 Click to edit Master text styles
 Second level
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Third level
 Fourth level
 Fifth level
Sucha Smanchat, PhD
sucha.smanchat@acm.org
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This manual is written based on the experience of the
author in writing PhD thesis, master theses, and several
academic publications in computer science and information
technology domains. It only serves as a guideline, not as a
set of rules to be followed. Also, it might not be suitable for
publications or theses in other domains due to the different
nature of research methodologies.
Sucha Smanchat, PhD
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 You must first recognize that academic writing is different
from general and business writing
 In ascending order of expected strength
 Research proposal
 Workshop paper
 Conference paper
 Academic journal
 Thesis
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 Introduction
 Related work
 Objectives
 Scope
 Research questions (if any)
 Methodology
 Timeframe (Gantt chart format is not really necessary)
 Contribution or outcome
 References
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 Introduction and research objective
 Related work (can also be placed before conclusion)
 Scope - not a section, usually stated in related sections
 Research questions (if necessary)
 Methodology (do NOT use the word “Methodology” as
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section title)
Timeframe
Experiment and result
Conclusion and future work
References
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 Chapter 1: Introduction
 Introduction of chapter 1 (not a section)
 Research context (try not to use this title): a summary of
major literature review leading to research objectives
 Research objectives
 Research scope
 Research questions
 Thesis structure
 Chapter summary
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Summarize the chapter and link to chapter 2
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 Chapter 2: Literature review (do NOT use “Literature
Review” as chapter title)
 Introduction of chapter 2 (not a section)
 Continue with the review of each topic going from broader
topics to more specific topics
 Conclusion and discussion (may also act as chapter
summary)
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Identify gap
Repeat the statement of research objectives
Link to chapter 3
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 Chapter 3: Methodology (do NOT use the word as title)
 Introduction of chapter 3 (not a section)
 Explain your work in logical order
 Begin with basic concept or overview then go into detail
 Your work can span multiple chapters! For example,
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Chapter 3 for theoretical concept
Chapter 4 for specific detail / extension
Chapter 5 for technical implementation
 Chapter summary
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Summarize your work and link to the experiment and evaluation
in the next chapter
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 Chapter 4: Evaluation (name the chapter accordingly)
 Introduction of chapter 4 (not a section)
 Explain the evaluation of your work. This depends on your
field of research
 Always discuss the results
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In each section or at the end of chapter, use your judgment
 Chapter summary
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Summarize your result and link to the final chapter
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 Chapter 5: Conclusion (name the chapter accordingly)
 Short introduction of chapter 5 (not a section)
 Research contribution
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Summarize your research contribution in response to research
objectives. Then generalize your contribution.
 Future work
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Further conceptual work, not trying to solve trivia obstacles
 Do NOT actively discuss your result in this chapter; it should
be in the previous chapter
 Page count should not exceed 5-10 pages for PhD, 4-5
pages for Master; otherwise it is not a conclusion.
 End the thesis with a punch line
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 The outline of the thesis / paper, defining theme
 The hardest part (perhaps of the whole thesis) is the
introduction of chapter 1
 Summary of research context, motivation, objective, and
probably a short description of your solution
 Use generic words, technical terms should NOT appear here
 An advertisement of your work
 Research objective
 What you want to do, not how to do it and not too detailed
 NOT what you must do anyway
 Do not put the evaluation of your work as an objective
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 Research questions
 The problems that need to be addressed.
 Clarifying the research questions help planning your
research and identifying your research contribution.
 Research hypotheses
 Research hypotheses are optional, depending on your field
of study
 They are common in social research, but less common in
computer science areas
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 Research scope
 What is and is not included in your work
 Use this section to make assumptions regarding what you
are not concerned with
 Scope must not be too small or too large, consult your
supervisor
 Save yourself from examiner panel
 Hardware specification is not necessarily a part of research
scope, unless you work actively involve hardware.
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 Background technologies and existing work related to
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your research
Begin with general concept then narrow it down
Identify 5W 1H of each literature and discuss it in relation
to your work. Do not include any unrelated literature.
Most often, each literature (paper) will be presented one
by one, which is acceptable but is not an ideal way of
writing.
Ideally, concepts, comparison, and discussion criteria
should be identified. Then explain literature based on
them.
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 In the end, all the reviews should lead to the research gap
or problem that your research is supposed to address or
solve
 A discussion section is useful for this purpose.
 A table summarizing the criteria / problems that the
reviewed literature address is useful for identifying gap
 Repeat your research objectives at the end of the chapter
to keep readers on track
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 The other chapters depend on your research. You may
follow the academic writing guideline in this slide or your
own style.
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 Write as if you are an average person reading your work
 A thesis should be necessarily self-contained. Readers
should not often have to go elsewhere to find necessary
information to understand your work
 For conference / journal paper, you can assume smarter
readers being in your research field
 Arrange the flow of your thesis like writing a novel
 Broad to narrow - easy to difficult
 Begin lightly, introduce characters (concepts), character
development (interactions / timeline of concepts), go into
climax, and an ending (or lead to a new chapter)
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 Usually, if not always, begin with an introduction
 Chapter introduction - longer
 Section introduction - shorter
 Even paragraph introduction – a couple of sentences
 Give an overview of what the reader is going to see
before going into detail
 End with a summary
 A summary section for a chapter
 A summary paragraph for a section
 A sentence at the end of paragraph as necessary
 A monotone thesis is a boring book
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 Plan your thesis writing by first listing all the sections and
arrange them in logical order forming the structure of
your thesis.
 Discuss with your supervisor if your thesis structure.
 A good way is to have all the section titles in place in your
thesis (preferably with proper heading style formatting to
automatically generate a table of content).
 Once the section titles are set, the rest is just filling in the
(big) blanks 
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 Depend on your institution, your field of study, your data
and your research
 No exact answer
 A thesis is finished when it is finished, with every
essential detail and nothing more to write.
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 A paragraph should not exceed 10-12 lines. Otherwise,
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the reader would get lost in the sea of words.
A paragraph of proper size should convey just sufficient
content. Start a new paragraph if another content is to be
presented.
A paragraph should not have only one sentence.
A sentence should not be longer than three lines.
No one appreciates a long sentence with more than 2
conjunctions (e.g. “which” and “that”).
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 Do not use spoken language in academic writing
 Except where you need to quote
 Be objective when writing
 Your own opinion should be clearly separated
 Do not over-claim something without proof
 Identify clearly what is not yours – avoid plagiarism
 Do not write weak sentence
 The pitfall is the language used in general/business writing
 Avoid glorification wording
 Ideally, everything you write must be justifiable.
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 Do not use contraction, spell the full words instead
 “don’t” -> “do not” , “gonna” -> “going to”
 “isn’t” -> “is not” , “we’ve” -> “we have”
 “ain’t” -> ???
 Avoid “etc.”
 Do not use the word “essentially” when you do not really
mean it.
 There is a difference between “such as” and “including”
when providing a list of items.
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 Spell out numbers, except for big number and those
intended for calculation e.g.
 Three categories of data
 The experiment is repeated five times.
 There are 128 samples used in the test.
 The room temperature is 25 degree Celcius
 Know the difference between
 “e.g.” = exempli gratia = “for example”
 “i.e.” = id est = “that is”
 Use judgment whether to use a bracket
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 Note the difference between “which” and “that”
 “which”
 Use “which” when describing the term preceding it.
 The term should be independent of the phrase after
“which” (i.e. deleting the phrase should not affect the main
sentence. A comma is usually necessary.
 “that”
 Use “that” when it is necessary to describe the term
preceding it.
 The term itself would not be understood without the
phrase after “that”.
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 Note the difference between “because”, “since”, and “as”.
They all can be used for providing reasons but:
 “because” is specifically for giving reason
 “since” also has a sense of time
 “as” also has a sense of things happening at the same time
 If it could be ambiguous, use “because”
 Some usual words are not academic language, e.g.,
 “steal” VS “misappropriation”
 “enough” VS “sufficient”
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 Avoid vague words: “someone”, “somebody”, “very”
 Avoid personified words: “I”, “you”, “my”, “your”
 Use passive form instead
 Use “we” or “our” to emphasize your own work, but not
too often
 Do not use strong words without sufficient support
 “must” -> “may”
 “problem” -> “issue”, “hindrance”, “consideration”
 “best”, “worst”
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 Write concise sentences. Redundant words usually
confuse readers.
 Advanced tip: avoid “there is” and “there are” if possible
 Note for Thais: Thai writing is usually redundant so you
have to adjust your thought when writing in English.
 Order the phrases in a sentence so that the part you want
to emphasize comes first to make it stand out.
 Microsoft Word has a hotkey to find synonyms of a
selected word. Try Shift-F7 after highlighting a word. This
helps avoid repeating the same word too often.
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 Using sections
 Make a section when it is a necessity
 Do not use deep subsection. In most cases, you should not
need to go below the 4th level (e.g. 1.1.1.1)
 Use paragraphs instead of small subsections and link them
nicely to form the flow. This demonstrates your writing skill.
 Understand your work and how your content link together!
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 Using sections
 DO NOT write after a section title! Title is title. Do not mix it
with a paragraph. Start a new paragraph under the title.
 If you do use section title as the beginning of a paragraph,
then it is a paragraph and should not be made a section.
 There should not be only one subsection in a section (or
only one section in a chapter).
 A subsection should not start right after the main section
title. At least you need to explain what the section is about.
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 Using abbreviations and jargons (technical terms)
 The full form of an abbreviation should be written first
before subsequent uses of the abbreviation.
 Jargons should be defined at least at the first appearance in
the thesis.
 Sometimes it helps to repeat the full form of an
abbreviation in a later chapter to help remind readers
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 Using bullet points
 Avoid using bullet points
 Bullet points can cause discontinuity of the flow
 Only use bullet when absolutely necessary, e.g.
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Stating research objectives (it is still possible to write research
objectives in a paragraph)
Stating research questions
 Do not use bullet points to list the sections in a chapter
 If it is possible to rearrange bullet points into a paragraph
and link them together to form a flow, do it!
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 It is often suggested to write what comes to mind quickly
so your thought is not interrupted by grammar
 But make sure you come back to correct any error and
rearrange the content to fit the flow
 Beginner should start with simple sentences before
advancing to complex sentences.
 There are more than one way to convey the same content
or idea.
 If a sentence becomes too complex, try explaining it from a
different point of view. It could be easier.
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 Write your thesis in a way that it can be extracted into
good journal papers
 Read your sentences out loud after the writing
 Leave your work for a few days then read it again.
 Or ask your friend to review it.
 Give a name to your work?
 No advice, just be creative
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 You cannot be a good writer without having enough
experience. So write a lot!
 Also read a lot. You will see a lot of good writing in (highquality) research papers.
 Students use some excuses like “it has been done like this
before” or “my senior did it like this” a lot. Don’t trust
them entirely! They could be wrong!
 A thesis is only once in a lifetime (especially a PhD one) so
you should be satisfied with nothing but a perfect thesis.
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The preparation of this manual is based on experience obtained
throughout many years of study and research. During those years,
the author had received many good comments (many of which also
appear in this manual) from his supervisors, who had to endure the
poor writing when the author started out a master thesis. The
author would like to thanks his supervisors, whose names are
omitted for privacy, for their great supervision.
The credit for the making of this manual also goes to Dr. Minh Dinh
for additional comments and suggestions.
Sucha Smanchat, PhD
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 Write your own biography in academic language
 Hint: do not begin with “My name is …”
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