Authoring a PhD

Conclusions
Just as in athletics or a professional sport, finishing a thesis well
usually requires a lot of advance preparation. In earlier chapters
I have touched on many different logistical issues which if left
unaddressed can cause you days or weeks of delay at the final
version stage. These issues are time-bombs, which may lie
apparently dormant only to explode under your feet as you
rush to complete. Poor style, long sentences, complex grammar,
padded writing and repetitions left alone at an earlier stage all
have to be fixed. Hard-to-justify research ‘methods’ or odd
choices of research strategy can require complex explanation
later on to try and disguise them or explain them away.
Interview quotations have to be firmed up and attributed
exactly, and weak methods of evidencing will show up more
prominently in the referencing (or lack of it) at key points.
Poor-quality charts, diagrams and tables, often left unscruti-
nized in separate pages at the ends of draft chapters, will now
look ragged if incorporated into your text. Partial bibliographic
entries have to be filled in. The most common problems are
Web references that prove evanescent and cannot be recaptured
for checking; source documents in far-away archives that can-
not be revisited; and newspaper or magazine clippings where
T H E E N D
-
G A M E
◆
2 2 5

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you recorded inadequately source details at the outset. If you
are using notes, significant ‘version control’ problems between
the notes and bibliography can become apparent at this stage.
Even the suggestions made in this chapter mostly cannot be
last-minute operations. Many require you to do things almost
from the first stages of your research. For instance, if you are to