General Essay and Dissertation Tips

These tips & comments are in no particular order...

Make sure you have a read of my statement bank.
If you are going to introduce detailed comments about your own country - then make sure you go away & do some reading & research on it first. You may well find that what you believed to be true, is not the case.
Your own experiences may not be representative, so be careful of how you use them in discussion in an essay or dissertation.
Make sure you re-read any tips on referencing, style, etc. given to you previously before writing the essay or dissertation. Then re-read them again before submitting the final version.
Regarding interviews; my view is that unless you get a lot, they tend to be unrepresentative. I always suggest using interviews to help provide information for yourself and to stimulate ideas (conversations may take you down a route that you had not previously considered). Interviews are likely to provide little more than some useful soundbites to add colour to the dissertation (rather than as the key part of the essay/dissertation itself).

For dissertations (and books) I find that there are certain routine things that should be done each time. This method may not work for everyone, but it works for me.

Keep the latest version of your work in a separate folder. Create a new folder for updated versions. Do not keep over-writing older versions, there may be information which you delete at some stage, but later decide to include.
Call your file names '00-Title page.doc', '01-Abstract.doc', etc. This way it is easier to check everything is in the correct order when it comes to numbering pages, etc.
There are certain files you will always need...

00-Title page; this one page document should just have the title of the work and your name on it.
01-Abstract; this should include a 300 word (approx) summary of the work.
02-Dedication; if you are making one, this is where to put it.
03-Contents; the table of contents - just the chapter headings (no need for sub-headings normally), appendicies, etc.
04-Figures and Tables; if you have figures (graphs, pictures, photos, etc.) or tables, then they should be listed separately from the main chapter table of contents.
05-Notes on Style; there are various things you may want to include here. For example, the convention you are using regarding the ordering of names, use of macrons, translations, names of organizations, exchange rates used, etc. If you are using anything other than British or American English you may also want to make this clear. As far as I am aware nobody will sue you for using text taken from another book's 'Notes on Style' (I certainly won't take any action if you want to copy the words from the 'Notes on Style' section of my books) - the format tends to be fairly similar, so use this as a base. After that... just remember to be consistent with your notes on style.
06-Acknowledgements; list the people and organizations that have helped you. I usually add a bit of information about the study itself - in terms of how I conducted it - here, so as to put the names in to context.
07 onwards will be your chapters
After the chapters you will have (numbered separately), Appendicies, Glossary & Abbrevations, Notes (if not done at the end of each chapter), Bibliography, and possibly an Index.

When you come to number pages, usually you will number using Roman numerals for files 03 onwards (ie, the Contents list starts on page i), Page 1 will be the first page of file 07-Chapter1.
As I find useful information or have ideas about particular parts of the work I put this into files which shadow the main chapters. For example, I will have 'xx-Chapter1' and 'xx-Chapter2'. This way I can keep track of which chapters need work on them and make sure that relevant information to a particular chapter can be found quickly when I write the chapter proper.
Put a summary of what you intend to put in a chapter at the start of the chapter and at the start of the shadow file. This helps boost the word count when you are starting out and gets rid of the problem of what to do with a blank screen when you start writing.
Keep a track of how many words you have written. Excel is good at this. Keep track of the number of words in both the proper file and the shadow file. It is probable that at some point your total will go over the word limit while you still have words in the shadow files. At this point you will have to change from merely increasing the quantity of words to improving quality as anything taken from the shadow file will mean that something else has to come out or be tightened up in the main file.
As you get to the point where you have to take words out, or when you find information in the shadow file which you no longer think you will use, put these words, sentences or paragraphs in a 'dump file'. It is better to do this than delete it altogether, as you may yet discover that you need this information after all (whether it be for this work or another one).

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