Authoring a PhD

Interrogative headings
consist solely of questions and end
with a question-mark. Some very well-organized students quite
late on in their studies have shown me PhD outlines which
consist entirely of interrogative headings, sometimes as many
as 15 per chapter, with an alleged ‘plan’ for the thesis as a whole
defined by upwards of 150 questions. This approach often 
looks precise and informative at the planning stage, reflecting
specialized knowledge on the author’s part. But interrogative
questions create only an illusion of professional expertise, for
one critical reason. Questions are not answers. It is always
much easier to formulate a set of interesting questions about a
subject than it is to produce well-evidenced, coherent and plau-
sibly argued answers to them. Most expert readers will be thor-
oughly familiar already with the kinds of questions one can ask
around your thesis topic. They are primarily reading your work
to find out what substantive solutions you have come up with.
And here a series of interrogative headings obscures things as
effectively as vacuous headings, and can be every bit as formal-
istic. Again check your extended contents page and if you use
interrogative headings (ending in ?), replace all of them with
‘answer’ headings that convey instead your substantive argument.
(iii)
Inaccurate headings
, which actively miscue readers
about the content of their accompanying section, occur all the
time. They represent a fundamental failure of the key authorial
role, to effectively manage readers’ expectations. The heading
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says that a chapter or section will do A, but instead it does some-
thing different, perhaps something close to the author’s inten-
tions like C or D, or perhaps something much further away like
M or N. This problem can arise in many ways. Authors often set
out to do something with a detailed plan, but their text actually
turns out to have an inner direction of its own and they then
have difficulty in recognizing the fact. Perhaps authors promise
readers to evaluate a decision but in the end they do something
more modest instead, such as describing the process of reaching
that decision. Perhaps they hope initially to make some form of
intellectual breakthrough and end up with something more
mundane. Often an author’s initial headings link so poorly or
loosely to what has actually been accomplished in a piece of text
that she cannot see that the section is being radically misde-
scribed, that readers will expect one thing from the heading and
get something different from the section text itself.
Combating most of these common problems in finished
pieces of work is partly bound up with how far you edit, revise
and replan your text, a topic discussed in detail in Chapter 6.
But in the planning stages (before you have written out your
ideas), it is also important to make sure that your headings
describing sections and chapters are as accurate as possible.
Look at your extended contents page and check that the fit
between headings and what you plan for each section is a close
one. Headings should capture the flavour of your substantive
argument, but without overselling or overclaiming. The head-
ings and the planned text should be commensurately scaled,
and the heading should create only expectations that your text
is actually going to meet.
(iv)
Repetitive headings
occur when anxious PhD students
keep incanting words from the title of their doctorate in their
chapter titles and section headings. Again this is a quick way to
confuse and miscue readers, because different headings may
tend to blur into each other and chapters and sections will lose
a distinctive feel or identity. It is particularly inadvisable to
reuse theoretical or thematic concepts taken from your whole
thesis title in many different chapter or section headings. You
do not achieve linkage by saying mantra words over and over,
but by forging a closely connected working argument, whose
development can be schematically traced in your headings.
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Other instances of repetition may not confuse readers, but
instead just make your headings longer and more boring than
they need to be. For example, suppose the thesis title makes
clear that the author is focusing on Korean post-war musical
culture. It would be completely otiose to have later chapter or
section headings repeat that the country reference is Korea or
that the general time period is post-war. Similarly if a thesis
focuses on a particular author or body of work it is unneces-
sary to have the chapter headings repeat that. Instead they
should move on, taking the thesis frame of reference as given
and providing more details of what that particular chapter or
section is about. It is straightforward to check your extended
contents page and make sure that chapter and section head-
ings effectively partner with the thesis title itself, without
repeating it.
Repetitive or overly similar headings often arise in the first
place because students submit chapters to their supervisors or
review committees as separate bits of work on widely spaced
occasions. Hence they subconsciously may try to cram more of
the thesis self-description into the opening chapter title than is
needed. To avoid this problem, get into the habit of always put-
ting your current overall thesis title and the latest version of
your short contents page as the frontispiece for each chapter
you submit. Your supervisors, advisers or departmental asses-
sors will also be grateful to be given a clear view of where your
current piece of work fits within the thesis as a whole. PhD 
students often blithely assume that their supervisors have 
a godlike ability to automatically retain a clear view of their 
overall thesis architecture from previous discussions, normally
several weeks earlier. In fact supervisors inherently focus on
your thesis a lot less than you do. They have other projects of
their own to keep in view, and other PhD students to supervise. 
So they can only give concentrated attention to your work
whenever you submit new chapters. Supervisors often find it
very difficult to separate out the layers of different past discus-
sions or to follow all the twists and turns of your thesis plan-
ning ideas and changes. Hence they will always appreciate
being discreetly reminded of your overall title and current
chapter plan.
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Handling starts and finishes
Creations realized at the price of a great deal of work
must in spite of the truth appear easy and 
effortless … The great rule is to take much trouble to
produce things that seem to have cost none.