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Better Dissertation Writing in English

Punctuation

Add space between text and citation.

For example, do not write

It has been amply documented that improper diet can cause heart disease[1].

Instead, write

It has been amply documented that improper diet can cause heart disease [1].

Most punctuation marks follow the text without space.

For example, do not write

There are three kinds of lies :lies ,damn lies ,and statistics .

Instead, write

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

It is the American style to put (most) punctuation marks before the closing quotation mark.

For example, do not write

Adam Smith's immortal words for the price mechanism are ``invisible hand''.

Instead, write

Adam Smith's immortal words for the price mechanism are ``invisible hand.''

Abbreviations with an ending period absorb any period that follows it.

For example, do not write

This result is due to Erdos, et al..

Instead, write

This result is due to Erdos, et al.

Footnotes should follow the period, in fact, any punctuation except a dash, and not the other way around.

For example, do not write

Mahler composed Das Lied as his swan song³.

Instead, write

Mahler composed Das Lied as his swan song.³

Grammar

Grammatical errors ruin many theses’ quality and turn off their readers. Pick up any good book on grammar if you are not comfortable with your level of proficiency.
British and American grammatical rules differ somewhat. For example, whereas Britons may write, ``none of the larger insurers is, as far as it knows, in danger of breaching its solvency limits'' (The Economist, January 28, 2003), Americans prefer ``none of the larger insurers are, as far as they know, in danger of breaching their solvency limits.'' Remember that languages are practical tools; therefore, they are bound to change over time and space. Here is another example, from Time (February 10, 2003): ``No NASA manager was fired; no safety systems were added to the solid rocket boosters whose explosion destroyed Challenger."
It is not necessary to be perfect in grammars, however. Grammars, like languages, evolve, and sometimes ideas can be communicated perfectly well with less than perfect grammar. Well, Mark Twain's masterpiece Huckleberry Finn was banned from the Concord public library in 1885 partially because of ``a systematic use of bad grammar.'' No joking. My point is simply that you need to spend that much time to write with grammar at a respectable level, but perhaps not more.
On the other hand, it must be admitted that a work written with good grammar and punctuation impresses the reader with your diligence and attention to detail; the reader is respected. Some people actually associate bad grammar with stupidity (see Stanley Bing's ``The Element's of Style'' in the August 20, 2007, issue of Fortune magazine). So why take the risk?
Taiwanese students make a few common grammatical errors.

Articles (the, a, an) are not used properly.
Subjects and verbs do not agree.
``To'' can be a preposition as in ``a key to solving the problem,'' ``Buttonwood admits to never having heard of this company before'' (The Economist, October 24, 2003) or ``most people in Taiwan are opposed to reunifying with the mainland'' (New York Times, January 26, 2003). But this usage is often confused with its being an infinitive (as in ``a key to solve the problem''). Of course, sometimes both make sense. Here is another example: ``[This] can take a claim to having been the most important work of the twentieth century in the philosophy of science'' (Wittgenstein's Poker, 2001).

Bibliography

There exist many bibliographical styles for theses. They often differ from fields to fields, however.
Adopt a consistent style.

Example:

Heath, David, Robert Jarrow, and Andrew Morton. ``Contingent Claim Valuation with a Random Evolution of Interest Rates.'' The Review of Financial Studies, 9, No. 1 (1990), 54--78.

Thesis Structure

We tend to think of a paper or a thesis as a collection of sentences. But that view is simplistic. How the sentences are put together is the real key to good writing. In persuasive writing like academic papers and theses, you need to plan carefully how the sentences support each other logically.
A Taiwanese student may be able to write articles in English with near-perfect grammar. Every sentence is flawless. But how the sentences are put together often reveals a structural flaw that is best described as lack of logic. Ask yourself constantly, Does the paragraph have a topic? Is this sentence relevant to that topic? Does it support that topic? If not, then the sentence does not belong here.
It is best to structure your thesis as a tree. At the root of the tree is the main topic of your thesis. Each branch from the tree represents a subthesis that supports that main topic. These subtheses may form separate chapters. From each subthesis follow more branches. These branches in turn support the subthesis they descend from. And so on down to individual paragraphs and their sentences. Don't be afraid to break a paragraph into two if it covers more than one topic. Don't hesitate to delete a paragraph if it is irrelevant to your support structure.

Style (See Also The Economist's Style Guide)

Writing with style is something I do not demand of my students; not having a style is no sin. You should strive to be clear about the main theses, however. A dissertation is, after all, neither a novel nor a piece of metaphysics. You should avoid sensationalism at all costs, lest your thesis get mistaken for a work written by a reporter from a tabloid magazine or newspaper. Most, if not all, newspapers in Taiwan should be considered tabloids and hence not good role models for your thesis.

For example, do not write

Financial options took Taiwan's capital market by storm in mid-1997. Investors were so wild about them that sacred finance theories taught by professors were trashed.

Instead, write

When financial options appeared on Taiwan's exchange in mid-1997, their prices initially ran counter to what orthodox finance theories would predict perhaps because of temporary market overreactions.

Need I mention that you should never poke fun at professors? If you have time, try to rewrite the following paragraph from the New York Times (January 12, 2003) to suit a thesis.

``I've spent all my life around chickens, and I've seen no instance of anything I'd call intelligence,'' said Edwin Jemison, who sells chemicals for the Jones-Hamilton Company to chicken producers. ``All a chicken wants is to be the same every day, to eat his fill and be comfortable. I think that's a sign of low intelligence.'' Mr. Jemison did admit that the domestic turkey is probably the gold standard for stupidity. While chickens can survive a rainstorm outside, turkeys will look skyward and drown as their throats fill with water.

Avoid phrases with ethnic or sexist connotations. If you pride yourself on knowing such idioms as ``go dutch,'' think again. Such phrases are usually derogatory and can be offensive to some readers. In the age of the World Wide Web, who knows who your readers are. Although the standard of taste evolves, it is wise to avoid controversies not relevant to your thesis.

Many theses read like a computer manual. They are plain, linear, and boring. It is O.K. to add a little drama to the thesis. And do not shy away from putting your own contributions at the very beginning of the thesis and hammering your competitors' works with some force.

Do not write the whole dissertation first in Chinese before translating it into English. Doing so makes your dissertation inherit some Chinese-like grammar and structures.

Do not be wordy.

Take the following sentence as an example:

A barrier option is known to have the property of being less expensive than a plain vanilla option with the same parameters.

Isn't it much cleaner to write simply

A barrier option is less expensive than an otherwise identical plain vanilla option.

Be precise. The Chinese languages are imprecise and unstructured compared with English. It is good practice to always ask yourself such questions as What does this ``it'' refer to? What does this ``that'' denote? Many theses I had read contain pronouns whose references are either nonexistent or ambiguous.

Refrain from using Latin, French, German, or Italian in your thesis unless you know what you are doing.

Taiwanese students tend to abruptly move to an unrelated topic within a paragraph. This practice destroys the logic and flow of the paragraph. Remember that a paragraph should talk about one topic only. Start a new paragraph if a new topic is to be addressed.

Read good English books and essays. Try The Economist, Encounter, Atlantic, or Time for journalistic style. Both Scientific American and National Geographic teach semi-technical writing for the masses. And don't forget to pick up a copy of the classic The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., E.B. White, and Roger Angell.

Most important of all, you must practice writing often and with a critical eye. It works for coding, and it will work for writing, too.

Finally, you should have something interesting to write about. Few things are more frustrating than reading a vacuous piece of work. In fact, it is a crime to waste a reader's time.

Useful Links

You and Your Research by Richard W. Hamming.
Mathematical Writing by Donald E. Knuth.
Useful Things To Know about Ph.D. Thesis Research by H.T. Kung.
The Elements of Style, 4th ed. by William Strunk, Jr., E.B. White, and Roger Angell. The 1918 version (free).
The Chicago Manual of Style.