How to write a thesis

How to write a thesis

Umberto Eco

Book - 2015

"Eco's approach is anything but dry and academic. He not only offers practical advice but also considers larger questions about the value of the thesis-writing exercise. How to Write a Thesis is unlike any other writing manual. It reads like a novel. It is opinionated. It is frequently irreverent, sometimes polemical, and often hilarious. Eco advises students how to avoid "thesis neurosis" and he answers the important question "Must You Read Books?" He reminds students "You are not Proust" and "Write everything that comes into your head, but only in the first draft." Of course, there was no Internet in 1977, but Eco's index card research system offers important lessons about critical th...inking and information curating for students of today who may be burdened by Big Data." -- Publisher's description.

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Subjects
Dissertations, Academic.
Published
Cambridge, Massachusetts : MIT Press [2015]
Language
English
Italian
Main Author
Umberto Eco (-)
Other Authors
Caterina Mongiat Farina (translator), Geoff Farina
Physical Description
xxvi, 229 pages ; 21 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN
9780262527132
  • Foreword
  • Translators' Foreword
  • Introduction to the Original 1977 Edition
  • Introduction to the 1985 Edition
  • 1. The Definition and Purpose of the Thesis
  • 1.1. What Is a Thesis, and Why Is It Required?
  • 1.2. For Whom Is This Book Written?
  • 1.3. The Usefulness of a Thesis after Graduation
  • 1.4. Four Obvious Rules for Choosing a Thesis Topic
  • 2. Choosing the Topic
  • 2.1. Monograph or Survey?
  • 2.2. Historical or Theoretical?
  • 2.3. Ancient or Contemporary?
  • 2.4. How Long Does It Take to Write a Thesis?
  • 2.5. Is It Necessary to Know Foreign Languages?
  • 2.6. "Scientific" or Political?
  • 2.6.1. What Does It Mean to Be Scientific?
  • 2.6.2. Writing about Direct Social Experience
  • 2.6.3. Treating a "Journalistic" Topic with Scientific Accuracy
  • 2.7. How to Avoid Being Exploited by Your Advisor
  • 3. Conducting Research
  • 3.1. The Availability of Primary and Secondary Sources
  • 3.1.1. What Are the Sources of a Scientific Work?
  • 3.1.2. Direct and Indirect Sources
  • 3.2. Bibliographical Research
  • 3.2.1. How to Use the Library
  • 3.2.2. Managing Your Sources with the Bibliographical Index Card File
  • 3.2.3. Documentation Guidelines
  • 3.2.4. An Experiment in the Library of Alessandria
  • 3.2.5. Must You Read Books? If So, What Should You Read First?
  • 4. The Work Plan and the Index Cards
  • 4.1. The Table of Contents as a Working Hypothesis
  • 4.2. Index Cards and Notes
  • 4.2.1. Various Types of Index Cards and Their Purpose
  • 4.2.2. Organizing the Primary Sources
  • 4.2.3. The Importance of Readings Index Cards
  • 4.2.4. Academic Humility
  • 5. Writing the Thesis
  • 5.1. The Audience
  • 5.2. How to Write
  • 5.3. Quotations
  • 5.3.1. When and How to Quote: 10 Rules
  • 5.3.2. Quotes, Paraphrases, and Plagiarism
  • 5.4. Footnotes
  • 5.4.1. The Purpose of Footnotes
  • 5.4.2. The Notes and Bibliography System
  • 5.4.3. The Author-Date System
  • 5.5. Instructions, Traps, and Conventions
  • 5.6. Academic Pride
  • 6. The Final Draft
  • 6.1. Formatting the Thesis
  • 6.1.1. Margins and Spaces
  • 6.1.2. Underlining and Capitalizing
  • 6.1.3. Sections
  • 6.1.4. Quotation Marks and Other Signs
  • 6.1.5. Transliterations and Diacritics
  • 6.1.6. Punctuation, Foreign Accents, and Abbreviations
  • 6.1.7. Some Miscellaneous Advice
  • 6.2. The Final Bibliography
  • 6.3. The Appendices
  • 6.4. The Table of Contents
  • 7. Conclusions
  • Notes
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Although first published in Italian in 1977, before Eco (The Name of the Rose) became an internationally renowned novelist, this guide to writing a thesis-originally aimed at Italian humanities undergraduates-brims with practical advice useful for writing research papers. Stating up front that "the topic is secondary to the research method and the actual experience of writing a thesis," Eco walks the reader through the process of starting and completing a thesis, including selecting a topic, conducting research from primary and secondary sources, compiling a reference bibliography, and drafting and revising the final paper. He doles out his dollops of advice in chapters whose numbered sections and subsections themselves approximate the structure of a thesis, and he often enlivens his potentially dry subject matter with impish humor-for example, Eco describes photocopies that students make but fail to read as "a neocapitalism of information." His advocacy of index card files to organize data seems quaintly nostalgic in the age of laptops and online databases, but it only underscores the importance of applying these more sophisticated tools to achieve the thoroughness of the results that he advocates. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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