhDs) are an important academic achievement and should be respected accordingly but without going overboard by giving them overly large fonts sizes which can take away from rather than add to their importance.

Wrapping up – doctoral title rules

This article has been over everything you need to know that using the PhD title properly and effectively, since the person has worked hard to earn a degree very few people have.

The doctor title can be used in place of the PhD and for incredibly formal communications, such as a business email or card, you can use both.

However, sometimes using both can cause confusion as to whether or not there is a reason first using both the doctor and PhD tags. Nonetheless, many people still use both.

Frequently Asked Questions about using PhD or Ph.d

1. what does phd stand for.

A PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy , which is a doctoral degree that represents the highest level of academic achievement in a specific field of study.

2. Is Ph.d the same as PhD?

Yes, Ph.d is the abbreviation for Doctor of Philosophy , and both terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same academic degree .

3. Can I use the title ‘Doctor’ with a PhD?

Individuals who hold a PhD have the right to use the title “Doctor” in front of their name as they are a person with a doctoral degree .

4. What is the correct way to write PhD?

The correct way to write PhD is with no spaces and with both letters capitalized, following the standard abbreviation for Doctor of Philosophy .

5. How do I abbreviate Doctor of Philosophy?

You can abbreviate Doctor of Philosophy as PhD , which is the most commonly used abbreviation for this type of doctoral degree .

6. Can I use both the title ‘Dr.’ and ‘PhD’ together?

Yes, you can use both the title ‘Dr.’ and ‘PhD’ together to denote your academic achievement as a holder of a doctorate degree .

7. What is a dissertation in relation to a PhD?

A dissertation is a scholarly document that Ph.D candidates are required to submit as part of their research degree in a specific field.

8. Who is considered a PhD candidate?

A PhD candidate is a student enrolled in a PhD program working towards the completion of their doctoral studies.

9. Is a PhD also referred to as a Doctorate?

Yes, a PhD is also commonly referred to as a Doctorate , signifying the attainment of the highest

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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Should I write "PhD" or "Ph.D."?

Question pretty self-explanatory. Should the abbreviation of the Latin term philosophiae doctor be written as PhD (no periods) or Ph.D. (with periods)?

abbreviations

1 You have a couple of correct answers below. Personally I avoid periods in abbreviations, so I would use PhD, just as I would say Washington DC using the postal code abbreviation DC rather than the historical abbreviation D.C. (District of Columbia). – Wayne Commented May 17, 2011 at 12:38

6 Answers 6

Actually both are correct. I could easily find both on my NOAD, and there are plenty of pages on the net where you find it written as "PhD".

The OALD gives an interesting distinction, stating that Ph.D. is especially North American English.

Now, being a non-native speaker, I can only rely on official sources to state who uses what , but there's no doubt that both variants are used.

Lastly, I think there's really no point in distinguishing them as " Philosophiae Doctor " or " Doctor of Philosophy " because it's the same exact expression, although considering the abbreviation, the former is the correct and original long version, the latter is just the English translation.

1 Collins English Dictionary shows a separate abbreviation if you want to specify the degree in English: "DPhil". (Also at dictionary.reference.com/browse/phd , just further down the page.) – MT_Head Commented May 17, 2011 at 9:52
@MT_Head: Thanks for commenting. With "if you want to specify the degree in English" you mean "being unambiguous"? – Alenanno Commented May 17, 2011 at 9:54
Indeed. To give an anecdotal example: in the company I used to work for, which was British, people didn't tend to use periods for abbreviations of degrees, e.g. MSc , PhD . I now work for an American company, where the convention is to use them, hence Ph.D. – Steve Melnikoff Commented May 17, 2011 at 9:55
I see, I was thinking of that before honestly, since PhD (or PHD) can be other things too... Thanks for pointing it out! – Alenanno Commented May 17, 2011 at 10:04
6 @MT_Head DPhil is also what a PhD is called at Oxford. If you use DPhil then a BE speaker would assume you specifically mean Oxford. – mgb Commented May 17, 2011 at 15:07

PhD and Ph.D. are both correct. Canadians tend to omit the periods and those from the U.S. tend to keep them. A reference grammar explains it like this:

2 abbreviations and acronyms 1 punctuation We usually write abbreviations without full stops in modern British English. Full stops (AmE ‘periods’) are normal in American English. Mr (AmE Mr. ) = Mister (not usually written in full) kg (AmE kg. ) = kilogram […]

Quote source: Swan, Michael. Practical English Usage (Third Edition). page 2.

I tend to use both 'PhD' and 'Ph.D'. A DPhil is awarded at both Oxford Uni and Sussex Uni in England. All others award PhDs to my knowledge.

It bugs me when people use 'Dr' before their name and then also state the award following it. I feel it should be one or the other.

Agree with Dr being used with PhD part. – Failed Scientist Commented Jul 28, 2016 at 10:19
4 "Oh, I'm going to get some cash out of this ATM machine." – hBy2Py Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 17:00
1 @hBy2Py : Ha! That's an example of the ironically named RAS syndrome (Redundant Acronym Syndrome syndrome). According to Wikipedia the term was coined in 2001 in a light-hearted column in New Scientist, though I haven't a reference for the original article. On the original question, during my lifetime (started in the 1950s) in the UK there has been a slow but steady move to reduce the use of punctuation and capitalisation in print. This has been driven in part by the newspaper industry, though I can't give any source other than the say-so of journalist friends. – Duckspindle Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 12:17

As many noted, both are accepted, so it is a matter of convention and taste.

The important is to be consistent with the other abbreviations you use throughout your text. Compare:

I got a Ph.D. in A.I. at U.C.L.A in the U.S.
I got a PhD in AI at UCLA in the US.

My personal preference goes for omitting periods, given that this is an abbreviation, following the Guardian style guide :

Do not use full points in abbreviations, or spaces between initials, including those in proper names

I remember discussing this with a trained secretary a long time ago. We eventually decided that the use of camel case (starting each abbreviated word in upper case) removes the need for the periods when abbreviating titles. However, when an abbreviation is relatively new or used in an unusual context, the periods help to avoid ambiguity.

For my own use, the overriding consideration is 'house style'. It is more important for a document to be internally consistent, to avoid confusion.

Bobble's "house style" consideration typically applies not just to a single document but also, as the name implies, to all documents emanating from the same "house". For example, my academic discipline (linguistics) traditionally employs the no-periods convention for all titles (not only PhD, MA, and BA but also Mr, Dr, and Prof), while the style enforcer at my academic institution (an American university) insists that I sprinkle periods around (for a total of 9 in my 6 examples). – H Stephen Straight Commented Feb 12, 2013 at 22:32

The most common I have seen are:

I have rarely come across a Ph.D. (with two periods).

28 Ugh. Ph.D looks like the inconsistent worst of all worlds. – user1579 Commented May 17, 2011 at 16:57

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged abbreviations latin periods or ask your own question .

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How to Correctly Use the Titles Dr. & PhD With a Name

How to Reference a Person With a PhD

When someone has earned a Doctor of Philosophy, or Ph.D., degree, that person is subsequently referred to as “doctor” in formal speech. The same is true of a person who is a medical doctor, psychologist, dentist or veterinarian. In formal speech, that person should be referred to as “doctor.” However, the rules are different in written form when addressing someone who is called “doctor” in formal speech. In written form, the titles “Dr.” and “Ph.D.” are not interchangeable.

Determine the Type of Doctor

First, you should identify what type of doctor you are addressing. Doctors of medicine and psychology, doctors of dentistry and doctors of veterinary medicine must be addressed differently in comparison to academic doctors who have earned a Doctor of Philosophy doctoral degree. Be advised that there are different types of doctoral degrees. A Doctor of Philosophy degree is just one kind of doctoral degree. There’s also, for example, a Doctor of Education doctoral degree and a Doctor of Psychology doctoral degree. The titles associated with the various doctoral degrees are not interchangeable. Only a person who has earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree should be addressed as Ph.D.

Addressing a Doctor in Writing

Place the title of “Dr.” before the name of a person who is a doctor of medicine or psychology, doctor of dentistry, or doctor of veterinary medicine. For example Dr. George Ross. Always write the word “doctor” in its abbreviated form when it goes before the person’s name. Never write, for example, Doctor George Ross. Do not combine the title of “Dr.” with any other title even if the person could appropriately be addressed by a different title. Never write, for example, “Dr. George Ross, Ph.D.,” even if the person is a medical doctor who has also earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree. Pick one title. Do not use the “Dr.” title when referring to someone who is solely an academic doctor.

Put a comma followed by the title “Ph.D.” after the name of a person who has earned a Doctor of Philosophy doctoral degree. For example Stacey Childs, Ph.D. Do not combine the title of “Ph.D.” with any other title even if the person could appropriately be addressed by a different title. For instance, even if the person being addressed is a doctor of medicine who has also earned a Ph.D., never write, for example, Dr. Stacey Childs, Ph.D. Pick one title. Do not use the “Ph.D.” title when referring to someone who not earned a Doctor of Philosophy doctoral degree.

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Maya Austen began freelance writing in 2009. She has written for many online publications on a wide variety of topics ranging from physical fitness to amateur astronomy. She's also an author and e-book publisher. Austen has a Bachelor of Arts in communications from the New England Institute of Art and currently lives in Boston, Mass.

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Is it correct for a PhD holder to sign as "Dr. J. Doe, PhD"?

I have seen some of the PhD holders sign as "Dr. [First Name] [Surname], PhD".

Is it academically correct to write "Dr. Frank Amoani Arthur, PhD"?

28 Are you in Germany? If not you can do whatever you want. – Cape Code Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 5:42
3 In addition, "Dr. X Y, PhD" would be correct if the person actually holds two different doctoral degrees: a Dr. and a PhD. – lighthouse keeper Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 6:51
4 I would like to add that in some fields and (sub)cultures, adding the ", PhD" bit after your name may seem unnecessarily pretentious. – Gimelist Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 8:01
1 It certainly depends on the usage context. In a job talk title slide, naming the degree seems justified, while in a conference talk or in a twitter profile, it would look pretentious. – lighthouse keeper Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 8:09
1 @CapeCode Not just Germany. In The Netherlands it is a criminal offense to write your name like this. The law explicitly provides that you have to choose between either writing "dr." or writing "PhD". – Tom van der Zanden Commented Jun 22, 2021 at 7:54

7 Answers 7

There are two important points to note about name markers that refer to academic titles:

You can have more than one of these markers in your name: Kay Doe, PhD, MD indicates a person who is both a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of medicine.
The marker Dr. can very often be used as a variant of the post-positioned markers. If both of them are equivalent markers in your country, you can choose either marker to refer to your academic title.

These two observations make the suggested name form Dr. Kay Doe, PhD rather ambiguous.

Does it refer to a person with two doctor titles because there are two markers? Or do both markers refer to just one doctor title? But if so, why is that doctor referred to twice in one name? This may even lead to suspicion: Does the name bearer use two markers which refer to the same title with the intention to sound more impressive than their academic distinction actually warrants?

This ambiguity is avoided if you use only one title marker per title.

1 +1 for not asserting that something is "correct" or "incorrect" and instead focusing on what is the most effective for communication. – Thomas Steinke Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 22:43
In Germany, we tend to list multiple doctor titles in front of the name, e.g. Dr. phil. D. med. Dr. h.c. Max Mustermann would declare a doctor of philosophy, a medical doctor and an honorary doctor all at once. But notably, these titles must match the precise expression of a title that has been awarded. So Dr. phil. X cannot be used instead of X, PhD , except if the awarding university explicitly declared it that way. Here you can find a list of examples (need to scroll down to a table). – xamid Commented Mar 27, 2023 at 5:59

In the US, at least the title doctor doesn't imply a medical doctor, though it includes that. My students would usually refer to me as Dr. Buffy. Someone not knowing that I hold a doctorate might call me Mr. Buffy, but Dr. Buffy is more specific.

If I wish to list my degrees after my name they aren't being used a title like Dr. or Ms.

So, being pedantic: Dr. Buffy, BA, MA, PhD. is just fine. In Germany, and places with a related academic culture, degrees are used more as titles so it is a bit different: Herr Doctor Professor Buffy.

Medical doctors (again in the US) insist on being called Doctor and have no difficulty with Dr. Foobar, MD. It would be extremely uncommon for them to be listed any other way.

5 "Herr Professor Doctor", actually. – Oleg Lobachev Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 15:07
1 Yes, Herr Student @OlegLobachev. Kidding of course. Thanks. In the US we would garble it, of course. As I did. I listed them in the order I did because of the order I earned them. I was Doktor before I was professor. – Buffy Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 15:12
2 There is a story of a quite famous mathematician (a professor) who was living with one of his students in a "romantic" relationship. He once is said to have informed her that she didn't need to refer to him with all of his titles as long as they were in private. Apocryphal? You judge. – Buffy Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 15:15
1 There's a reason why physicians are Dr. Foo, M.D. The Dr. part is for public appearances, so patients perceive that they're authoritative. The M.D. part is required by regulation in some places like hospitals and medical schools, as to disambiguate Ph.D., D.O., D.D.S./D.M.D., O.D., D.V.M. etc. which all have different rights/requirements when interacting with patients. My major US institution sticks both (Dr. Foo Bar, PhD) on everybody's e-mails and ID cards and computer accounts, even for non-medical people. – user71659 Commented Aug 2, 2018 at 7:02

I'm sure this must have been dealt with in previous questions, but the short answer is:

This is correct if you are both a medical doctor and an academic doctor. But just being an academic allows you to write Dr. (name) XOR (name) PhD.

12 This is not universally true. – Cape Code Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 7:23

If you have Dr. NAME only it might cause some confusion. I was once caught in a situation where I was asked to be on standby for assistance during a medical emergency because my boarding pass identified me as Dr. MYNAME. I had to explain that the Dr was for a PhD and not for medical practises. In my opinion the academic the title should be Dr. LASTNAME or Dr. LASTNAME M.D. for a medical practitioner Dr, LASTNAME PhD for an academic qualification Dr. LASTNAME HC for an honorary doctorate ( honororium causa )

As you can see from some of the answers here, there is substantial variation in use of academic titles and suffixes for degrees. It is certainly okay to use the suffix PhD if you have a PhD, and it would be hard to mount an argument that it is "incorrect" to use a suffix for a degree you actually have. There is wide variation in what is common practice in academia, but what is most important is to consider the following practical issues:

IMPORTANT --- avoid confusion with medical doctors: In most places, in an academic context the title "Dr" is fine for someone with a PhD (though in some countries they are distinct). However, in contexts outside academia it can cause confusion. In particular, for a person with a PhD who is not a medical doctor, it is often desirable to avoid using the title "Dr" in contexts where it might cause people to think that you are the appropriate contact person in a medical emergency ---e.g., " Dr O'Neill, this man is having a heart attack - do something! " So, for example, when I am checking into a plane, or in similar circumstances, I try to ensure that I am booked in as "Mr" not "Dr", notwithstanding that the latter title would apply in an academic context.

Academics rarely use the degree suffix: Because the PhD is so common among academics, we would rarely use this suffix outside of a CV. It is common for academics to use titles (e.g., Dr, Assoc Prof, Prof, etc.) in descriptions such as a signature block, staff page, etc. It is uncommon (but not incorrect) to additionally add the suffix "PhD". The main reason most academics leave this part off is because the degree is common among academics.

Dual use might clarify or it might confuse, depending on who is reading it: If you use both a title and a suffix for the same degree, that can potentially help to understand the source of the title, or it can look awkward or cause confusion. This really depends on the audience. In most cases, if you use the title "Dr" and the suffix "PhD" then people will assume that the title comes from the degree specified in the suffix, which is accurate here. It is perhaps a bit unusual to use both, but it is not unheard of.

I think in the US anyway, you can sign your name however you wish. In my case, I am a DVM and I have a Masters degree. I want my business cards to say Dr. MYNAME, DVM, MS. I have seen multiple DVMs that write their name the same way. I think it's good to know what kind of Dr. I am, and this helps others to know it also. Even if I didn't have the Masters degree, I would likely still want my business card to say Dr. MYNAME, DVM.

1 What is a DVM ? – astronat supports the strike Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 14:10
2 @astronat Doctor of Veterinary Medicine. – Bryan Krause ♦ Commented Jun 21, 2021 at 14:13

Dr Jones if he has a medical degree. Mark Jones, Ph.D. or Dr. Jones, if he has a Ph.D. Never Dr. Jones, Ph. D.

4 What if a PhD who is also a medical doctor? I think "Never" is too strong a word. – Nobody Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 6:34
5 @scaaahu Mark Jones, MD, PhD. – Nicole Hamilton Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 9:38
1 @NicoleHamilton That's a good one. – Nobody Commented Aug 1, 2018 at 9:45
My major US university puts "Dr. Jones PhD" on everybody's ID cards, e-mails, computer accounts, directory, etc. It's because the medical school and hospital have all kinds of "Dr." running around and they need to make it easy to identify what responsibilities you have. – user71659 Commented Aug 2, 2018 at 7:07

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PhD or Ph.D? Which is correct?

PhD and Ph.D are both correct ways to indicate the title, or honorific, of a doctor. However, Ph.D isn’t nearly as common as PhD. In fact, Ph.D is an old-fashioned method of writing it. But, there’s nothing wrong with using it that way. However, it’s more visually correct and recognizable in the modern world as PhD.

So, while there aren’t really any rules to remember for using PhD or Ph.D, it’s important to understand what it means. Plus the history of it will give you a little trivia.

Ph.D History

The earliest known documented use of Ph.D is from 1869. It’s an abbreviation of the Latin phrase, “Philosophiae Doctor” or “Doctor of Philosophy.” But “Philosophiae” has roots in ancient Greek, which translates into “love of wisdom.” To call someone a “doctor” is another way to say “learned person.”

The title PhD is the more common version in modern times and it means the same thing. These are people who receive doctorate degrees, which is the highest level of education someone can get. As it was back in 1869, the placement of the honorific can be before or after a name.

Examples of both PhD and Ph.D

The examples below show the myriad of ways in how to use and where to place PhD or Ph.D as an honorific for a person.

Dr. Ken Wellington, PhD

Professor Cynthia Kline, PhD

In many cases, doctors will have other degrees of study alongside their doctoral education. These additional honorifics indicate that.

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How To Write PhD? Is it ph d or phd

How do you write phd correctly after a name is it ph d or phd, here are the steps to write phd correctly:.

Firstly, “P” must be in a capital case.
Secondly, “h” is in small case with no space after “P”
Thirdly, use period/full-stop after “h”
Fourthly, Write “D” in capital case.
Fifthly, keep Period after “D”
Finally, the correct way to write is Ph.D .
Or, It can be also written as PhD in a sentence.
As per APA style, write Ph. D
As per Chicago style, write PhD
As per MLA style, write it as Ph. D.

For example this is how to write PhD title after your name: Dr.John Mathew, Ph.D. You can write PhD after name on your business cards, resumes, CV’s or identity cards or on nameplates etc. Some have confusion with the use of comma and full stops while writing PhD title after name. Here is my indepth review how to write out properly PhD.

Writing a PhD title after name

Use capital “p” and “d” in the word ph.d..

You must write ‘P’ as capital and ‘D’ as capital letters. Though there is no strict rule on how to use capital and small letters, many of them do this way. Both letters which I have just mentioned must be written in Capital because those letters are the heart of the abbreviationPh.D. There is no other way of writing. Even if you search the whole world and ask many people and read many books, this is how PhD title is written. Sometimes there are possibilities that both letters are written in small letters by mistake. You need to correct instantly if such is the case. Otherwise, it looks awkward when someone looks at it or reads it. Usually, mistaken words are clearly observed than that of rightly written ones.

Use small letter ‘h’ in the word Ph.D.

The letter ‘h’ is what written small letter in this 3 letter word is. We write it in a small letter after name because this letter ‘h’ is in the middle of the word Ph.D. Here also don’t write mistake by using capital letters. This is the reason why many people write a PhD title after the name wrongly. They are confused about where to use capital letters and were not to use small letters. I suggest you practice all the letters in one or other way.

Why do we write a PhD title after the name?

We write a PhD title after the name to know that one has completed his doctoral studies and it is a sign of knowledge and status. We write a Ph.D. even for other purposes. For example, if someone is working in a university, it is mandatory that his qualification must be known to all the students and as well as the staff. This is why we write the Ph.D. title after the name. Not only in the university but also to the competent authorities who come for an inspection to the university must know the status of the faculty profiles. So the title Ph.D. is written after every faculty name as a title.

Should we use bold letters

I say a big no. You cannot write bold and fashioned way while writing PhD title after your name. As you write you must make it look similar along with the name without any difference. There is no way that you must write the Ph.D. title in bold fonts. This way, it looks very odd for those who look. Instead of reading your name, they will read Ph.D. firstly. So there is a chance of not remembering your name. So never use bold fonts while writing PhD title after your name.

Should we use Italic Letters

Again it is a big no. Do be too creative while writing a Ph.D. after your name. The use of italics is a big mistake. Do not use such writing in italics. Every time you use italic, again it looks very different from the original name adjacent to it.

Is Ph.D. a title after your name?

Do you think it is a PhD title or just a status? It is both status and title. Though in my personal opinion it is not a title, many call it as a title. But if you ask me I would tell it is a status word that is symbolically represented a matter of qualification. This is only my personal opinion about the title of Ph.D. So if at all you have some doubts about how this title arose as a part of history, you must read a vast number of history books about the Ph.D. title. It all requires for you to understand that a Ph.D. is not a title finally and just a resemblance of qualification.

Is it good to put PhD after title in your identity cards?

No, you must not use the title Ph.D. after your name in any type of identity card. These cards are existing irrespective of your qualification. This is meant to identify you as you are. There is no necessity what you have achieved. There is no need for knowing your qualifications. So in any type of identity card which is issued by the government like passport and voter card etc, you cannot use such title after your name. But there is one exception that the identity card at university or college or at job area must be given with Ph.D. title. If you ever need expert help with writing your Doctoral level papers, go to WriteMyPaperHub and send your request to write my PhD thesis for me .

Should we use the subject name when using a Ph.D. with the name?

This thought is quite awkward. But I must still mention this. There are some who use the subject name after the Ph.D. title along with the name. Like for example Dr. Luke, Ph.D. in Linguistics. Using this way is quite reasonable if there are some important debates or international meetups. Otherwise, I don’t suggest such type of writing after your name.

What happens if you don’t use a Ph.D. after your name?

If you do not use the Ph.D. title after your name, people around you won’t know that you are a doctoral research fellow. So it is very important to let them know it. You can only use this if at all there are some students around you or any known people. If there are unknown people around you, then there is no way that it is mandatory to use a Ph.D. after your name. Anyhow, I say that there is no danger of not using Ph.D. after your name.

Should comma be addded before or after PhD

Yes, a comma is a mandatory thing to be added after Ph.D. This is a rule. Otherwise, it is mixed combined with your original name. It will become part of your name. So comma is good after your name. I have already given the example above on how to put a comma after your name. But let me give here one more example as a matter of understanding. Dr.Mohima, Ph.D. If you see the name, for example, there is a comma used after the name to separate Ph.D. from it. So try to put a comma. But never use another punctuation mark as such full stop or colon after your name. I have seen people using other punctuation marks like semicolon after name and then they write the title Ph.D. Some don’t use at all. All such things are mistakes. Use the only comma after your name always.

Can we write Dr instead of Ph.D. after the name?

Writing a doctor instead of a Ph.D. means a different thing. So you cannot use such way. As this is not the right format. ‘Dr’ is used at the beginning of the name as another title. But after the name, it must be a Ph.D. and not ‘Dr’

Should we write a Ph.D. at all after one’s name that is too long?

Sometimes it so happens that your name is too long to write Ph.D. after it. During this trouble, you must cut out some part of the name and type PhD as a title after your name. There is no other way to do it. Usually, longs name are common in some countries like Germany and India. But in the USA we have shorter names. Whatever may be the length, you must try to use the most used name and eliminate the rest of the name. This way you can use the title Ph.D. comfortable after your name. Always try to use the same name. Don’t change the name or cut your name in different ways on different days. These will again a problem to your recognition.

Should we write phd or ph d on business card, welcome banners during functions?

On welcome banners and business cards, it is very important to mention the title Ph.D. This will be more serious if you do not use the Ph.D. title after the name. There are many people watching that public banner. If you do not write the title after the name, you are disrespecting the guest totally. So be aware of using the title ofPh.D. whenever you have public functions or welcome banners or during some important meetings. This is a sign that others should treat the guest better than the other out there.

Should the font size of Ph.D. be the same as someone’s name?

The name and the title Ph.D. must be in the same size. There must not be unusual differences. Font sizes matter a lot. Don’t use wrong font size or awkward fonts while using your title Ph.D. after your name. The best font could be like Ariel, Lato, Times New Roman, etc. These fonts will look better as a Ph.D. title after your name. Initially, there is some confusion about using the right font. But once you learn the size usage, you are comfortable using them rightly. Even when you write manually, you can easily write with similar size throughout. This requires a good amount of practice to write the Ph.D. title after your name with good font limitations.

Syam Prasad Reddy T

Hello, My name is Syam, Asst. Professor of English and Mentor for Ph.D. students worldwide. I have worked years to give you these amazing tips to complete your Ph.D. successfully. Having put a lot of efforts means to make your Ph.D. journey easier. Thank you for visiting my Ph.D. blog.

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Tips for writing a PhD dissertation: FAQs answered

From how to choose a topic to writing the abstract and managing work-life balance through the years it takes to complete a doctorate, here we collect expert advice to get you through the PhD writing process

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Embarking on a PhD is “probably the most challenging task that a young scholar attempts to do”, write Mark Stephan Felix and Ian Smith in their practical guide to dissertation and thesis writing. After years of reading and research to answer a specific question or proposition, the candidate will submit about 80,000 words that explain their methods and results and demonstrate their unique contribution to knowledge. Here are the answers to frequently asked questions about writing a doctoral thesis or dissertation.

What’s the difference between a dissertation and a thesis?

Whatever the genre of the doctorate, a PhD must offer an original contribution to knowledge. The terms “dissertation” and “thesis” both refer to the long-form piece of work produced at the end of a research project and are often used interchangeably. Which one is used might depend on the country, discipline or university. In the UK, “thesis” is generally used for the work done for a PhD, while a “dissertation” is written for a master’s degree. The US did the same until the 1960s, says Oxbridge Essays, when the convention switched, and references appeared to a “master’s thesis” and “doctoral dissertation”. To complicate matters further, undergraduate long essays are also sometimes referred to as a thesis or dissertation.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “thesis” as “a dissertation, especially by a candidate for a degree” and “dissertation” as “a detailed discourse on a subject, especially one submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of a degree or diploma”.

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The title “doctor of philosophy”, incidentally, comes from the degree’s origins, write Dr Felix, an associate professor at Mahidol University in Thailand, and Dr Smith, retired associate professor of education at the University of Sydney , whose co-authored guide focuses on the social sciences. The PhD was first awarded in the 19th century by the philosophy departments of German universities, which at that time taught science, social science and liberal arts.

How long should a PhD thesis be?

A PhD thesis (or dissertation) is typically 60,000 to 120,000 words ( 100 to 300 pages in length ) organised into chapters, divisions and subdivisions (with roughly 10,000 words per chapter) – from introduction (with clear aims and objectives) to conclusion.

The structure of a dissertation will vary depending on discipline (humanities, social sciences and STEM all have their own conventions), location and institution. Examples and guides to structure proliferate online. The University of Salford , for example, lists: title page, declaration, acknowledgements, abstract, table of contents, lists of figures, tables and abbreviations (where needed), chapters, appendices and references.

A scientific-style thesis will likely need: introduction, literature review, materials and methods, results, discussion, bibliography and references.

As well as checking the overall criteria and expectations of your institution for your research, consult your school handbook for the required length and format (font, layout conventions and so on) for your dissertation.

A PhD takes three to four years to complete; this might extend to six to eight years for a part-time doctorate.

What are the steps for completing a PhD?

Before you get started in earnest , you’ll likely have found a potential supervisor, who will guide your PhD journey, and done a research proposal (which outlines what you plan to research and how) as part of your application, as well as a literature review of existing scholarship in the field, which may form part of your final submission.

In the UK, PhD candidates undertake original research and write the results in a thesis or dissertation, says author and vlogger Simon Clark , who posted videos to YouTube throughout his own PhD journey . Then they submit the thesis in hard copy and attend the viva voce (which is Latin for “living voice” and is also called an oral defence or doctoral defence) to convince the examiners that their work is original, understood and all their own. Afterwards, if necessary, they make changes and resubmit. If the changes are approved, the degree is awarded.

The steps are similar in Australia , although candidates are mostly assessed on their thesis only; some universities may include taught courses, and some use a viva voce. A PhD in Australia usually takes three years full time.

In the US, the PhD process begins with taught classes (similar to a taught master’s) and a comprehensive exam (called a “field exam” or “dissertation qualifying exam”) before the candidate embarks on their original research. The whole journey takes four to six years.

A PhD candidate will need three skills and attitudes to get through their doctoral studies, says Tara Brabazon , professor of cultural studies at Flinders University in Australia who has written extensively about the PhD journey :

master the academic foundational skills (research, writing, ability to navigate different modalities)
time-management skills and the ability to focus on reading and writing
determined motivation to do a PhD.

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How do I choose the topic for my PhD dissertation or thesis?

It’s important to find a topic that will sustain your interest for the years it will take to complete a PhD. “Finding a sustainable topic is the most important thing you [as a PhD student] would do,” says Dr Brabazon in a video for Times Higher Education . “Write down on a big piece of paper all the topics, all the ideas, all the questions that really interest you, and start to cross out all the ones that might just be a passing interest.” Also, she says, impose the “Who cares? Who gives a damn?” question to decide if the topic will be useful in a future academic career.

The availability of funding and scholarships is also often an important factor in this decision, says veteran PhD supervisor Richard Godwin, from Harper Adams University .

Define a gap in knowledge – and one that can be questioned, explored, researched and written about in the time available to you, says Gina Wisker, head of the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Brighton. “Set some boundaries,” she advises. “Don’t try to ask everything related to your topic in every way.”

James Hartley, research professor in psychology at Keele University, says it can also be useful to think about topics that spark general interest. If you do pick something that taps into the zeitgeist, your findings are more likely to be noticed.

You also need to find someone else who is interested in it, too. For STEM candidates , this will probably be a case of joining a team of people working in a similar area where, ideally, scholarship funding is available. A centre for doctoral training (CDT) or doctoral training partnership (DTP) will advertise research projects. For those in the liberal arts and social sciences, it will be a matter of identifying a suitable supervisor .

Avoid topics that are too broad (hunger across a whole country, for example) or too narrow (hunger in a single street) to yield useful solutions of academic significance, write Mark Stephan Felix and Ian Smith. And ensure that you’re not repeating previous research or trying to solve a problem that has already been answered. A PhD thesis must be original.

What is a thesis proposal?

After you have read widely to refine your topic and ensure that it and your research methods are original, and discussed your project with a (potential) supervisor, you’re ready to write a thesis proposal , a document of 1,500 to 3,000 words that sets out the proposed direction of your research. In the UK, a research proposal is usually part of the application process for admission to a research degree. As with the final dissertation itself, format varies among disciplines, institutions and countries but will usually contain title page, aims, literature review, methodology, timetable and bibliography. Examples of research proposals are available online.

How to write an abstract for a dissertation or thesis

The abstract presents your thesis to the wider world – and as such may be its most important element , says the NUI Galway writing guide. It outlines the why, how, what and so what of the thesis . Unlike the introduction, which provides background but not research findings, the abstract summarises all sections of the dissertation in a concise, thorough, focused way and demonstrates how well the writer understands their material. Check word-length limits with your university – and stick to them. About 300 to 500 words is a rough guide – but it can be up to 1,000 words.

The abstract is also important for selection and indexing of your thesis, according to the University of Melbourne guide , so be sure to include searchable keywords.

It is the first thing to be read but the last element you should write. However, Pat Thomson , professor of education at the University of Nottingham , advises that it is not something to be tackled at the last minute.

How to write a stellar conclusion

As well as chapter conclusions, a thesis often has an overall conclusion to draw together the key points covered and to reflect on the unique contribution to knowledge. It can comment on future implications of the research and open up new ideas emanating from the work. It is shorter and more general than the discussion chapter , says online editing site Scribbr, and reiterates how the work answers the main question posed at the beginning of the thesis. The conclusion chapter also often discusses the limitations of the research (time, scope, word limit, access) in a constructive manner.

It can be useful to keep a collection of ideas as you go – in the online forum DoctoralWriting SIG , academic developer Claire Aitchison, of the University of South Australia , suggests using a “conclusions bank” for themes and inspirations, and using free-writing to keep this final section fresh. (Just when you feel you’ve run out of steam.) Avoid aggrandising or exaggerating the impact of your work. It should remind the reader what has been done, and why it matters.

How to format a bibliography (or where to find a reliable model)

Most universities use a preferred style of references , writes THE associate editor Ingrid Curl. Make sure you know what this is and follow it. “One of the most common errors in academic writing is to cite papers in the text that do not then appear in the bibliography. All references in your thesis need to be cross-checked with the bibliography before submission. Using a database during your research can save a great deal of time in the writing-up process.”

A bibliography contains not only works cited explicitly but also those that have informed or contributed to the research – and as such illustrates its scope; works are not limited to written publications but include sources such as film or visual art.

Examiners can start marking from the back of the script, writes Dr Brabazon. “Just as cooks are judged by their ingredients and implements, we judge doctoral students by the calibre of their sources,” she advises. She also says that candidates should be prepared to speak in an oral examination of the PhD about any texts included in their bibliography, especially if there is a disconnect between the thesis and the texts listed.

Can I use informal language in my PhD?

Don’t write like a stereotypical academic , say Kevin Haggerty, professor of sociology at the University of Alberta , and Aaron Doyle, associate professor in sociology at Carleton University , in their tongue-in-cheek guide to the PhD journey. “If you cannot write clearly and persuasively, everything about PhD study becomes harder.” Avoid jargon, exotic words, passive voice and long, convoluted sentences – and work on it consistently. “Writing is like playing guitar; it can improve only through consistent, concerted effort.”

Be deliberate and take care with your writing . “Write your first draft, leave it and then come back to it with a critical eye. Look objectively at the writing and read it closely for style and sense,” advises THE ’s Ms Curl. “Look out for common errors such as dangling modifiers, subject-verb disagreement and inconsistency. If you are too involved with the text to be able to take a step back and do this, then ask a friend or colleague to read it with a critical eye. Remember Hemingway’s advice: ‘Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.’ Clarity is key.”

How often should a PhD candidate meet with their supervisor?

Since the PhD supervisor provides a range of support and advice – including on research techniques, planning and submission – regular formal supervisions are essential, as is establishing a line of contact such as email if the candidate needs help or advice outside arranged times. The frequency varies according to university, discipline and individual scholars.

Once a week is ideal, says Dr Brabazon. She also advocates a two-hour initial meeting to establish the foundations of the candidate-supervisor relationship .

The University of Edinburgh guide to writing a thesis suggests that creating a timetable of supervisor meetings right at the beginning of the research process will allow candidates to ensure that their work stays on track throughout. The meetings are also the place to get regular feedback on draft chapters.

“A clear structure and a solid framework are vital for research,” writes Dr Godwin on THE Campus . Use your supervisor to establish this and provide a realistic view of what can be achieved. “It is vital to help students identify the true scientific merit, the practical significance of their work and its value to society.”

How to proofread your dissertation (what to look for)

Proofreading is the final step before printing and submission. Give yourself time to ensure that your work is the best it can be . Don’t leave proofreading to the last minute; ideally, break it up into a few close-reading sessions. Find a quiet place without distractions. A checklist can help ensure that all aspects are covered.

Proofing is often helped by a change of format – so it can be easier to read a printout rather than working off the screen – or by reading sections out of order. Fresh eyes are better at spotting typographical errors and inconsistencies, so leave time between writing and proofreading. Check with your university’s policies before asking another person to proofread your thesis for you.

As well as close details such as spelling and grammar, check that all sections are complete, all required elements are included , and nothing is repeated or redundant. Don’t forget to check headings and subheadings. Does the text flow from one section to another? Is the structure clear? Is the work a coherent whole with a clear line throughout?

Ensure consistency in, for example, UK v US spellings, capitalisation, format, numbers (digits or words, commas, units of measurement), contractions, italics and hyphenation. Spellchecks and online plagiarism checkers are also your friend.

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How do you manage your time to complete a PhD dissertation?

Treat your PhD like a full-time job, that is, with an eight-hour working day. Within that, you’ll need to plan your time in a way that gives a sense of progress . Setbacks and periods where it feels as if you are treading water are all but inevitable, so keeping track of small wins is important, writes A Happy PhD blogger Luis P. Prieto.

Be specific with your goals – use the SMART acronym (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and timely).

And it’s never too soon to start writing – even if early drafts are overwritten and discarded.

“ Write little and write often . Many of us make the mistake of taking to writing as one would take to a sprint, in other words, with relatively short bursts of intense activity. Whilst this can prove productive, generally speaking it is not sustainable…In addition to sustaining your activity, writing little bits on a frequent basis ensures that you progress with your thinking. The comfort of remaining in abstract thought is common; writing forces us to concretise our thinking,” says Christian Gilliam, AHSS researcher developer at the University of Cambridge ’s Centre for Teaching and Learning.

Make time to write. “If you are more alert early in the day, find times that suit you in the morning; if you are a ‘night person’, block out some writing sessions in the evenings,” advises NUI Galway’s Dermot Burns, a lecturer in English and creative arts. Set targets, keep daily notes of experiment details that you will need in your thesis, don’t confuse writing with editing or revising – and always back up your work.

What work-life balance tips should I follow to complete my dissertation?

During your PhD programme, you may have opportunities to take part in professional development activities, such as teaching, attending academic conferences and publishing your work. Your research may include residencies, field trips or archive visits. This will require time-management skills as well as prioritising where you devote your energy and factoring in rest and relaxation. Organise your routine to suit your needs , and plan for steady and regular progress.

How to deal with setbacks while writing a thesis or dissertation

Have a contingency plan for delays or roadblocks such as unexpected results.

Accept that writing is messy, first drafts are imperfect, and writer’s block is inevitable, says Dr Burns. His tips for breaking it include relaxation to free your mind from clutter, writing a plan and drawing a mind map of key points for clarity. He also advises feedback, reflection and revision: “Progressing from a rough version of your thoughts to a superior and workable text takes time, effort, different perspectives and some expertise.”

“Academia can be a relentlessly brutal merry-go-round of rejection, rebuttal and failure,” writes Lorraine Hope , professor of applied cognitive psychology at the University of Portsmouth, on THE Campus. Resilience is important. Ensure that you and your supervisor have a relationship that supports open, frank, judgement-free communication.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week, sign up for the Campus newsletter .

Authoring a PhD Thesis: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation (2003), by Patrick Dunleavy

Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis (1998), by Joan Balker

Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (2015), by Noelle Sterne

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How to Write PhD

How to Write PhD – Once you’ve completed your doctorate (PhD), you’ll want to put this achievement at the top of your resume envelope. The problem is how to put this academic milestone to good use if you decide to explore new career opportunities in business or discovered that you truly enjoy academic research.

Writers often use Ph.D. after their names to boost their credibility and professionalism, but what does it mean when the abbreviation doesn’t immediately follow your name?

Table of Contents

How do you Write PhD correctly after a name? Is it ph d or phd?

Here are the steps to write phd correctly:.

Firstly, “P” must be in a capital case.
Secondly, “h” is in small case with no space after “P”
Thirdly, use period/full-stop after “h”
Fourthly, Write “D” in capital case.
Fifthly, keep Period after “D”
Finally, the correct way to write is Ph.D .
Or, It can be also written as PhD in a sentence.
As per APA style, write Ph. D
As per Chicago style, write PhD
As per MLA style, write it as Ph. D.

Writing a PhD title after name

Use capital “p” and “d” in the word ph.d..

Use small letter ‘h’ in the word Ph.D.

Why do we write a PhD title after the name?

Should we use bold letters

Should we use Italic Letters

Is Ph.D. a title after your name?

Is it good to put PhD after title in your identity cards?

Should we use the subject name when using a Ph.D. with the name?

What happens if you don’t use a Ph.D. after your name?

Should comma be addded before or after PhD

Can we write Dr instead of Ph.D. after the name?

Should we write a Ph.D. at all after one’s name that is too long?

Should we write phd or ph d on business card, welcome banners during functions?

Should the font size of Ph.D. be the same as someone’s name?

10 tips for writing a PhD thesis

Writing up a PhD can often take place in a frenzy of activity in the last few months of your degree study, after years of hard work. But there are some steps that you can take to increase your chances of success.

Do not be daunted by the task of “writing up”. Work on the text as your PhD takes shape, remember that all writers need editing, and help yourself by using these basic tips to make life easier. Read what great writers say about how to write before you start, and take their advice to heart. There is no dark art to clear, concise work; it is mostly a result of editing, and editing again. Above all, keep Elmore Leonard’s advice in mind: “If it reads like writing…rewrite it.”
Plan the structure of your thesis carefully with your supervisor. Create rough drafts as you go so that you can refine them as you become more focused on the write-up. Much of writing comprises rewriting so be prepared to rework each chapter many times. Even Ernest Hemingway said: “The first draft of everything is shit.”
Academic writing does not have to be dry. Inject some flair into your work. Read advice on writing and remember George Orwell’s words in Why I Write : “Never use the passive where you can use the active”; and Mark Twain’s on adjectives: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.” If you prefer, Stephen King said: “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Do not write up in chronological order. Work on each chapter while it is fresh in your mind or pertinent to what you are doing at that moment, but come back to it all later and work it up into a consistent, coherent piece, restructuring sections where necessary.
Think carefully about your writing. Write your first draft, leave it and then come back to it with a critical eye. Look objectively at the writing and read it closely for style and sense. Look out for common errors such as dangling modifiers, subject-verb disagreement and inconsistency. If you are too involved with the text to be able to take a step back and do this, then ask a friend or colleague to read it with a critical eye. Remember Hemingway’s advice: “Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.” Clarity is key.
Most universities use a preferred style of references. Make sure you know what this is and stick to it. One of the most common errors in academic writing is to cite papers in the text that do not then appear in the bibliography. All references in your thesis need to be cross-checked with the bibliography before submission. Using a database during your research can save a great deal of time in the writing-up process. Helpful software includes EndNote or Paperpile. Managing your bibliography from day one may seem obsessive but it will save you a great deal of time and stress by the end of the PhD process.
Use a house style. Professional publications such as Times Higher Education use a house style guide to ensure consistency in spelling. For example, do not use both -ise spellings and -ize spellings, stick to British spelling and be consistent when referring to organisations or bodies. Because dictionaries vary in their use of hyphenation, use one dictionary and stick to it throughout the writing process. If you consult the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors , you will note the extraordinary number of words with alternative spellings. It can also be a very useful guide to preferred spellings, use of italicisation and foreign phrases.
Take care when quoting from other sources. Ensure you note whether the italic emphasis is in the original and take careful notes when you are collecting quotes for your thesis. Transcribe them accurately to save work later and keep original spellings (even if they differ from your chosen style) to ensure fidelity to your source.
Think about plagiarism. If you are quoting from works, quote from them accurately and paraphrase where necessary for your argument. This is where careful note-taking and use of references is invaluable and will help you to avoid even inadvertently plagiarising another work.
Remember that your thesis is your chance to present your work in the best possible light. Consider your opening paragraphs, entice your reader with your writing and above all be clear about your hypothesis and your conclusion. Append material where it adds value but not where it merely bulks out your work. Consider your reader at all times. This is your chance to showcase your work.

If you stick to these simple rules, your writing will be clear and jargon-free. Above all, take to heart Orwell’s advice: “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

In the academic world, having a PhD after your name means you have been awarded a prestigious three-year doctoral degree from a university or college. A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy degree and can be earned in a variety of subjects.

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5 Tips for Writing Your Ph.D. Dissertation

Somewhere around the end of the first year of your Ph.D. program, you will probably start (or have already begun) thinking about your Ph.D. dissertation — that all-encompassing body of work that is the pinnacle getting a doctorate .

Your Ph.D. dissertation can seem intimidating. After all, it is the culmination of years of sacrifice and dedication and something that is a representation of those efforts. But, rest assured, with a well-thought-out plan, ample time, a strong support system, and some effort and determination you can confidently write a dissertation to be proud of.

To help you along the way, we’ve put together five tips for writing your dissertation. Read on to get started!

If you are still applying to graduate school, download our digital resource: " Choosing, Applying for, and Thriving in a Ph.D. Program" to help with your search!

Plan WAY Ahead: Develop A Dissertation Timeline

The whole Ph.D. dissertation process can vary greatly from person to person, depending on the topic you have chosen, your writing abilities, and the number of drafts and revisions you have to do. Typically, after 1 to 2 years of coursework, Ph.D. students are able to complete their dissertations in an additional 3 to 5 years.

One of the best ways to ensure that you will cross your dissertation finish line is to develop a plan to get there. From the very beginning of your Ph.D. program, outline a tentative timeline that will take you from the start of your topic search, through the end of your dissertation defense. Although you might deviate from your schedule, planning far in advance will ensure that you don’t get too far off track.

For example, here is a rough outline of what students need to accomplish every semester in order to complete their dissertation in 4 years:

Semester 1 — Acquaint yourself with your school’s resources, databases, and libraries.

Semester 2 — Begin looking at topics that interest you and reading the relevant literature.

Semester 3 — Continue with your review of the literature, while you search for and choose a dissertation topic.

Semester 4 — Search for and choose an advisor/committee.

Semester 5 — Develop your topic, meet with your advisor, and craft your proposal.

Semester 6 — Defend your proposal and make edits if necessary. Begin conducting research.

Semester 7 — Analyze the data and begin drafting and revising the dissertation. Consult with your advisor and ask for feedback.

Semester 8 — Finalize the dissertation and defend it.

Don’t live and die by this timeline. This is just an example. If your research takes you two semesters instead of one, that is okay! If you are able to complete your review of the literature over the summer, that’s fine too. Develop a schedule for yourself, but also be flexible and understanding if things don’t move at the planned pace.

Meet with Your Advisor (Then Meet Again, and Again)

Your advisor is your best friend throughout the dissertation process. You have never written a Ph.D. dissertation before, but they have! A great place to start is to begin by reading (or skimming) their dissertation. This will give you a good idea of what they will expect from your body of work.

It is easier to seek advice and counsel at the beginning of the writing process (and at several check-points throughout) then to charge ahead unguided and have to make major course-corrections in the final stretch of your degree. Plan a few meetings a year with your advisor and stick to them. You don’t need to update your advisor every step of the way, but it is good to check-in at regular intervals.

Don’t be afraid to look to them for advice, but do be mindful of their time. While they are here to help you, your dissertation is not their only responsibility. Be sure to give them enough time to read your work and provide feedback, and ask questions that are direct and specific so they know exactly how to help you.

Write the Easiest Sections First

Not all sections of a dissertation are created equal — there are some that are more challenging to write, and several that are easier because they require less in-depth analysis. The sections of a dissertation can vary greatly based on your field and subject, as well as your school’s procedures. It is best to determine with your advisor what sections are expected of you at the beginning of the dissertation process. Here are the most commonly required sections of a Ph.D. dissertation:

Introduction

Literature Review

Methodology

Chapters/Articles

Bibliography/Works Cited

Among these sections, you should start by writing the methodology section. This is the easiest to write and the quickest to finish. Accomplishing this section will give you a confidence boost to dive into more challenging writing. Similarly, leave editing your abstract for last. The abstract is the section that provides an overview of your entire body of work, so it is simple to finalize once the major writing and organizing is complete.

Write Small Sections Every Single Day

Writing a little every day is a much better plan for success then cramming thousands of words into a few short months. It takes discipline and dedication, but committing to writing a small portion of your dissertation every day will not only strengthen your writing skills, but it will also help you avoid writer's block and keep you from feeling overwhelmed as your deadline approaches.

Another tip is to break each of the larger sections of the dissertation into smaller, more manageable pieces. Staring down the nose of a 20-page literature review is daunting and discouraging, but break that into 10 two-page chunks and suddenly that you can accomplish one in an afternoon.

Take Criticism Constructively and Learn from It

Finally, ask as many people as possible to read pieces (don’t give them the whole thing at once) of your dissertation and ask for their honest feedback. Employ the help of not only your advisor but your study and research partners, family and friends, and other professors within your field. The more people you can get to look at your dissertation, the better.

Also, don’t be discouraged by the feedback you receive in your formal committee reviews. Rather, take it as an opportunity to improve and learn from the best and brightest in your discipline. Your dissertation committee wants you to succeed and to help you produce your best possible work.

Your Ph.D. dissertation is an opportunity to showcase the work that you have done and highlight how your contributions have furthered the limits and understanding within your discipline. It is a great opportunity to present your best efforts for recognition, so don’t let the gravity of the document deter you. With a solid plan, a thorough understanding of what is expected, and people to support you, you are well on your way to succeeding!

Learn more about earning your Ph.D. by downloading our Guide to Choosing, Applying for and Thriving in a Ph.D. Program!

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Top Tips for Academic Writing from PhD Candidates

20 Mar, 2024 | Blog Articles , Get the Edge

University student writing in a notebook

Faissal, DPhil Clinical Neurosciences

“When it comes to writing for your academic project, remember that staying organised is super important! You’ll have to record, research and cite your sources, which you definitely don’t want to do in one go at the end. Using a reference manager like Paperpile or Zotero will help you keep track of your sources and cite them properly in your papers.

Instead of trying to write perfect sentences right away, you might find it useful to start by making a rough outline with bullet points. Then, add in facts, quotes and other information from your research to build your paper.

Also, don’t forget to separate the writing process from editing. Focus on getting your ideas down on paper first, and you can work on making your writing sound better and fixing any mistakes later.

Good luck with your writing!”

Alejandro, DPhil International Relations

“My number one tip for academic writing, whatever your level? Be concise .

Very often, students are led to think that good academic writing means using the most sophisticated, advanced vocabulary they can find. To make a piece of work more professional, it can be tempting to look for elaborate synonyms and use them in place of simple words.

However, doing this can actually prevent your reader from understanding the arguments and ideas you’re trying to put forward, and you might even get lost in your own sentences! Try to go for the simplest language, and the fewest words needed, to express an idea. Use short sentences, don’t be vague, and avoid overly complex language. Remember that academic writing is not about sounding a certain way, but about expressing your ideas clearly. Being concise, for me, is the essential first step to good academic writing.

P.S.: Don’t forget to proofread your work.”

Student sitting at a desk writing in a notebook

Academic writing is always a work in progress, and your style and voice will develop and evolve throughout your studies. It also won’t be possible to apply all of these tips, all of the time, but experiment with those that appeal to you, and use them as you develop your own writing.

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This page is about how to turn your research (once it's done) into a readable multi-chapter document. You need to figure out what to include, how to organize it, and how to present it.

Following this advice will make me happier about reading your submitted or draft dissertation. You may find it useful even if I'm not going to read your dissertation.

Many others have written usefully on this subject , including someone in the Annals of Improbable Research . There's also advice on writing a thesis proposal . However, this page focuses on what a finished dissertation should look like. You could also skim good dissertations on the web.

What Goes Into a Dissertation?

A typical thesis will motivate why a new idea is needed, present the cool new idea, convince the reader that it's cool and new and might apply to the reader's own problems, and evaluate how well it worked. Just like a paper!

The result must be a substantial, original contribution to scientific knowledge. It signals your official entrance into the community of scholars. Treat it as an chance to make a mark, not as a 900-page-tall memorial to your graduate student life.

Beyond stapling

The cynical view is that if you've written several related papers, you staple them together to get a dissertation. That's a good first-order approximation -- you should incorporate ideas and text from your papers. But what is it missing?

First, a thesis should cohere -- ideally, it should feel like one long paper. Second, it should provide added value: there should be people who would prefer reading it to simply reading your papers. Otherwise writing it would be a meaningless exercise.

Here's what to do after stapling:

Taking Responsibility

Don't expect your advisor to be your co-author. It's your Ph.D.: you are sole author this time and the responsibility is on your shoulders. If your prose is turgid or thoughtless, misspelled or ungrammatical, oblivious or rude to related research, you're the one who looks bad.

You can do it! Your advisor and committee are basically on your side -- they're probably willing to make suggestions about content and style -- but they are not obligated to fix problems for you. They may send your dissertation back and tell you to fix it.

In the following sections, I'll start with advice about the thesis as a whole, and work downward, eventually reaching small details such as typography and citations.

Know Your Audience

First, choose your target audience. That crucial early decision will tell you what to explain, what to emphasize, and how to phrase and organize it. Checking it with your advisor might be wise.

Pretty much everything in your thesis should be relevant to your chosen audience. Think about them as you write. Ask yourself:

What does your audience already know?

You can also safely assume that your readers have some prior familiarity with your research area. Just how much familiarity, and with which topics, is a judgment call -- again, you have to decide who your intended audience is.

In practice, your audience will be somewhat mixed. Up to a point, it is possible to please both beginners and experts -- by covering background material crisply and in the service of your own story . How does that work? As you lay out the motivation for your own work, and provide notation, you'll naturally have to discuss background concepts and related work. But don't give a generic review that someone else could have written! Discuss the background in a way that motivates and clarifies your ideas. Present your detailed perspective on the intellectual landscape and where your own work sits in it -- a fresh (even opinionated) take that keeps tying back to your main themes and will be useful for both experts and beginners.

In short, be as considerate as you can to beginners without interrupting the flow of your main argument to your established colleagues. A good rule of thumb is to write at the level of the most accessible papers in the journals or conference proceedings that you read.

What do you want your audience to learn from the thesis?

You should set clear goals here. Just like a paper or a talk, your dissertation needs a point: it should tell a story. Writing the abstract and chapter 1 at the start will help you work out what that story is.

You may find that you have to do further work to really support your chosen story: more experiments, more theorems, reading more literature, etc.

What does your audience hope to get out of the thesis?

Why does anyone crack open a dissertation, anyway? I sometimes do. Especially for areas that I know less well, a dissertation is often more accessible than shorter, denser papers. It takes a more leisurely pace, provides more explicit motivation and background, and answers more of the questions that I might have.

There are other reasons I might look at your dissertation:

For students, reading high-quality dissertations is a good way to learn an area and to see what a comprehensive treatment of a problem looks like. Noah A. Smith once ran a graduate CS seminar in which the students read 8 dissertations together. Each student was also required to select and summarize yet another dissertation and write a novel research proposal based on it.

Readers with different motivations may read your thesis in different ways. The strong convention is that it's a single document that must read well from start to finish -- your committee will read it that way. But it's worth keeping other readers in mind, too. Some will skim from start to finish. Some will read only the introductory and concluding chapters (so make sure those give a strong impression of what you've done and why it's important). Some will read a single chapter in the middle, going back for definitions as needed. Some will scan or search for what they need: a definition, example, table of results, or literature review. Some will flip through to get a general sense of your work or of how you think, reading whatever catches their eye.

High-Level Organization

Once you've chosen your target audience, you should outline the structure of the thesis. Again, the convention is that the document must read well from start to finish.

The "canonical organization" is sketched by Douglas Comer near the end of his advice . Read that: you'll probably want something like it. A few further tips:

Keep your focus

Keep your focus. Length is not a virtue unless the content is actually interesting. You do have as much space as you need, but the reader doesn't have unlimited time and neither do you.

Get to the good stuff

A newspaper, like a dissertation, is a hefty chunk of reading. So it puts the most important news on page one, and leads each article with the most important part. You should try to do the same when reasonable.

Get to the interesting ideas as soon as possible. A good strategy is to make Chapter 1 an overview of your main arguments and findings. Tell your story there in a compelling way, including a taste of your results. Refer the reader to specific sections in later chapters for the pesky details. Chapter 1 should be especially accessible (use examples): make it the one chapter that everyone should read.

Include a road map

Chapter 1 traditionally ends with a "road map" to the rest of the thesis, which rapidly summarizes what the remaining chapters or sections will contain. That's useful guidance for readers who are looking for something specific and also for those who will read the whole thesis. It also exhibits in one place what an awful lot of work you've done. Here's a detailed example .

Where to put the literature review

I recommend against writing "Chapter 2: Literature Review." Such chapters are usually boring: they're plonked down like the author's obligatory list of what he or she was "supposed" to cite. They block the reader from getting to the new ideas, and can't even be contrasted with the new ideas because those haven't been presented yet.

A better plan is to discuss related literature in conjunction with your own ideas. As you motivate and present your ideas, you'll want to refer to some related work anyway.

Each chapter might have its own related work section or sections, covering work that connects to yours in different ways.

Where to define terminology and notation

Basic terminology, concepts, and notation have to be defined somewhere. But where? You can mix the following strategies:

Retail. You can define some terms or notation individually, when the reader first needs them. Then they will be well-motivated and fresh in the reader's mind. If you use them again later, you can refer back to the section where you first defined them.

Wholesale. On the other hand, there are advantages to aggregating some of your fundamental definitions into a "Definitions" section near the start of the chapter, or a chapter near the start of the dissertation:

The downside is that such sections or chapters can seem boring and full of not-yet-motivated concepts. Unless your definitions are novel and interesting in themselves, they block the reader from getting to the new and interesting ideas. So if you write something like "Chapter 2: Preliminaries," keep it relatively concise -- the point is to get the reader oriented.

Thrift shop. Use well-known notation and terminology whenever you can, either with or without a formal definition in your thesis. The point of your thesis is not to re-invent notation or to re-present well-known material, although sometimes you may find it helpful to do so.

Make Things Easy on Your Poor Readers

Now we get down to the actual writing. A dissertation is a lot to write. But it's also an awful lot to read and digest at once! You can keep us readers turning pages and following your argument. But it's a bigger and more complicated argument than usual, so you have to be more disciplined than usual.

Break it down

Long swaths of text are like quicksand for readers (and writers!). To keep us moving without sinking, use all the devices at your disposal to break the text down into short chunks. Ironically, short chunks are more helpful in a longer document. They keep your argument tightly organized and keep the reader focused and oriented.

If a section or subsection is longer than 1 double-spaced page , consider whether you could break it down further. I'm not joking! This 1-page threshold may seem surprisingly short, but it really makes writing and reading easier. Some devices you can use:

subsectioning Split your section into subsections (or subsubsections) with meaningful titles that keep the reader oriented.

lists If you're writing a paragraph and feel like you're listing anything (e.g., advantages or disadvantages of some approach), then use an explicit bulleted list. Sometimes this might yield a list with only 2 or 3 rather long bullet points, but that's fine -- it breaks things down. ( Note: To replace the bullets with short labels, roughly as in the list you're now reading, LaTeX's itemize environment lets you write \item[my label] .)

labeled paragraphs Label a series of paragraphs within the section, as a kind of lightweight subsectioning. Your experimental design section might look like this (using the LaTeX \paragraph command):

Participants. The participants were 32 undergraduates enrolled in ... Apparatus. Each participant wore a Star Trek suit equipped with a Hasbro-brand Galactic Translator, belt model 3A ... Procedure. The subjects were seated in pairs throughout the laboratory and subjected to Vogon poetry broadcast at 3-minute intervals ... Dataset. The Vogon poetry corpus (available on request) was obtained by passing the later works of T. S. Eliot through the Systran translation system ...

footnotes Move inessential points to footnotes. If they're too long for that, you could move them into appendices or chapters near the end of the thesis. (Here's my take on footnotes .)

captions Move some discussion of figures and tables into their captions. Figures and tables should be clearly structured in the first place: e.g., graphs should have labeled axes with units. But a helpful caption provides guidance on how to interpret the figure or table and what interesting conclusions to draw from it. The figure or table should itself include helpful labels (axis

(In LaTeX, you can write \caption[short version]{long version} . The optional short version argument will be used for the "List of Tables" or "List of Figures" at the start of the thesis.)

theorems Even simple formal results can be stated as a theorem or lemma. The theorem (and proof, if included) form a nice little chunk, using the LaTeX theorem enviroment.

Breaking down equations

Long blocks of equations are even more intimidating than long swaths of text. You can break those apart, too:

Intersperse short bits of text for guidance (perhaps using LaTeX \intertext ). You might introduce line 3 of your formula with

A change of variable from x to log x now allows us to integrate by parts:

Distinguish conceptually important steps from finicky steps that just push symbols around. You can even move finicky steps to a footnote, like this:

Some algebraic manipulation 5 allows us to simplify to the following:

Use visual devices like color, boldface, underlining, boxes, or \underbrace to call attention to significant parts of a formula:

Simplify the formulas in the first place by defining intermediate quantities or adopting notational conventions (e.g., "the t subscript will be dropped when it is clear from context").

Now tie it back together

Now that you've chopped your prose into bite-sized chunks, what binds it together?

Coherent and explicit structure

Your paragraphs and chunks have to tie together into a coherent argument. Do everything you can to highlight the structure of this argument. The structure should jump out at the reader, making it possible to read straight through your text, or skim it. Else the reader will get stuck puzzling out what you meant and lose momentum.

Make sure your readers are never perplexed about the point of the paragraph they're reading. Make them want to keep turning the page because you've set up questions to which they want to know the answers. Don't make them rub their eyes in frustration or boredom and wander off to the fridge or the web browser.

So how exactly do you "highlight the structure" and "set up questions"?

Ask questions explicitly and then answer them, as I just did. This is a great device for breaking up boring prose, communicating your rhetorical goals, and making the reader think.

Explicitly refer back to previous text, as when I wrote, "So how exactly do you 'highlight the structure' and 'set up questions'?"

Use lots of transitional phrases (discourse connectives). Note that it's fine to use these across chunk boundaries; that is, feel free to start a new subsection with "For this reason, ...", picking up where the previous subsection left off.

As you come to the end of a section, remind the reader what the point was. If possible, this should lead naturally into the next section.

If a section is skippable, or chapters can be read out of order, do say so. (But don't use this as an excuse for poor organization or long distractions. Some readers tend to read straight through, and in particular, your advisor or committee may feel that they must do this.)

Lots of internal cross-references

A thesis deals with a lot of ideas at once. Readers can easily lose track. Help them out:

Each figure or table should be mentioned in the main text, so that the reader knows to go look at it. Conversely, the figure's caption may point the reader back to details in the main text (stating the section number). A caption may also refer to other figures or tables that the reader should be sure to compare.

Boldface terms that you are defining, as a textbook would. This makes the definitions easy to spot when needed. You may also want to generate an index of boldfaced terms.

Be very consistent in your terminology. Never use two terms for the same idea; never reuse one term or variable for two ideas.

Be cautious about using pronouns like "it," or other anaphors such as "this" or "this technique." With all the ideas flying around, it won't always be obvious to everyone what you're referring to. Use longer, unambiguous phrases instead, when appropriate.

Try saying "the time t " instead of just " t " or just "the time." Similarly, "the image transformation T ," "the training example x i ," etc. This style reminds the reader of which variables are connected to which concepts. You can further do this for expressions: "the total probability Σ i p i " instead of just "the total probability" or "the sum."

Feel free to lavish space where it confers extra understanding. Don't hesitate to give an example or a caveat, or repeat an earlier equation, or crisply summarize earlier work that the reader needs to understand.

Be concrete

As I read a thesis, or a long argument or construction within a thesis, I often start worrying whether I am keeping the pieces together correctly in my head. Something that has become deeply familiar and natural to you (the world expert) may be rougher going for me. If I can see some concrete demonstration of how your idea works, it helps me check and deepen my understanding.

Examples keep the reader, and you, from getting lost in a morass of abstractions. Example cases figured in your thinking; they can help the reader, too. Invented examples are okay, but using "real" examples will also show off what your methods should or can do.

Running examples greet the reader like old friends. The reader will grasp a point more quickly and completely, and remember it better, when it is applied to a familiar example rather than a new one. So if possible, devise one or two especially nice examples that you can keep revisiting to make a series of points.

Pictures serve much the same role as examples: they're concrete and they share how the ideas really look inside your head. A picture is worth at least a thousand words (= 2.5 double-spaced thesis pages).

Pseudocode is a concrete way to convey an algorithm. It is often more concise, precise, and direct than a prose description, and may be closer to your own thinking. It will also make other people much more likely to understand and adopt your methods.

Theorems , too, are concise and precise. They are also self-contained chunks, because they formally state all their assumptions. A reader sloshing through a long, complicated, contextual argument can always grab onto a theorem as an island of certainty.

Experimental results are also concrete. You don't have to wait for the experimental section: it is okay to foreshadow your experiments before you present them in full. When you are developing the theory, you can say "Indeed, we will find experimentally in section 5.6 that ..." You can even showcase an example from your experiments or give some summary statistics; these might not even show up later in the experimental section.

Commitments keep the reader anchored. As noted earlier, your dissertation should discuss alternative solutions that you rejected or are leaving to future work. That's scholarship. But make it clear from the start what you actually did and didn't do. Don't have section 2.3 chatter on about everything one could do -- that reads like a proposal, not a thesis! -- while waiting till section 4.5 or even 2.5 to reveal what you actually did.

Placing these concrete elements early is best, other things equal. Either embed them early in the section or just tell the reader early on to go look at Figure X. (If you continue the section by discussing Figure X, the reader is more likely to actually go look. Figure X or its caption can refer back to the text in turn.)

For example, consider pseudocode. Some readers prefer code to prose, and it's concise. So you may want to give pseudocode early in the section, before you ramble on about why it works. An alternative is to intersperse fragments of pseudocode with your prose explanation, as in literate programming . Of course, the pseudocode itself should also include some brief comments; where necessary these can just point to the text, as in "implements equation (5)" or "see section 3.2."

Sentences. The previous section dealt with sections and paragraphs, but how about sentences? Yours should read well. The best advice in The Elements of Style : "Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise." To learn how to improve your sentences, read Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace , by Joseph M. Williams, and do the exercises. Another classic is On Writing Well , by William Zinsser.

Computers are getting exponentially faster (Moore, 1965). However, Biddle (1971) showed ...

Bandura's (1977) theory ... ... (e.g., Butcher, 1954; Baker, 1955; Candlestick-Maker, 1957, and others). The work of Minor (2001, pp. 50-75; but see also Adams, 1999; Storandt, 1997) ... According to Manning and Schütze, 1999 (henceforth M&S), ...

(Another option is the apacite package, which precisely follows the style manual of the American Psychological Association. It is nearly as flexible in its citation format, but APA style has some oddities, including lowercasing the titles of proceedings volumes. One nice thing about APA style is that if you have multiple Smiths in your bibliography, it will distinguish them where necessary, using first and middle initials. Another nice thing is the use of "&" rather than "and" in author lists; however, you can easily hack plainnat.bst to mimic this behavior.)

\usepackage[colorlinks]{ hyperref } \usepackage{ url }

\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table]{xcolor} \usepackage{soul} \newcommand{\todo}[1]{\hl{[TODO: #1]}} \todo{Either prove this or back away from the claim. I think Fermat's Last Theorem might be the key ...}

\newcommand{\todo}[1]{}

... only 58 words in the dictionary have this property. % to get that count: % perl -ne 'print if blah blah' /usr/share/dict/words | wc -l

Version control. It's probably wise to use git (or CVS or RCS or Subversion or mercurial or darcs) to keep the revision history of your dissertation files. This lets you roll back to an earlier version in case of disaster. Furthermore, if you host the repository on your cs.jhu.edu account, it will be backed up by the department.

Sharing your thesis. When you're willing to open up for comments from fellow students, your advisor, or your committee, give them a secret URL from which they can always download the latest, up-to-date release of your thesis, as well as earlier versions. (This is probably friendlier than just pointing them to your git repository.)

Keep this URL up to date with your changes. Each distinct version should bear a visible date or version number, to avoid confusion. For each new version (or on request), you should probably also supply a PDF that marks up the differences from an appropriate earlier version, using the wonderful latexdiff program (available here or as an Linux package; plays nicely with git via latexdiff-git or other scripts ) or a similar technique . (Note: If you use a makefile to build your document by running latex, gnuplot, etc., then you can also make it run latexdiff and update the URL for you.)

If you use Overleaf , just give your committee a view URL for your project. They will be able to see the PDF, visit different versions, and leave comments in the source file.

Planning Your Dissertation

Every dissertation is a little different. Talk to your advisor to draft a specific, written plan for what the thesis will contain, how it will be organized, and whom it will address. Discuss the plan with each of your committee members, who may suggest changes. They might disagree with advice on this page; find out.

As the dissertation takes shape, your plan may need some revision. Your advisor and committee may be willing to provide early feedback. But no one will want to slog through more than a version or two in detail. So ask them each how many drafts of each chapter they're willing to read, and in what state and on what schedule. Some of them nmay prefer to influence your writeup while it's still in an early, outline form. Others may prefer to wait until your prose is fairly polished and easy to read.

In addition to your advisor's goals and your committee's goals, you may have some goals of your own, e.g.,

GOOD LUCK!!! Now, download that LaTeX template , and take the first step toward filling it in today ...

Time Management

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writing from the PhD part one

So you want to write from your PhD thesis. Where to start, you might ask?

Your first job is to decide whether your PhD is a book – or not. Perhaps the thesis could be a book but won’t because of the job and career demands you’re facing. Either way, let’s start this conversation by assuming that there’s no book, or at least not yet. You’ve decided to write papers for peer reviewed journals.

The immediate temptation is to try to condense your entire thesis into one paper. This is not an easy task. If it took you an entire thesis of eighty to a hundred thousand words to answer your research question, chances are that you aren’t going to be able to condense al that complexity into a mere seven or eight thousand. You need to break your thesis down into manageable pieces. Each piece a paper.

The good news is that most monograph (Big Book) PhDs can support more than one paper. Generally, it’s several. So the big question is where to start chopping it up.

Well, here’s a possibility to try out. Start by thinking about what is common to the thesis and the refereed paper in a journal.

You know that journals are knowledge-building communities. And journal editors are looking for papers that add to what their readers already know. This might be a new way of looking at something, some new empirical data, a different interpretation of a phenomenon, literatures brought to a familiar topic to open a new avenue of thinking. And so on.

This might sound familiar. In fact it connects with what happens in the thesis. You argued in your thesis conclusion, and probably in your viva, that your research had made a number of contributions to knowledge, you’d added to the field.

Both the thesis and the journal article are to do with adding to what is already known.

So one way to start thinking about possible papers is to go straight to your conclusion and see what you wrote about what was novel and significant arising from your project. What did you say were your contributions?

You could even do that now….

Perhaps a reminder about what a contribution looks like. Imagine that you said you had provided important local knowledge about how, say, a particular policy was playing out. Or you investigated a little known event that happened a while ago which was actually pretty important. Or you had interpreted a set of texts in a new way. You might also have done something interesting in your research process, perhaps used a new method, or perhaps you found a novel solution to a particular methods based problem. You might also have had something different to say about some minor aspects of the study: these were integral to the overall contribution, but were also a contribution in their own right. And, wait there’s more, you’d also put together formerly disparate literatures to offer new insights.

Why not jot down your PhD contributions now?

Check out that list. Im sure it’s exciting to revisit. And here’s the thing. Whatever your claims to contribution were, chances are that each one of these could be the basis of a paper. Chances are that if you said this thing here is novel in the field and the examiners agreed, then a journal community will think the same.

Once you’ve got a handle on a new/significant thing you have to offer, you need to look for the journals where readers will recognise and appreciate it. You can then frame your paper up in terms of what ‘stuff’ is already part of the field and what you can add.

Another way to think about papers and the PhD is to ask yourself what current hot topic or old sticky problem your research might help with. Does your analysis have some take on something that readers know is important?

But in both cases you need to ask yourself what questions this journal community is interested in. What do they talk about? Then ask yourself, What (partial) answer do I have to offer? Does your paper help to fill in some blank spots and if so, how and why is that important? You may find yourself taking an angle on a topic that isn’t exactly the same as your thesis. And you will probably find you’re not answering the same question as you had in your thesis. That’s fine. You’re not rewriting the thesis.,

You’ll have gathered by now that you need to be very specific about any possible paper. Rather than say I’ll write about x, you need to think about the contribution – exactly what new chunk of stuff you’re going to add to what, where, and why it is important that you do.

Another way to think about writing from the PhD is to say that you now need to focus on what your peers want to read and will be interested in, rather than what you wanted to research and write about. Ask yourself how can I inform my field?

I’m going to continue writing about writing from the PhD in the next post. But in the meantime you might also want to see if your library has Helen Kara and Janet Salmon’s book (2019) Publishing from your doctoral research: create and use a publication strategy (Routledge). It has a load of useful advice and exercises you can do to find out where and how to write from the PhD.

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

About pat thomson

2 responses to writing from the phd part one.

I created my own terminology for using my PhD thesis to write for publication. The phrase I use might exist elsewhere, but I “write through”, or I engage in the act of “writing through”.

What a timely post thanks Pat! I completed a couple of months ago and graduation in a few weeks so I have been thinking it’s time to get the ‘brain’ back ‘on’. This post, and the book suggestion is helping ‘grease the wheels’, much appreciated!

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How I write papers

There is plenty of advice out there on how to write academic publications, from general stylistic tips to field-specific guides. Yet, I’ve found most of that advice tends to be abstract, or focused on the final product, never giving you a step-by-step account of the process. In this post, I share the writing process I find myself using after 70+ academic publications. This will give you an idea of where to start writing your paper (especially if you have never written one), and it will show you that all polished papers have humble (even crappy) origins. Kill perfectionism, and the dreaded “academic writer’s block” will eventually disappear.

In a previous post , I went over several reasons why I think scientific writing is difficult for many doctoral students: the lack of specific training, the focus on the finished product (vs. how to get there), the fact that it is a collaborative process, or that many of us don’t use our mother tongue when we write. As a way to counter many of those, I thought it could be useful to share what my own writing process is 1 , which I have come to after more than 10 years of trying (and quite a few “loaves of bread sold” 2 ). This process assumes that you are collaborating with others, in that it defines when and what to send to co-authors and other collaborators. This is also the process that we recommend in the “writing seminar” I have helped teach at our university.

This may result in a post longer than usual, so… For those of you that want to get to the point right away and run off:

My paper writing process

For those of us that need a bit more explanation, read on below. I will try to illustrate each step with an example from a recent paper I co-authored (still under review) 3 . You will see how different the finished product is, compared with its humble origins:

Step 1. Define the main idea

Once you decide you want to write a paper, start with a blank piece of paper (e.g., a post-it), or a new document in your computer. Do not start from the full report of your study 4 , or other random pieces of text you may have written during your research about the topic. Blank paper. OK, now, just try to answer in one sentence : What is the paper about? What is the main research contribution 5 you are trying to make here? or, in other words, what is the “reusable knowledge” that you think other researchers need to know, and could build upon? Write that one sentence down. That’s it 6

Diving into my archives I found the earliest “main idea” I had about this recently-published paper of mine: “Active or passive [data] gathering? Design-based research studies on technological support for evidence-based teacher reflection” . As you can see, this initial idea had quite a few problems (for starters, it was two sentences, not one! plus, what is the new knowledge I wanted to convey is not very clear either). It looks nothing like the final title of the paper. However, it tried to convey that it was about certain studies we had done, and that active/passive data gathering seemed to play an important role in what we discovered. That will have to do for now. Let’s move on.

Step 2. Define the audience

This one is probably the first point where my advice may deviate from other advice out there. Scientific writing (or any writing, really) is basically an act of communication. And, by definition, it requires a sender (you), a message (see point #1), and a receiver . You have to have one. Pitching a contribution to the wrong audience is one of the most common causes of rejection for scientific papers, so… don’t make this mistake. Define who will be interested in the main idea of the paper, who cares about this kind of thing you’re proposing. If it’s your first paper, you may not be sure, and that’s OK. But there are things you can do to find out, like a) asking your advisor or more experienced colleagues; b) looking at similar papers you have read: which conferences or journals are they published in? Narrow it down to 1-3 concrete options of journals/conferences. Write them down. Look at the venue’s author and submission guidelines. The good thing about setting this from the outset is that now you have already indications of the expected length of the piece, its tone, level of specificity, things the readers probably know already, etc.

I initially set my paper to be sent to the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET). The main reasons for this decision were that it was a journal in the field of educational technology, and a really inter-disciplinary one (our paper was neither very technical nor very educational), that it is quite high-quality and high-impact, and that they make a point of publishing research that also has relevance for teachers (which I think our paper idea had) 7 .

Step 3: Define the team

Once you know what you write about and for whom, you can decide who can help you in doing it. In most fields, you do not do your research alone, but collaborating with others (but in some fields it may be required that you write some papers alone – check with your advisors). This additional team members can be your advisor(s), some colleague who helped you with the data gathering or data analysis 8 … but think wider. Is there somebody else you know (in your department, or elsewhere) who knows a lot about the literature on topic X that your paper addresses? or data analysis technique Y? That could save you some time, and this person could bring in new, interesting ideas to the paper.

Then, send your idea and target venue to potential co-authors : this can be a short email, a chat over coffee… The main point is to pitch them the idea, see what they think and whether they are interested. In this process, it is good that you set expectations about what their role will be, how much time you think this will take them, what can be the expected author order, etc. All of those can change during the writing process (depending on how the different people behave), but it is good to have some baseline expectation. From this conversation, you can already get some valuable information to help you refine the core idea (maybe they think this is not about keyword X, but rather keyword Y, or they suggest some other venue for publication, or analyses that you had not run yet).

In my paper’s case, I simply told my boss back then, that I was thinking of writing this paper for this venue (he agreed). I also contacted the professional development specialist who had helped co-design the tool we were proposing, and helped manage the data gathering in the school. Later on during the process, I also contacted one of my PhD students, since her topic was closely related to that of the paper – and she was doing a lot of reading on some of the related literature we needed to cover anyway.

Step 4: Write a pseudo-abstract

Now that you have an idea of something scientific to write about, some scholars you want to tell it to, and some people we want to write it with, let’s flesh out the idea a little bit more. Not a lot. Just a little bit. I call this step “pseudo-abstract”, because it more or less has all the elements that a good abstract should have… only it is not really an abstract (i.e., one paragraph of nice text) yet. It is basically a series of bullet points with simple, clear messages, in three parts 9 : a) what is known about the topic of the paper (1-3 bullets); b) what this paper adds to such current knowledge, i.e., what contribution(s) it brings (1-2 bullets); and c) what are the implications of this contribution for other researchers, or practitioners, policy-makers or the society at large (1-3 bullets). Keep the bullets as complete sentences, but simple ones (e.g., not more than 100 characters). You can also think about this step as the “grandmother’s version of your scientific contribution” (i.e., how you would communicate this contribution to a non-expert) – remember, most of our grandmothers are not biochemists or sociology researchers!

Below, you can see a pseudo-abstract for the same paper, which I did some months later than the original “main idea”. You can see that the title there has already changed (but still looks pretty generic), and some more ideas have been added, especially regarding what is known about the topic (i.e., what would be the main take-away message from the literature about the relevant keywords, like “teacher reflection”), and what are the implications (in this case, how a teacher or a school leader could use the tools/ideas we present in the paper).

Example pseudo-abstract from a real paper

Step 5: Create a weighted outline

Now that you have fleshed out the basic idea, let’s start thinking about how we are going to write it. A first step in this is to do an outline of the sections of the paper, as you would find it in a table of contents of a book: sections, subsections, sub-subsections… And, since we already know where we want to send it, we know how long the paper should be (in pages, or words), so we can assign estimated lengths to every section and subsection 10 . Why do this weighted outline? First, it makes us reflect about the relative importance of the different parts of the text (i.e.: more important parts –like the paper’s main contribution– should be described in more detail, and hence should be longer). Secondly, and since for many people writing is a bit painful, we do not want to write 30 pages of text on a topic, only to find out that we only needed three pages (so, we have to throw away 90% of that hard-worked text). Furthermore, downsizing text is just plain difficult: once you got used to saying things at a certain level of detail, it has some kind of “anchoring effect” that makes it very difficult to change our frame of mind (i.e., we think that all we said there is really important to be said). In a sense, making this weighted outline tries to put the anchoring on your side so that you will keep the paper close to the length you actually need.

Once you have the main idea (which can be the working title), the co-authors, the target venue, the pseudo-abstract and the weighted outline, it is a good moment to send all this to the co-authors for feedback. This should be a one-page document, so it is more likely that even busy people can give you quickly some ideas about the general direction, section titles and relevant keywords, etc. Once you get this feedback and make the necessary corrections, you can also polish this into an actual title, abstract and outline with lengths, which you can send to the editor of your target journal(s), to inquire whether they think this kind of paper fits the scope of the journal – and their opinion actually matters a lot, since they are the first filter even before your paper reaches the reviewers! Although they are not obliged to answer, they will often be nice enough to tell you (since by responding, they will get either a good paper, or less out-of-scope papers, later on).

You can take a look at the weighted outline from my example paper here , which I wrote still aiming at the BJET journal, which had a maximum length of 6,000 words. One thing you can notice is that some of the subsections end up being very short (100 words?), which should have made me think that something was not totally right (one-paragraph sections are rare!). Also, the total length was well over 80% of the hard limit (since you also have to count abstract and the other front matter in those 6,000 words). As you will see, these clues became quite important later on…

More steps… after the break

Wow, this post is getting a bit long! Since we have now reached the middle point within the process, and it was a lot to absorb, I think we can make a break here, until next week. Then, we will go into the details of the paper. As they say, the devil is always in the details but, once the groundwork of these first five steps is there, and you have already gotten feedback from your co-authors a couple of times, you can have some confidence that your shot (and the effort that each step takes) cannot go too far off the mark.

In the meantime, why don’t you give these five steps a try? Do you have an idea for a paper about some research you did, but you don’t know where to start? Try this and let me know how it went, in the comments below!

The emphasis on “my own” is important. Writing is still mostly an art (yes, even scientific writing), a very complex skill that requires many smaller skills and abilities, which not all of us can tap in the same way. As they say, “your mileage may vary”. Even I don’t always follow this process every single time (e.g., if I’m pressed for time, I might jump a step here and there). This process is just what most of my writing processes resemble, especially if I have some kind of control about the paper (e.g., if I am the first author). ↩︎

If you don’t get the reference, go read the previous post . It has cute baker drawings! ↩︎

Prieto, L. P., Magnuson, P., Dillenbourg, P., & Saar, M. (2017). Reflection for action: Designing tools to support teacher reflection on everyday evidence. Preprint Available at https://osf.io/bj2rp . ↩︎

See a later post for why you should have a full, detailed research report vs. writing up your papers directly from the research. Suffice to say that the report is where you describe your full process and results, which are of interest to you and your team. A paper is a wholly different thing, and the audience is normally interested in a small subset of that only. ↩︎

The topic of what constitutes a valid research contribution is a complex and thorny one, since it varies a lot depending on your research field. In general, it seems that most fields require that a contribution is a piece of reusable knowledge (i.e., you can convey it to others and they can reproduce it and build upon it), which is relevant to a certain scientific community (e.g., astrophysicists, engineers, linguists, whatever your field is), which is novel (i.e., new and non-obvious), and has some kind of usefulness (but this one varies a lot from applied to more basic/theoretical fields). Furthermore, you have to provide some evidence that all of the above is true (be it with mathematical proofs, data from empirical studies, or whatever method your field considers valid). In the end, the goal of the paper and its different parts is basically to prove your point on all these regards! ↩︎

Pro tip: instead of writing the one idea in a piece of paper, try writing three different main ideas in three post-its, and then choose the best one (or pitch them to a colleague). You can even go further and try what in design circles is called “crazy 8s” (i.e., eight different ideas for the main contribution, in 8 minutes). Try to make each idea meaningful, different from the previous ones, but don’t worry if they end up being crap. That is the whole point of the exercise. For empirical proof that this seems to help both the quality of the outputs and your own feeling of self-efficacy, see, for example, Dow, S. P., Glassco, A., Kass, J., Schwarz, M., Schwartz, D. L., & Klemmer, S. R. (2010). Parallel prototyping leads to better design results, more divergence, and increased self-efficacy. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) , 17 (4), 18. ↩︎

Interestingly, this is not the journal where we have the paper now under review. In case you’re curious, the main reason for the eventual change was that our draft ended up being much longer than what the journal allowed. This was in part due to my lack of discipline when writing, and the fact that we chose to tell our contribution in a way that could not really be made much shorter. Even when we changed our target journal to another one more adequate to the manuscript length, but with similar characteristics to BJET, our paper was rejected (i.e., the reviewers did not appreciate the contribution enough). Thus, we had to improve the paper based on some of the reviewer feedback and find yet another journal to submit it to – where it is now under review. In retrospect, I’d say that this last journal was probably the best choice anyway (it’s just that we did not even know about this journal at the outset when the paper started). This is worth taking into account: no plan survives contact with reality – but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. ↩︎

Who should count as co-author in your papers? This is another topic for an entire post, but for now: anybody that made substantial contributions to the design, data gathering, analysis or interpretation of the evidence; AND helps you drafting or revising the paper; AND checks out the final version for publishing; AND agrees to be responsible for its contents. You can check out things like the Vancouver Convention , or this very complete site from the Norwegian Research Ethics Committee . ↩︎

This kind of structure is used in many journals, under the name “highlights” or “practitioner notes”. Basically, they are aimed at summarizing the paper in a nutshell, in relatively simple language, so that other scientists and people that are not necessarily experts in your field, can understand them… which is precisely what we want to do at this point! ↩︎

Pro tip: journals and conferences normally offer a hard maximum length limit… don’t target that number! make it about 80% of the length limit, or even less if you think the contribution should be shorter. You will probably go over your target length anyways during the writing of actual text – and shortening text is both painful and difficult. ↩︎

Communication

Luis P. Prieto

Luis P. is a Ramón y Cajal research fellow at the University of Valladolid (Spain), investigating learning technologies, especially learning analytics. He is also an avid learner about doctoral education and supervision, and he's the main author at the A Happy PhD blog.

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PhD Dissertation Outline: Creating a Roadmap to Success

PhD dissertation outline: Dissertation structure and format

A good PhD dissertation outline is as important to your dissertation as a map is to get you to your destination. Imagine for instance you’re trying to drive to a specific place to attend a party you’ve been looking forward to. You know the address, but you don’t have a map or a driving app. You get there eventually, but it takes a lot longer that it should have and stresses you so much that you’re in a bad mood when you get there. The party ends up being a bust.

This is similar to trying to write an academic paper, especially a PhD dissertation, without using an outline.

Why you need a PhD dissertation outline

When you do your PhD, outlines become the driving app for your academic paper, giving you direction so you know what’s in front of you. This is especially important for a PhD dissertation because of its physical length and the amount of time you will need to live with it. Successful PhD dissertation writing requires a laser focus, and an outline makes a great navigator.

There are many advantages of creating a PhD dissertation outline 1,2 :

Organize your project – Using an PhD dissertation outline will help you organize your thoughts and your work. If you have an idea or find a bit of information to include in a different section, simply write a note in the appropriate place to remind yourself.
Stay on task – Like the driving app, a PhD dissertation structure keeps you on the proper road and minimizes distractions. When writing without keeping in mind your PhD dissertation structure, it’s easy to find yourself in the weeds.
Increase productivity – A PhD dissertation outline keeps you aware of what you have to do, allows you to set goals, and be more productive.
Save time – This is a major advantage in PhD dissertation writing. The faster you can successfully complete your dissertation process, the more money you’ll save, and the sooner you can get on with the rest of your life.
Reduce anxiety – The effective use of a good PhD dissertation outline will give you control over this massive project. You’ll be more confident that you can successfully complete your PhD dissertation.

How to write a PhD dissertation outline

So, now that you’re convinced that you need a PhD dissertation outline, where do you start? A few general steps will get you on the right road 3 :

Select an appropriate topic: This one might seem obvious, but it is often a very difficult decision to make. The topic will guide the approach and research methodology. Although the research question will probably be tweaked along the way, not choosing a relevant topic at the start will result in chaos later on.
Review other dissertations on your topic: This will give you an idea about what your PhD dissertation structure will look like.
Draft a research problem: The research problem is the core of your dissertation and will guide your methodology and thus strongly influence your PhD dissertation structure.
Get input from your advisor/supervisor: Seek advice from your supervisor on some PhD thesis outline examples and take advantage of any assistance they provide to help you choose wisely. This will help keep you on the right road

PhD dissertation structure

Doctoral dissertations typically have five standard chapters, although your university might have a specific required structure. Here is a brief description of the typical five-chapter PhD dissertation format 3 .

Chapter 1: Introduction – This section provides an overview of the dissertation including its topic, purpose, and relevance. Typically, the general subject area is discussed and narrowed down to the research topic. Then, the research questions are posed, and the methodology is presented. Chapter 2: Literature Review – A comprehensive survey and synthesis of existing studies on the research topic, the literature review demonstrates the research gap and sets the context for the research question. Depending on the topic, theory may also be explored. Existing methodologies used to address this topic are also discussed. Chapter 3: Methodology – In this section, the methodology and materials used to collect and analyze the research data are presented in enough detail to demonstrate the validity of the method and allow the research to be duplicated by others. Chapter 4: Results – The research findings are reported in this section and presented in relation to the research question. Relevant visuals such as tables and figures are typically included here to communicate the findings effectively. C hapter 5: Discussion – In a five-chapter format, this is the final chapter in a PhD dissertation format. In this chapter, the findings are discussed and interpreted in light of the research question. Bits from all the chapters are synthesized to completely address the research question.

An additional chapter is sometimes added that includes conclusions, recommendations, and suggestions for future research.

Tips for creating your PhD dissertation outline 3,4

Finally, here are some quick and useful tips for your PhD thesis outline journey.

Use the structure to complete the outline – Carefully think about each chapter and write down questions and information you will need.
Create your outline early – Keep it up to date through your early research and advisor meetings.
Be flexible – Changes will need to be made to your outline as you progress.
Be detailed – You never know when a small piece of information you jotted down in your outline will save you time and anxiety.
Keep in close contact with your PhD dissertation advisor/supervisor – Make sure to share your outline. You may just save yourself a lot of time and misery if major changes need to be made.
Stay calm – Changes will come from different committee members. Remember, they are just trying to strengthen your work.
Statistics Solutions. The benefit of outlining. https://www.statisticssolutions.com/the-benefits-of-outlining/ [Accessed 14 July 2022].
PapersOwl. How To Create An Outline For A Dissertation? https://papersowl.com/blog/outline-for-dissertation [Accessed 14 July 2022].
Research.com. What Is A University Dissertation: Structure, Challenges & Writing Tips. https://research.com/research/what-is-a-university-dissertation [Accessed 14 July 2022].
Docformats.com. Dissertation Outline Templates. https://www.docformats.com/dissertation-outline-templates/ [Accessed 14 July 2022].

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Phd, ph.d., dr..

In English, PhD can be written with or without periods; both are correct. The trend today is to drop periods with abbreviations of academic degrees. However, many sources, including the Canadian Oxford Dictionary , still recommend the use of periods: Ph.D.

When you are addressing a person with a doctoral degree, it is considered more polite to use the title Dr. or the academic abbreviation PhD with the person’s name, instead of the simple courtesy titles Mr. or Ms.

Note: Do not use both the title and the degree. If the degree is listed after the name, the title is not used before the name.

Chris Cameron, PhD.
Dr. Chris Cameron

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The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

PhD FAQs – A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Doctoral Study

Tempted to do a PhD but have lots of questions? Hopefully this collection of popular PhD FAQs will help you to tick a few off the list!

Note – If you’re already sure that you want to do a PhD, and are looking for guidance on the applications process, check out my post on How to apply for a PhD which includes advice from successful PhD applicants. My post-PhD reflections on the things I regretted from my own PhD may be useful for you too, you can find that post here .

Let’s start with the absolute basics of PhDs!

What does PhD stand for?

PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy. Doctor of Philosophy ? No matter which subject area your PhD is in you’ll become a Doctor of Philosophy because philosophy derives from Greek to mean “Love of wisdom” which make a bit more sense.

What is a PhD?

A PhD is a type of research degree classified as a doctorate. You get a PhD by doing original research into a topic, typically for at least three years.

There are loads of other types of doctorate and a PhD is simply the most common. EngD is another which is relatively common for industry-funded engineering students here in the UK.

PhD & DPhil what’s the difference?

There is no real difference between a PhD and DPhil, they’re both Doctor of Philosophy qualifications. A small number of historic institutions in the UK such as Oxford and York offer DPhils but the degree itself is equivalent.

How common are PhDs amongst the population?

Approximately 1% of the working population (25-64 years old) have a PhD. This varies a lot by country:

Can you call yourself Doctor with a PhD?

Yes you can. Though to avoid confusion with medical doctors, rarely will PhD-holders use the “Dr” title outside of their workplace.

Sometimes PhD-holders will add the abbreviation PhD after their name if they want to make it clear they are a non-medical doctor, for example “Jeff Clark PhD”.

What have I done about my title since getting my PhD? Nothing so far!

Why do a PhD?

Unlike a lot of other degrees, most PhD students get paid to study . Read more in the finances section below.

There are lots of potential reasons to want to do a PhD. The PhD students from our monthly PhD Profiles series said the following:

Sara found research the most enjoyable part of her undergraduate degree and a PhD was a way to carry on with research.

Ornob wants to pursue a career in evolutionary biology so began with a PhD in the field.

Vivienne has aspirations to be a professor so a PhD is a job requirement to progress in academia.

Jeff (me!) had an interest in the field and enjoyed research. I wrote a whole post with a deep dive on why I decided to do a PhD here .

Floor had enjoyed research during her Masters and didn’t think that she wanted a career in industry, so decided to do a PhD.

It’s important to mention that you don’t need to have a desire to stay in academia to do a PhD. In fact, even if you do want to go into academia afterwards, it’s probably good to know early on just how competitive it can be. Many people sadly cannot make a career out of academia long term.

Enjoy the subject matter and want to spend a few years researching it? That is reason enough to do a PhD. I’ve also now written a whole post about the benefits of having a PhD .

Applying for a PhD

Do you need a masters degree to do a phd.

No you don’t necessarily need a Masters degree to do a PhD as long as you can demonstrate you’d be suitable for a PhD without it.

For a more in-depth answer see the separate post here :

Can You Get a PhD Without a Master’s?

If you don’t have a Masters, I’d recommend checking out Centres for Doctoral Training (CDTs) which offer combined Masters + PhD courses. We have discussed CDTs with a graduate in Floor’s post here .

What grades do you need to do a PhD?

Entry requirements for PhDs can vary. In regards to the UK system usually you’d generally be expected to have at least a 2:1 from your undergraduate degree, plus some research experience.

My experience : I (narrowly) got first class honours in my undergrad (MEng) which certainly does help. But if you can demonstrate aptitude in research you usually don’t need a 1:1. It would be expected for you to have done well in any research projects. If you can get your name on a publication then even better!

The easiest way to find out what is expected is to check the PhD advert for entry requirements. For details on applying for a PhD, including how to find PhD adverts, check out my guide here :

How to apply for a PhD

I work in industry, can I come back and do a PhD?

Absolutely! I worked for almost four years between finishing my first degree and starting my PhD.

A PhD is more similar to a job than any other point in your education, so if you’ve spent time in a structured role it can provide you with a good work ethic. If your time in industry adds relevant skills and experience to your application, even better!

I’ve met loads of people older than me who are pursuing PhDs. If it’s your dream, it’s never too late to start a PhD!

What is the social life of a PhD student like?

Let me get this out the way first: PhD students should be able to have a life outside of the lab! If a PhD student has no time away from research I would personally suggest that they were doing things wrong.

Even if you really enjoy your project, it is good for your mental health to have a social life!

No matter the size of your research group there are often departmental and university-wide events. Plus, besides everyone you may meet through your research and department, PhD students can still join societies and sports clubs through the students’ union. I spent one of my birthdays during my PhD on the beach in Morocco with the surf club, don’t let being a PhD student put your off getting involved!

Check out the full post I’ve written: Do PhD Students Have a Social Life? Sharing My Experiences Making Friends and Avoiding PhD Loneliness

If you do go on to do a PhD, make sure to make the most of all the opportunities ! Your time as a PhD student is fantastic for personal growth.

How much holiday do PhD students get?

Sadly unlike undergraduates, PhD students don’t follow fixed semesters. This means no more three month long summer holiday, sorry!

However most departments recommend PhD students take 7-8 weeks of holiday a year , which is more than practically any job outside of academia.

I kept track of all the time off I took during my PhD and you can find the details here , including a month by month breakdown:

Do PhD Students Get Holidays? Sharing How Much Annual Leave I Take

Getting a PhD

How much work is a phd.

For a month I tracked how many hours I was working and what I was working on, so you can see a breakdown of my calendar here . I found I was working for roughly 40 hours a week. Now that I’ve recently finished my PhD, I’d say that that amount of hours was pretty representative of the whole PhD.

How Much Work is a PhD?

I do of course know some people who worked much longer hours, but most PhD students were on a similar schedule to me. Working roughly 9-5 on weekdays. Treat it like a job and you’ll be fine. PhD students don’t need to be slaving away long hours.

I managed to be strict with my time, largely avoiding work late nights or going in at the weekends. One of the main perks of doing a PhD is that you have autonomy and can be flexible with when you work. As long as you get the work done, any reasonable supervisor won’t mind when you’re there.

Yes I’ve heard stories of PhD students having to clock in and out with an expectation that they spend a certain number of hours in the office. I personally think this is stupid and doesn’t build trust. Try to speak to current PhD students from the group when choosing a supervisor .

How is a PhD assessed?

What you submit at the end of your research varies between universities and countries. Sometimes it’s a thesis and other times it can be a bunch of published papers. In all situations you give some kind of presentation and answer questions about your work.

In the UK you usually submit a thesis in preparation for a viva voce . The viva is an oral exam where you discuss your research with several academics and at least one will be an expert in your field. My viva wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be, but nonetheless it was five hours ( FIVE HOURS! ) long. At the end of your viva you’ll get told the outcome of your PhD with any changes to be made to your thesis.

There is often no requirement , to publish your work in journals during a PhD in the UK but it does help.

In other countries you may have to publish a certain number to pass your PhD and effectively these can be submitted instead of the thesis. This approach makes much more sense to me.

How long does it take to get a PhD?

In the UK, typically between three and four years to complete your research and submit the thesis. It can then take a few months for the exam (viva voce) to take place and then for any corrections to the thesis to be made.

Nosey about my PhD? For me personally, I started the PhD on 1st October 2016, submitted my thesis on 17th February 2020, had the viva on 25th March, submitted my minor corrections on 30th March and had the email to say it was officiated on 1st April 2020. Yep, April Fool’s Day…

When you realise your degree certificate will forever say your PhD was awarded on April Fools Day! #academiclife @imperialcollege pic.twitter.com/hKsGFyuc0x — Jeff Clark (@savvy_scientist) April 14, 2020

We cover all the stages of a PhD here, including putting the length of a PhD in the perspective of a whole career:

How Long Does It Take To Get A PhD?

Are PhDs really difficult?

No, well not how you might think.

You don’t need to be a genius, but you do have to be smart with how you work. Here I go into how a PhD is pretty different to all the prior years spent in education:

How Hard is a PhD?

Check out my new post covering academic challenges and failures relating to my own PhD: Overcoming Academic Challenges and Failure During a PhD

Money-Related Questions

How much does a phd cost.

If you have funding, which is explained below, all your fees are paid for by the funding source. If you are looking to self-fund, then you’ll have to pay bench-fees/tuition fees, which are usually approximately £4,000 a year for home students in the UK.

Fees vary massively depending on both the country the PhD work takes place in and where you’re from. For example, I believe Australian universities charge around $100,000 in fees to overseas PhD students. Of course ideally you have funding which covers both this and pays a stipend!

Do PhD students pay taxes?

In the UK, PhD students do not pay income tax, national insurance, council tax and student loan repayments. This means that if you can secure funding, even though you may earn less than friends in typical jobs, you get to keep all your earnings!

Do PhD students get paid?

Most PhDs, at least in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) get a stipend: basically a tax-free salary.

How much do PhD students get paid?

At the time of writing, most PhD students in the UK get around £16,000 a year . Doesn’t sound like a lot, but:

As mentioned above, you don’t pay income tax, national insurance, council tax or make any student loan repayments. My most popular post is this one , comparing the income of PhD students vs grad jobs and the difference really isn’t that big. Plus it’s only for 3 to 3.5 years!
You’re getting paid to learn science, working on something you’re really interested in. It’s amazing.
You have a lot more freedom than practically any “proper job”.
You’re getting paid, to be a student…

PhD Salary UK: How Much Do PhD Students Get Paid Compared to Graduates?

In summary, PhD stipends are really not that different to grad starting salaries. Please don’t be put off from a PhD simply because for a few years you might be earning a bit less than if you were working in another job.

Depending on what you want to do with your career, having a CV may lead to higher salaries. What is 3 years of lower wages out of a 40+ year career? The answer: nothing!

Where do I find PhD funding?

Getting funding will likely be the biggest hurdle for you to secure a PhD. I have a post here detailing the different types of funding and how you can find a project with funding attached.

How to Find PhD Funding in the UK

Can you self-fund a PhD?

Yes you can self-fund a PhD, and some students are in a position to do so. Just be careful that you account for university fees and not just your living costs.

Are you allowed to have another job at the same time?

Most universities encourage you to get involved with work within your department as a graduate teaching assistant (GTA). Some countries even insist that you work a certain number of hours as part of a contract for your monthly stipend.

Working as a GTA you might be invigilating exams, helping in tutorials, marking coursework etc and at Imperial you usually earn around £15-£26 an hour.

If you’re looking to work a full time job in tandem with your PhD (and doing the PhD full time), it is best checking your university’s policy. Some may have regulations against you working over a certain number of hours which could impede you from concentrating on the PhD.

There are extra ways to make money on the side which I address here :

How to Earn Money Online for Students

Can you get a mortgage as a PhD student?

Since I did my PhD in London I didn’t even consider buying somewhere during my PhD. I’m not interested in being tied into a massive mortgage for 25 years to buy a shoebox!

If I’d accepted my PhD offer for a CDT at Leeds I certainly would have tried to buy somewhere with my partner. I found this page useful when doing research. Buying a property with a partner who has a normal job would definitely make the mortgage application a whole lot more successful.

Will a PhD help your career?

This depends on what you want to do with your career. Some example scenarios:

Staying in academia – a PhD is usually required
Certain technical jobs in industry – a PhD may be required or a big bonus
Non-technical jobs – a bonus

I do not imagine any scenarios where having a PhD is worse than not having one. It is true though that for certain careers there may be other things you could do which would be a better use of your time, for example gaining more direct work experience.

If you want to do a PhD that shouldn’t stop you though, and considering the length of your career taking a few years out for a PhD is inconsequential.

Whichever career path you fancy taking, if you are at all interested in doing a PhD I think you should at least apply.

PhDs in London

Can someone afford to live in london as a phd student.

Yes! I lived in London for my PhD and actually was able to save money every single month while taking many holidays and not living in a tent.

I have a few posts sharing my experiences living in London which you may find useful:

For a month last year I tracked all my expenses to get an idea of my costs living in London as a student, you can find it here .

Sharing my monthly living expenses as a student in London: September 2019

Related to reducing costs, I learned to cycle in London and loved it. It saved me about £100 a month too!

Learning to cycle in London: my first 1000 miles

On top of that, for the whole of 2019 (third year PhD) I tracked my money, and the report is here :

My personal finances report for 2019

Where is good to live in London?

I’ve lived in three different houses during my PhD in London and have a pretty good idea now of good places to live in London. You can read this whole post talking about living in London as a student and the associated costs including a breakdown of rent :

London student accommodation: Breaking down the cost of living in London for students

Bonus: Read the journeys of PhD students

Before I started my PhD I had a ton of questions and nobody who I could ask about their experience. The reality is that many of these PhD FAQs have a variety of answers as everyone’s PhD story is different. Therefore if you’d like to hear first hand from people who are going through the journey check out my series of PhD profiles , with a new profile every month. You can also discover some of their top tips for applying!

If you’d like personalised help with your PhD application I am now starting to offer a small number of one-to-one sessions. Please contact me to find out more or click here to book a call.

Is there anything else you’d like to know to help with a potential PhD application? Let me know and I’ll write about it! You can subscribe to stay up to date here:

The Five Most Powerful Lessons I Learned During My PhD

8th August 2024 8th August 2024

5th February 2024 4th July 2024

The Benefits of Having a PhD

7th September 2022 30th January 2024

Privacy Overview

How to write a PhD literature review WITHOUT using AI (Part 1: Understanding the literature)

by James Hayton, PhD
August 26th, 2024

Stay up to date

Should you do a phd, the risks of using ai to write your literature review.

There are countless videos online showing you how to use AI to write your literature review. All of them make it look easy, but all of the ones I’ve seen get fundamental things wrong. And the problem, as with a lot of bad advice, is that it will seem to work at first, but cause major, or even irreparable damage later.

The danger is that AI can help you produce something that looks like a literature review, on a topic you don’t understand. To the uninformed reader it might look impressive, but there won’t be any real insight into the topic. It will probably also contain serious mistakes that you might not notice if you don’t have the expertise.

As I’ve said before, anything you submit as your own work, you have to be able to defend . If you have a lazy examiner who doesn’t read your thesis you might be OK, but a good examiner will quite quickly figure out that you’ve used AI. They will find the parts where you don’t understand what you’ve submitted as your work, and they will, quite rightly, give you a very hard time. And if they discover that you didn’t write major sections of your own thesis, you will fail.

Can AI be used to help you write a literature review?

Can AI be used ethically and effectively? Yes, probably, but if you use it, don’t be dependent on it. You should treat it like an enthusiastic but slightly incompetent intern 1 , in that you can get it to do some work, but you need to check everything it’s done. And while it might make suggestions, never let it make decisions for you.

And if you don’t know enough about a topic to judge what AI is doing, you’ve got to fix that.

You don’t HAVE to use AI for your literature review

I started my PhD in 2003, which means I’m closer to the generation that searched the literature by going to the library 2 and reading physical, printed copies of journals than I am to the current generation with all the AI tools. But despite the advances in technology over the last 21 years, the fundamentals have not changed; you still need a good knowledge and understanding of the literature to be able to write about it.

And isn’t that the point? Surely you want to develop your expertise. You want to know the literature and have some insight of your own, rather than following a chatGPT-generated template. And surely you want to develop your own skills, so you can write with confidence without being dependent on an AI platform.

So here’s how to write a literature review without using AI. It might be slower, especially in the beginning, but you’ll be much stronger for having done the heavy lifting yourself. For now, I’m going to assume that you have some idea what you want to study, but if you want to know how to find, or rather develop, a research topic then leave a comment below and I’ll cover it in a separate video.

Never write about literature you don’t understand

So I’m going to start with a fundamental rule, and that is to never write anything that you don’t understand yourself.

Some people will tell you to take each paper you read and write a summary paragraph, then edit all those paragraphs together, but this is a terrible idea. It’s a terrible idea because when you first start reading, you don’t know how an individual paper fits into the broader context and there might be concepts that you don’t yet understand. You also might not be able to tell if the paper is any good, because not all published papers are.

This is one of the many basic, basic things that the AI advocates fail to acknowledge: a lot of published papers are just bad. So even if you trust the AI platform, which you shouldn’t, you can’t always trust the literature that it’s summarizing.

And if you follow the standard advice of writing these summary paragraphs, or taking key points and then paraphrasing them, without understanding them, you’ll fill pages with content that looks like a literature review, but you will know that you don’t understand what you’re writing about. iAnd if you have any kind of impostor syndrome, this approach is just going to make it worse.

So we have to build some knowledge and understanding of the literature before we can write about it with any confidence. This means forgetting about writing, at least initially, and taking some time to just read.

How to build your knowledge of the academic literature

I can’t give you an exact, step by step process here., because it will vary depending on your situation, your current level of knowledge, the state of your field and what you need to find out. If you want a process that you can just follow from start to finish without thinking or using your own judgement, it doesn’t exist (whether you use AI or not).

But there are general principles you can follow and adapt as your needs change over time. Generally speaking, there are different levels of knowledge you need to develop.

Start with the general trends

Let’s start with the broad picture: This is an understanding of the trends and debates and the kinds of problems people are working on. So we’re not too worried about the details of individual papers here, because initially we’re just getting a low-resolution picture of the field.

And you can usually do this fairly quickly. If you take a handful of recent papers on a specific topic and just read the introductions, you’ll probably notice that they all say similar things about the current state of the field. They will mention the same problems or ongoing debates, they’ll mention many of the same concepts, and they’ll refer to the same key papers.

For example, one of my projects involved looking at silicon nanoparticle luminescence. Basically getting silicon to give off light. Every single paper said the same thing in the introduction; that there had been a surprise result, others had reproduced it but nobody knew the underlying mechanism, and if we could figure it out then there was huge technological potential. There was a lot of heavy technical detail behind it and there were many different experiments and proposed theoretical explanations, but the basic story is easy to understand.

The key paper that everybody referenced was by Canham 3 , a name I still remember two decades later, even though I haven’t looked at the topic since. I don’t remember all the others, but I remember that one. This brings us to the next key point.

Identify the key, influential papers

Not all the literature is of equal value . Most papers have very little impact on the field, but there will be a few that have a disproportionate impact, perhaps because they made some major discovery or invented a new technique or developed a new theory. These get cited far more than anything else.

If everybody else is referring to these people, you need to know who they are and what they did that was so important. And this brings us to the next rule.

Always go back to the original source

Always go back to the original source and check what they actually did and said , because when somebody else summarizes a paper, unless they quote directly, there’s always a subtle change. In some cases, the secondary source explains the concept better, but I’ve seen so many instances where they get it wrong and then other people have cited the secondary source.

So it’s always a good idea to go back to those key original sources and try to understand;

What problem they addressed
What they did that was new
What influence this had on the field

Although it’s important to take some time to try to understand these sources, you maybe don’t need to get too lost in the detail, because you can always come back to these sources multiple times throughout your PhD. And if you come back to a paper a few months or years later, after reading a lot more, after conducting some of your own research, you might have a very different understanding of it.

You should read sources multiple times

A quick side-note here: Years ago, I saw a professor on twitter saying that they “only ever read anything once”. I wish I had saved it because it was such a perfect example of the kind of misleading bullshit you see online, from people who really should know better. Any professor who says they only ever read anything once is either a genius, is lying, or is really bad at their job. Y ou can and should come back to the most important sources and read them multiple times , because your perspective on them will change as your expertise grows.

Learning the basics

As you build this initial picture of the field, the general trends and debates and the key influential figures, you will, inevitably, come across concepts, theories and techniques that you don’t understand. It’s worth taking some time to try to understand some of these.

You need to be selective and prioritize here to avoid getting overwhelmed. Part of this is accepting that you can’t know everything and there will always be gaps in your knowledge. This can be a little scary as you’ve probably come through an education system where you’re graded based on how much of the syllabus you know, but at PhD level we have to let go of that way of thinking because the amount of literature and knowledge is endless.

You’ll never know everything, but you can identify some key concepts that you need to understand for your project.

Know the most common research and analytical techniques

One of the most important aspects here, that’s often overlooked, is developing an understanding of common research and analytical techniques . This is crucial, not only for your own research, but to understand and assess the literature you read.

So many videos I’ve seen about literature reviews just take what the paper says without any critical thought. But you need be able to look at how they conducted their research and reached their conclusions…

It takes time to build this knowledge, so again it’s important to be selective, either based on the kind of research you want to do, or the most common techniques used in the field.

Find good, authoritative sources you can refer back to

It might be worth finding good, authoritative sources on specific techniques. So if you’re doing IPA, for example, get a copy of the book by Smith, Flowers and Larkin . Again, you don’t need get lost in all the detail, but you can get an initial understanding of the basic principles, and then keep going back to that source whenever you need to.

Investing time in that kind of basic understanding will then make it possible to understand the papers that use them.

Highly relevant papers for your specific project

And then, finally, we have specific papers that are highly relevant to your own study. These might be papers that look at the same problem, but from a different perspective, or perhaps serve as a foundation for part of your research. There will probably be a relatively small number of these, but you’ll need to know them really well.

Quick summary of the different levels of knowledge of the literature

To recap, as a foundation, you need

A basic knowledge of the general trends, problems and debates in your field. You can get this from the introductions of a few papers, or from a good published literature review.
To know the big, influential papers and what they did that was so important
To understand the most important concepts and the most commonly used techniques
To know the most relevant literature for your specific project

And for all of these, you should build up a collection of key, high quality sources that you can go back to whenever you need .

The key word here is quality, because it’s not about the number of papers in your bibliography, but the standard of the sources you rely upon. If you understand even a handful of important papers, it’s far better than having extensive notes or summaries of hundreds of papers that you don’t understand.

Getting into the details

With that strong foundation, you can start to look in more detail at the literature around specific issues of interest, depending on what you need at any given time.

The way you should approach this depends on what you’re trying to do. If need to do a systematic review, then maybe you need to follow PRISMA guidelines . But maybe you’re looking for a solution to a specific problem, or different methods that have been used to measure something, or for the latest, cutting edge results.

To find these, you might need to follow a more organic process, trying out different keyword searches or chasing up references in the bibliographies of papers, or just talking to people , because universities are full of people with useful expertise.

The hard work of searching the literature

However you approach it, there will be dead ends and you will have to sort through a lot of papers that aren’t useful to you (or maybe aren’t useful to you right now), but that’s the nature of academic research.

You might be able to supplement this process using AI, but you cannot delegate the process to AI. You need the ability and the patience to search and filter the literature yourself. It is a fundamental skill that you must have. It’s slow and sometimes frustrating, especially at the start, but you’ll get better and better at filtering through the literature to find the best and most relevant sources as your knowledge grows.

Coming up in part 2: How to write you literature review

In part 2 I’ll talk about how to turn your knowledge of the literature into a written literature review. But if you have any questions about this video please leave a comment below, because I have skipped over some points quite quickly, and if you’d like to know when I publish part 2, please subscribe to email updates so I can let you know directly when it’s available.

And if you’ve found this video useful, please take a moment to share it with somebody who needs it.

The best literature review the world has ever seen

This video on the same topic by Writer Science

I stole the AI-as-an-intern analogy from Kevin Kelly in his interview on the Tim Ferris podcast ↩︎
Google scholar was launched in November 2004 , just over a year after I started my PhD. I mostly used Web of Knowledge throughout my PhD (launched in 1997) ↩︎
L. T. Canham. Silicon quantum wire array fabrication by electrochemical and chemical dissolution of wafers. Applied Physics Letters, 57(10):1046–1048, 1990 (Cited over 7000 times as of August 2024) ↩︎

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PhD: An uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life

By james hayton (2015).

PhD: an uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life is your essential guide to the basic principles every PhD student needs to know.

Applicable to virtually any field of study, it covers everything from finding a research topic, getting to grips with the literature, planning and executing research and coping with the inevitable problems that arise, through to writing, submitting and successfully defending your thesis.

Useful links

About james hayton, phd, latest phd tips, phd coaching.

AI-free zone

All the text on this site (and every word of every video script) is written by me, personally, because I enjoy writing. I enjoy the challenges of thinking deeply and finding the right words to express my ideas. I do not advocate for the use of AI in academic research and writing, except for very limited use cases.

Why you shouldn't rely on AI for PhD research and writing

The false promise of AI for PhD research

Everything you wanted to know about structuring your PhD but were too afraid to ask

Jan 18, 2021

Have you checked out the rest of The PhD Knowledge Base ? It’s home to hundreds more free resources and guides, written especially for PhD students.

Understanding how to structure a PhD thesis can seem like a dark, mysterious art. Yet it needn’t be. Behind each PhD is a fairly predictable and tried-and-tested structure. You start by introducing the thesis, then you lay the foundations, then you get down to business, then you discuss what you’ve found and tie it all together.

Or, put differently, we can say that a PhD is made up of four distinct sections:

Introduction

In this post, I want to explain what they are, how they relate, and why thinking about your thesis in this way can help you as you plan, structure, and write it.

Hello, Doctor…

Sounds good, doesn’t it? Be able to call yourself Doctor sooner with our five-star rated How to Write A PhD email-course. Learn everything your supervisor should have taught you about planning and completing a PhD.

Now half price. Join hundreds of other students and become a better thesis writer, or your money back.

1. The introduction stage

2. the foundation stage, 3. the core stage, 4. the synthesis stage.

Your PhD thesis. All on one page.

Use our free PhD structure template to quickly visualise every element of your thesis.

How the four sections relate to one another

Acknowledgements
Literature review
Theoretical framework
Methodology
Empirical chapters
Discussion chapters

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Admission Steps

English and literary arts - creative writing - phd, admission requirements.

Terms and Deadlines

Degree and GPA Requirements

Additional Standards for Non-Native English Speakers

Additional standards for international applicants.

For the 2025-2026 academic year

See 2024-2025 requirements instead

Fall 2025 quarter (beginning in September)

Final submission deadline: December 16, 2024

Final submission deadline: Applicants cannot submit applications after the final submission deadline.

Degrees and GPA Requirements

Bachelors degree: All graduate applicants must hold an earned baccalaureate from a regionally accredited college or university or the recognized equivalent from an international institution.

Masters degree: This program requires a masters degree as well as the baccalaureate.

University GPA requirement: The minimum grade point average for admission consideration for graduate study at the University of Denver must meet one of the following criteria:

A cumulative 2.5 on a 4.0 scale for the baccalaureate degree.

A cumulative 2.5 on a 4.0 scale for the last 60 semester credits or 90 quarter credits (approximately two years of work) for the baccalaureate degree.

An earned master’s degree or higher from a regionally accredited institution or the recognized equivalent from an international institution supersedes the minimum GPA requirement for the baccalaureate.

A cumulative GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale for all graduate coursework completed for applicants who have not earned a master’s degree or higher.

Official scores from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), International English Language Testing System (IELTS), C1 Advanced or Duolingo English Test are required of all graduate applicants, regardless of citizenship status, whose native language is not English or who have been educated in countries where English is not the native language. Your TOEFL/IELTS/C1 Advanced/Duolingo English Test scores are valid for two years from the test date.

The minimum TOEFL/IELTS/C1 Advanced/Duolingo English Test score requirements for this degree program are:

Minimum TOEFL Score (Internet-based test): 80

Minimum IELTS Score: 6.5

Minimum C1 Advanced Score: 176

Minimum Duolingo English Test Score: 115

Additional Information:

Read the English Language Proficiency policy for more details.

Read the Required Tests for GTA Eligibility policy for more details.

Per Student & Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) regulation, international applicants must meet all standards for admission before an I-20 or DS-2019 is issued, [per U.S. Federal Register: 8 CFR § 214.3(k)] or is academically eligible for admission and is admitted [per 22 C.F.R. §62]. Read the Additional Standards For International Applicants policy for more details.

Application Materials

Transcripts, letters of recommendation.

Required Essays and Statements

Writing Sample

We require a scanned copy of your transcripts from every college or university you have attended. Scanned copies must be clearly legible and sized to print on standard 8½-by-11-inch paper. Transcripts that do not show degrees awarded must also be accompanied by a scanned copy of the diploma or degree certificate. If your academic transcripts were issued in a language other than English, both the original documents and certified English translations are required.

Transcripts and proof of degree documents for postsecondary degrees earned from institutions outside of the United States will be released to a third-party international credential evaluator to assess U.S. education system equivalencies. Beginning July 2023, a non-refundable fee for this service will be required before the application is processed.

Upon admission to the University of Denver, official transcripts will be required from each institution attended.

Three (3) letters of recommendation are required. Academic recommendations preferred. Letters should be submitted by recommenders through the online application.

Essays and Statements

Essay instructions.

Applicants should submit a sample of critical prose (e.g., a seminar paper, scholarly publication, or excerpt from thesis or other longer work demonstrating familiarity with the conventions of academic research and writing) not to exceed 20 pages.

Personal Statement Instructions

Personal statements should be 2 pages maximum and should address the applicant's past academic experience, future scholarly goals, and their suitability for graduate study and research in our program.

Résumé Instructions

The résumé (or C.V.) should minimally include the applicant's educational history, work experience, academic experience (including research opportunities or presentations), selected publications, and/or volunteer work.

Writing Sample Instructions

Applicants must submit representative samples of creative work (for Prose, no more than 30 pages; for Poetry, 5 - 10 poems).

Start the Application

Online Application

Financial Aid Information

Start your application.

Your submitted materials will be reviewed once all materials and application fees have been received.

Our program can only consider your application for admission if our Office of Graduate Education has received all your online materials and supplemental materials by our application deadline.

Application Fee: $65.00 Application Fee

International Degree Evaluation Fee: $50.00 Evaluation Fee for degrees (bachelor's or higher) earned from institutions outside the United States.

Applicants should complete their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) by February 15. Visit the Office of Financial Aid for additional information.

COMMENTS

Should I Write Ph.D. or PhD? (Complete Guide)
A PhD is something you have. You work towards it, and once you've handed in all of your papers, you get a PhD. A PhD is also something you are. If you have a PhD, you might say "I'm a PhD." It can also be a title, similar to "Sir" or "OBE". If your name is James Smith, and you are PhD, your name and title could be, Mr James ...
How to use the PhD title and all the little doctorate "rules"... use ph
When writing a name with a PhD after it, the correct way to do so is to use "PhD" or "Ph.D. or Ph D" Depending on the preference of the individual, either form can be used. However, if the individual has a business card that states their degree in full, then the more formal "Doctor of Philosophy" should be used.
abbreviations
49. Actually both are correct. I could easily find both on my NOAD, and there are plenty of pages on the net where you find it written as "PhD". The OALD gives an interesting distinction, stating that Ph.D. is especially North American English. Now, being a non-native speaker, I can only rely on official sources to state who uses what, but ...
How to Correctly Use the Titles Dr. & PhD With a Name
Addressing a Doctor in Writing. Place the title of "Dr." before the name of a person who is a doctor of medicine or psychology, doctor of dentistry, or doctor of veterinary medicine. For example Dr. George Ross. Always write the word "doctor" in its abbreviated form when it goes before the person's name. Never write, for example ...
Is it correct for a PhD holder to sign as "Dr. J. Doe, PhD"?
12. There are two important points to note about name markers that refer to academic titles: You can have more than one of these markers in your name: Kay Doe, PhD, MD indicates a person who is both a doctor of philosophy and a doctor of medicine. The marker Dr. can very often be used as a variant of the post-positioned markers.
PhD or Ph.D? Which is correct?
Vocabulary / By Conor. PhD and Ph.D are both correct ways to indicate the title, or honorific, of a doctor. However, Ph.D isn't nearly as common as PhD. In fact, Ph.D is an old-fashioned method of writing it. But, there's nothing wrong with using it that way. However, it's more visually correct and recognizable in the modern world as PhD.
How To Write PhD? Is it ph d or phd
Firstly, "P" must be in a capital case. Secondly, "h" is in small case with no space after "P". Thirdly, use period/full-stop after "h". Fourthly, Write "D" in capital case. Fifthly, keep Period after "D". Finally, the correct way to write is Ph.D. Or, It can be also written as PhD in a sentence. As per APA style, write Ph.
How to write a PhD: A template
Our PhD Knowledge Base is growing and we have a number of posts that can help you as you fill out the template. 1. Writing your aims & objectives. 2. Writing your abstract. 3. Writing your introduction. 4. Conducting/writing a literature review.
10 tips for writing a PhD thesis
Writing up a PhD can often take place in a frenzy of activity in the last few months of your degree study, after years of hard work. But there are some steps that you can take to increase your chances of success. ... Look out for common errors such as dangling modifiers, subject-verb disagreement and inconsistency. If you are too involved with ...
Tips for writing a PhD dissertation: FAQs answered
A PhD thesis (or dissertation) is typically 60,000 to 120,000 words ( 100 to 300 pages in length) organised into chapters, divisions and subdivisions (with roughly 10,000 words per chapter) - from introduction (with clear aims and objectives) to conclusion. The structure of a dissertation will vary depending on discipline (humanities, social ...
How to plan, structure and write your PhD
A Template To Help You Structure Your PhD's Theoretical Framework Chapter. In this guide, I explain how to use the theory framework template. The focus is on the practical things to consider when you're working with the template and how you can give your theory framework the rockstar treatment. Use our free tools, guides and templates to ...
How to Write PhD
Here are the steps to write PhD correctly: Firstly, "P" must be in a capital case. Secondly, "h" is in small case with no space after "P". Thirdly, use period/full-stop after "h". Fourthly, Write "D" in capital case. Fifthly, keep Period after "D". Finally, the correct way to write is Ph.D.
5 Tips for Writing Your Ph.D. Dissertation
Semester 1 — Acquaint yourself with your school's resources, databases, and libraries. Semester 2 — Begin looking at topics that interest you and reading the relevant literature. Semester 3 — Continue with your review of the literature, while you search for and choose a dissertation topic. Semester 4 — Search for and choose an advisor ...
How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more)
First time to the site? Start here The blog now has a podcast attached! For now this is audio of some of the posts, but more interactive conversations with other scholars and writers are in development! Stay tuned... From the blog If you want new posts straight to your inbox, sign up here: About Me…
Mastering Your Ph.D.: Writing Your Doctoral Thesis With Style
Most importantly, while writing your thesis, be sure to take care of yourself. Eat well, exercise, and get plenty of sleep so you're at your best when you sit down every day to write. This is the home stretch of your Ph.D., and you want to make sure you cross the finish line energized and ready for the next step.
Top Tips for Academic Writing from PhD Candidates
Remember that academic writing is not about sounding a certain way, but about expressing your ideas clearly. Being concise, for me, is the essential first step to good academic writing. P.S.: Don't forget to proofread your work.". Academic writing is always a work in progress, and your style and voice will develop and evolve throughout your ...
Eight Collections of Free PhD Writing Advice
Using this free PhD writing template, you can quickly visualise every element of your thesis. View collection. Explore our back-catalogue of motivational advice. Each week we send out a short, motivational email to over 20,000 students. Here you can sign up and access the archive.
How to Write Up a Ph.D. Dissertation
make the notation, terminology, and style consistent throughout. do keep good ideas, text, and results from your previous papers (giving credit to any co-authors) expand the text. make the text clearer, more tutorial, and more thoughtful. add more examples and intuitions to help the reader.
writing from the PhD part one
Another way to think about writing from the PhD is to say that you now need to focus on what your peers want to read and will be interested in, rather than what you wanted to research and write about. ... It has a load of useful advice and exercises you can do to find out where and how to write from the PhD. Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash ...
A Happy PhD
Step 1. Define the main idea. Once you decide you want to write a paper, start with a blank piece of paper (e.g., a post-it), or a new document in your computer. Do not start from the full report of your study 4, or other random pieces of text you may have written during your research about the topic. Blank paper.
PhD Dissertation Outline: Structure and Format
A PhD dissertation outline is vital to write your thesis systematically. When you do your PhD, outlines make the task of writing the thesis easier and more productive. So, check out these quick and useful tips to create a strong PhD dissertation structure.
PhD, Ph.D., Dr.
PhD, Ph.D., Dr. In English, PhD can be written with or without periods; both are correct. The trend today is to drop periods with abbreviations of academic degrees. However, many sources, including the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, still recommend the use of periods: Ph.D.. When you are addressing a person with a doctoral degree, it is considered more polite to use the title Dr. or the academic ...
PhD FAQs
Check out the full post I've written: Do PhD Students Have a Social Life? Sharing My Experiences Making Friends and Avoiding PhD Loneliness. ... At the time of writing, most PhD students in the UK get around £16,000 a year. Doesn't sound like a lot, but: As mentioned above, you don't pay income tax, national insurance, council tax or ...
How to write a PhD literature review WITHOUT using AI (Part 1)
PhD: An uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life By James Hayton (2015) PhD: an uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life is your essential guide to the basic principles every PhD student needs to know. Applicable to virtually any field of study, it covers everything from finding a research topic, getting to grips with the literature, planning and executing research and coping with ...
Everything you wanted to know about structuring your PhD but were too
The challenge in planning and then writing a PhD is knowing what goes where in the first place and getting things in the right order when you plan and write chapters. ... or you need any other support as you write your thesis, check out our one-on-one PhD coaching. It's like having a personal trainer, but for your PhD. Share this: Tweet ...
English and Literary Arts
Degrees and GPA Requirements Bachelors degree: All graduate applicants must hold an earned baccalaureate from a regionally accredited college or university or the recognized equivalent from an international institution. Masters degree: This program requires a masters degree as well as the baccalaureate. University GPA requirement: The minimum grade point average for admission consideration for ...

Should I Write Ph.D. or PhD? (Complete Guide)

Should I Write Ph.D. Or PhD?

What Does Ph.D. Or PhD Stand For?

Why Americans And Brits Disagree On Ph.D. Or PhD

Why Ph.D. Or PhD Is A Bit Strange

Where Does The Word “Doctor” Come From?

How To Get A Ph.D. Or PhD

What Kind Of Word Is Ph.D. Or PhD?

How To Address Someone With A Ph.D. Or PhD

Ph.D. Or PhD Vs Doctorate

How to use the PhD title and all the little doctorate “rules”… use ph.d etc the correct way.

How do you Write PhD correctly after a name? Is it ph d or phd and ph.d? Abbreviation explained

Should you use Dr as well as PhD?

What is the proper title for a PhD with a doctorate degree?

When can you start to use your PhD title after your doctorate? As a PhD student? After your phd thesis?

What is the correct way to write PhD?

How do you put a PhD in a title?

Should the font size of Ph.D. be the same as someone’s name?

Wrapping up – doctoral title rules

Frequently Asked Questions about using PhD or Ph.d

2. Is Ph.d the same as PhD?

3. Can I use the title ‘Doctor’ with a PhD?

4. What is the correct way to write PhD?

5. How do I abbreviate Doctor of Philosophy?

6. Can I use both the title ‘Dr.’ and ‘PhD’ together?

7. What is a dissertation in relation to a PhD?

8. Who is considered a PhD candidate?

9. Is a PhD also referred to as a Doctorate?

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