Setting up systems

Making early decisions about how you will plan, manage and record the various elements of your research and writing will save you time and frustration later. These can be modified if necessary, but giving some thought to issues of project management at the outset is important.

Some things to think about

How will you plan your week around your research, writing and personal commitments? Do you need some kind of weekly or monthly planner? Do you want to tentatively map out your whole research project, including milestones, at the outset?
What mechanisms do you need to use for managing and securing your research data?
Will you need ethics approval? Do you know the requirements here?
How will you organise and keep track of the literature and other secondary research materials that you will be using?
What kind of notetaking systems will you be using?
How will you be managing your references? It is important to set up reference management systems, such as EndNote, at the beginning of your candidature.
Do you need to keep records about supervisory meetings?
Where and how will you keep records of training sessions and professional development?

Workshop resource:

Setting up your own style sheet

A personalised style sheet can be a useful thing to set up in the early stages of your writing. This is simply a record of the stylistic choices you will use to ensure consistency throughout your thesis. It helps you remember the decisions you have made about the small details of style that you will be using.

While many of these decisions will be determined by the referencing system you are using, making early decisions about small stylistic details can save you a lot of time when it comes to editing later in your thesis.

Tips

Pick out key formatting issues for the specific types of references and citations you will use most often and keep them in a prominent position. This will save you time when checking for accuracy, even if you are using a reference management system, such as EndNote (these can make mistakes and need to be checked).
Record how you will use things such as hyphens, when you will capitalise, key points of punctuation, when you stop spelling out numbers, whether abbreviations have plurals or not, key acronyms in your discipline, etc.

e.g.

Use hyphens for	pre-existing, pre-nuptial, ante-natal, etc.
Capitalise all key words in titles	The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, her Lover
Use Em dashes without spaces	—
Spell numbers from one to ten, then use numeric	One, two, three...11, 156, 5973

Setting up a writing routine

Writing is hard, and academic writing has its own set of challenges. One of the best ways to become more confident with your writing is to practise very regularly – every day if possible. It doesn’t matter what you are writing, but developing a regular routine, even if it is only 10 minutes per day, will help oil your writing skills.