Customer Reviews

How to Write a Thesis 4E (How to Write a Thesis, 4th ed)

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The title of this book, "How to Write a Thesis," is so mislabeled, I think it's downright criminal. Rather than being about thesis writing, this book instructs the undergraduate how to write a research or term paper. Chapter One's title is, in fact, "So You Have a Research Paper to Write." I bought this to help me with a Master's thesis. That was a very bad mistake.

I don't even see much use for the undergraduate in this book. The good portion of the text is devoted to formatting. And, I seriously doubt any good professor would allow someone to format their paper from this.

Stay away from this one.

The title implies that this is a book specifically about writing a thesis. Having purchased it for that purpose, I soon realized that it was not about writing a thesis at all but about writing research papers in general. In this regards, it was not useful to me at all. Further, there is no index so attempts to search for specific information pertinent to my needs were futile.

Like other reviewers I thought this book would give me some useful pointers on writing my Masters thesis. The book is geared toward shorter research papers and essays perhaps for high school level. I found the techniques in the book to be outdated...it talks more about card catalogs than computer databases. Useful for the disorganized high school/undergrad student, but not what I expected.

I bought this book to better my thesis, and sadly have to say my money was wasted. This book provides methods for looking up for bibliography in the library, writing methods etc., all of which someone who go to a graduate school should already know. As a metter of fact, it's the sort of stuff I've been tought in the first 6 weeks of my unergraduate degree, and I didn't go to an Ivy League Uni. Nevertheless, it could be very helpful for an undergrad who goes to a college which doesnt teach these basic techniques; Going to do their first term paper, etc. Also - you can get there a good summery of the Chicago method, ()

As someone who works privately with students, helping them with theses, I highly recommend this book. When students call me in regard to assistance with their thesis, I recommend that they buy this book and use it as a reference. As the title states, this is a "how to" book, and it does an excellent job of walking students through the process of writing a thesis. It is a practical and easy to use guide.