Perhaps I am not the most likely person to start a page on how to write a thesis. I am not a native speaker and I am not an expert in English grammar or spelling. However, as an academic, I regularly submit papers written in English to academic journals. I also supervise lots of theses for our Bachelor and Master’s programs. Despite being not an expert, I write a lot and also provide a lot of feedback.
One of the difficult things about writing is that nobody really wants to spend a lot of time beforehand on learning the art of writing. So many just get started, write a first text, getting feedback and improve and try to learn from mistakes. The purpose of this website is to facilitate this process. By doing so, I assume that most writers know about grammar and spelling.
On this website, I have created several blog entries about writing a thesis. The blogs are about issues that I repeatedly discus with student when giving feedback. The blog entries are structured as follows:
- Explain the important principles in writing:
- the writing style of economics
- how to structure a thesis
- writing sentences
- Explain specific elements of a thesis:
- accronyms and abbreviations
- referencing
- tables (for empirical theses)
- numbers
- equations.
- Feedback and annotations
Auke Plantinga 