How to write

writing

This is a guide for students writing seminar papers or theses.

1. Structure overview

A good text has to have a simple and transparent structure.

Here is a standard structure for both a paper (sections) or thesis (chapters). This is a great structure especially for empirical papers. You can deviate but only do so deliberately.

  1. Introduction: in which you get your readers on board
  2. Theory: in which you help readers see how your question relates to and can go beyond existing knowledge
  3. Strategy: in which you tell readers how you will answer the question, what data and answer strategies you will use
  4. Main results: this is the heart of the piece
  5. Discussion / deepening: in which you go beyond the heart, for instance by (a) showing robustness (b) exploring mechanisms (c) examining heterogeneity (d) examining cases
  6. Conclusion

2. Chapter types, section types

Here are further pointers on different types of chapters.

Front Matter

A thesis typically has front matter.

Table of contents

  • Have a table of contents.
  • Go two or at most three levels deep (so sections and subsections, but generally not subsubsections).
  • Use informative section headers so that readers can figure out the logical structure of the thesis from the table of contents.
  • Have your table of contents generated automatically and hyperlinked to sections. Number all sections.
    • In latex using \section{} and subsection
    • In R markdown or quarto use #, ##

Acknowledgements

You can include acknowledgements and thank colleagues and friends — anyone who gave you support; normally this is added after a defense and before submission.

Dedication

It’s not uncommon to dedicate a thesis (or dissertation, but not a paper) to someone.

Abstract

In a thesis you can have a short abstract (< quarter page) and a longer executive summary (two pages). In a paper, just an abstract.

Abstracts should give:

  1. a brief description of question and motivation
  2. an overview of strategy
  3. a very short summary of main findings

People often use an abstract to report what they did, but the most important purpose is to report what you found. Remember, findings can be positive and negative — if you find that the data simply does not support some intuitively plausible or commonly believed proposition, that is big news; don’t bury that.

Introductions

Introductions should include:

  • a high-level motivation: readers should know from the first paragraph what question you hope to answer
  • a brief description of what you will do
  • a summary of findings
  • a clarification of contributions (why what you did matters or how it is innovative)
  • (possibly) a roadmap

Saying early on what your main findings or claims are is very important. Given the abstract, executive summary, and intro, the reader should have no doubt about where things are going by the time they get into it. Doing this lets readers evaluate your claims more quickly and more directly; it shouldn’t be a puzzle for the reader to figure out your conclusion, and your key points should not come as a surprise in the last pages.

Formal theory chapters

Here is a good structure for a formal theory (game theoretic) chapter:

  1. Motivate the model. What question will the theory answer. Why do we care? What do we already know?
  2. Describe the model formally. This requires a full description of (a) the players – how many are they? What are their roles?, (b) the strategies – what choices do they have?, (c) the preferences. Additionally, this may require a description of the sequence of moves and the information available to all players.
  3. The game description should normally include all parameters of interest, including any for which you plan to take comparative statics. Make things easy for readers by putting these in a table.
  4. Provide key results in the form of formal propositions. For example, Proposition 1: “Under the following conditions (e.g., all groups are of size …) the following strategies (…) form an equilibrium.” Primary propositions often establish or describe a particular solution (equilibrium). Later proposition might describe the uniqueness or non-uniqueness of solutions, or describe properties of solutions.
  5. End the chapter by describing empirical propositions (that might be tested) that are motivated by the theoretical propositions.

Empirical strategy chapters

Whether empirical chapters are quantitative or qualitative, they should lead off with a description of your strategy. What are you looking for to find evidence in favor or against a proposition? This strategy is often laid out in earlier chapters (for many people, in Chapter 2), but there should still be a recap here. For a quantitative analysis, the standard ordering (whether in one chapter or many) is:

  1. Describe hypotheses and estimands.
  2. Describe the population: what cases are you looking at and why.
  3. Describe data / measures. Describe sources, measures, and transformations. You might show descriptive statistics here.
  4. Describe analysis strategies. Provide justification and conditions required for valid inferences. Readers should be clear about how you will map from data you might see to inferences. This is as true for qualitative work as for quantitative work.

Case study chapters

Be clear why you have a case study and what you want to do with it.

  • Quick summary of why you have the case and what you hope to learn from it
  • Justify case selection: why this case? How does it relate to other possible cases? Clarify whether it is typical or atypical, a “most likely” case or “least likely” and so on. Your cases are probably not “ideal” cases so use the discussion of case selection as an opportunity to say what the likely implications of different features of a case are for inferences.
  • Say what you are looking for in the case and what you will infer depending on what you find
  • Describe sources
  • General description of the case
  • Specific findings relevant for theories
  • Inferences

Conclusions

You can loosen up in the conclusion a bit to describe possible implications of your work in your domain or other domains. Draw linkages with other work and point to gaps in knowledge. While there is some value in speculation, this does not mean that you should make claims that are not supported by your analyses.

Common sections:

  • Recap of most important findings
  • Caveats
  • Implications
  • New agendas

Appendices

Things that live in appendices:

  • Reconciliation reports describing deviations from analysis plans and analyses implemented. More.
  • Proofs of formal results
  • Robustness checks
  • Tabular analogues of figures in the main text

If you have appendices:

  • Keep them short
  • Sections should be lettered not numbered: Appendix A, Appendix B…
  • Every section should be referenced in the main text

3. Writing tools

Microsoft Word is fine for lots of writing, but for technical writing it is worth investing in learning LaTeX — a free system for preparing documents. For real transparency, it is good to integrate your analysis with your writing. This can be done in various ways, but the simplest might be quarto or Rmarkdown. Be prepared to learn these new tools.

4. Style

  • Your aim in writing is to communicate your findings as faithfully as possible, not to communicate your process faithfully (of course, you have to be transparent about how you did your analysis). It’s normal to go in circles as you develop your thinking on a topic, but you do not have to bring the reader in the same circles. Instead, try to think about what presentational structure would make it easiest for readers to understand your work quickly.
  • Never try to make things seem more complicated than they are.
  • Keep sentences short.

Pointers on style:

Please:

  • Lots of signposting: Readers should know why they are reading any given section and any given paragraph within a section. Start off sections with a brief statement of the purpose of the section and end with a quick recap. Organize paragraphs so that each paragraph serves a clear function and readers can tell from the first line what the function is. Many readers won’t read a section if they don’t know why they need to read it.

    • Social science writing is not like literary writing
      • You don’t build up and then reveal the findings at the end
      • You give the findings up front and then provide the evidence to support it
      • You should not assume that readers read linearly: they treat this as a compendium not a poem
      • So readers need to know what function every section has in the thesis and what function every paragraph has in a section

  • Keep writing tight: Remove flab at the beginning of sentences: “In order to” “I am now going to talk about” “I would argue that”; “It should therefore come as no surprise that” (if you must, try “Unsurprisingly”).

  • Remove unoriginal flower: “much ink has been spilled,” “hardly a day goes past.”

  • Formality: Keep the writing formal. No contractions in formal writing (it’s, that’s, should’ve, etc).

  • Voice: Saying “we” for a single-authored piece can be a little weird. It works for sentences that implicate the reader or the disciplines (“we see from this figure…,” “we know that X causes Y”). For single-authored pieces, “I” usually works fine. Avoid “this paper argues.” Instead, say, “I argue.”

  • Use the present tense when describing things being done in the text: “I describe my strategy in Chapter 2 and my findings in Chapter 3.” Not “I will describe my strategy in Chapter 2 and my findings in Chapter 3.” And not “I described my strategy in Chapter 2 and my findings in Chapter 3.” Past tense is of course fine for past events: “I use information from interviews conducted in . . .”

  • Math: Get math formatting right. Here is a good guide. In particular, never start a sentence with math; always have math in italics. So, not “x denotes commodities” but “We use x to denote commodities.” Use the equation editor in Word or, if you have a lot of math, use LaTeX. Be sure to italicize and punctuate properly: [f(x) = \mathbb{E}[x].]

  • Hyperbole: Avoid superlatives: vast, massive, extraordinary. Use adjectives sparingly.

  • Emphasis: I quite like italics and bolding but if you write well you generally shouldn’t need them. Never EVER use capitalization for emphasis.

  • Modesty:

    • Don’t overclaim — if you are arguing that X causes Y, don’t call this “my theory”; it is an empirical claim, not a theoretical claim.
    • Don’t use “prove” unless you mean an analytic proof — empirical tests (almost) never prove anything.
    • Be especially careful about null results – a null result means that you cannot reject the null of no effect, not that you have proved that there is no effect.
    • Go easy on “important,” “importantly” (let the reader decide).
    • Don’t say “no measurable / detectable effect” if you just mean that you have not detected one.
    • “Necessary” is a very strong claim (“this necessarily leads to…”)
  • Common errors:
    • The past tense of lead is led, not lead.
    • Get “affect” and “effect” right.
    • Get “lose” and “loose” right.
    • Get “advise” and “advice” right.
    • Get “its” and “it’s” right (hint: never use “it’s”; use “its” and “it is”).
    • Get “fewer” and “less” right.
    • “Question begging” is a technical term; use it if you know what it means.
  • Preferred
    • First, second, not firstly, secondly
    • Cut any word that looks anything like aforementioned
  • UK or US?
    • US
  • More guidance:

Signposting examples

Here are five examples of signposting:

1. Introduction I show that natural resource abundance causes conflict. In section 2 I provide the logic. In section 3 I describe my strategy. Sections 4 and 5 give results and section 6 discusses implications.

2. Theory Three theories predict an adverse effect of natural resource abundance. I describe each in turn and present strategies to distinguish between them.

3. Strategy I estimate the effects of natural resources on conflict using qualitative and quantitative strategies. I describe each in turn. …

4.1 Sierra Leone Case study I first present general background about this case, I then explore whether there is evidence in support of each of mechanisms 1, 2, and 3.

5. Tables and Figures

  • Use figures rather than tables when possible.

  • Tables and figures should generally be self-explanatory: readers shouldn’t have to search through the text to figure out what the table or figure is trying to communicate.

  • Tables and figures should usually be in the main body of the text, not at the end.

  • Tables and figures should be numbered and captioned/titled, in most cases. You can do automatic numbering in Word using “captions”, and in Latex using \label{} and in markdown with {#label}

  • Tables and other output should not be presented as Stata output or other raw output. There are many tools to produce nice output without a lot of work (outreg2 in Stata, texreg, stargazer in R, but many more)

  • Coefficients should be arranged in rows with comprehensible and consistent variable names

  • Standard errors should be shown in parentheses (or you should note what measure of uncertainty you are displaying if it is not standard errors)

  • Include descriptive statistics such as number of observations (N) and R-squared if available.

  • Make sure to say what the dependent variables is in the Table, if relevant.

  • Precision: numbers should normally reported to two significant digits. e.g. 0.12 not 0.000121313245

  • Bottom line: It’s often useful and legitimate to give the bottom line of a table at the bottom of the table: “Table shows that there is no evidence that democracy causes growth”

6. References

General pointers

  • The bibliography should contain an entry for every work cited—including websites—and should contain entries only for work cited.
  • There are lots of rules around correct formatting in the text and at the end. Plus there are different sets of rules. You should outsource this work to a tool not lose time getting this right.
  • References in sentences either have the year in parentheses or the year and last name in parentheses. They should include page references when possible.
  • For references to specific claims include page numbers.
  • Only include references you have read.
  • Check your biases: are you citing mostly friends, coethnics, men, seniors… are you giving credit where credit is due?

In markdown enter like this:

  • @putnam2000bowling said some great stuff
  • Putnam said some great stuff [@putnam2000bowling]
  • @putnam2000bowling [p. 7] said some great stuff
  • Putnam said some great stuff [@putnam2000bowling, p. 7]

More

Grabbing references

I pull from google scholar mostly

  • I do a search. e.g. https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=putnam+bowling+alone&btnG=
  • Then select the bib reference.
  • And save that into a .bib text file
@incollection{putnam2000bowling,
  title={Bowling alone},
  author={Putnam, Robert D},
  booktitle={Culture and politics},
  pages={223--234},
  year={2000},
  publisher={Springer}
}

@online{NYT,
  author = ,
  title = {Hong Kong Crackdown Is an Early Test for Biden},
  year = 2021,
  url = {https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/opinion/hong-kong-arrests.html},
  urldate = {2021-01-25}
}

Other tools include Zotero, Endnote, Mendeley

Principle is that you should spend a little time figuring out how to make this work and then not spend much time on it.

7. Footnotes

  • Footnotes generally preferred to endnotes.
  • Use footnotes sparingly.
  • Citations generally do not go in footnotes but in the main text.
  • Put singly at the end of a sentence, after the period.^[Like this]
  • Put singly at the end of a sentence, after the period.^[Like this]
  • Not like^[No!] that, or like this^[No].

8. Actually writing

Aim

Nearly everyone finds writing hard and many find some parts of writing impossible.

Aim should be to make the process easy.

  • Principle: Know what you want to say before you start writing:

    • Chapter abstracts: write these first; these help you get clear on the point/purpose of every chapter
    • Use outlines: every paragraph should be making a point. An outline can have the main point of each paragraph in a single line.

  • Principle: Know how you want to say it before you start writing.

    • It can be incredibly useful to present your argument to others to figure out what about it people find easy or hard and how to deliver a point most effectively.

Keep moving

  • Principle: Balance easy and hard writing.

    • Some parts take a long time to write. If you are stuck switch to easier bits and sleep on the harder bits. But be sure to return to them.
  • Principle: Write a bad draft and then improve.
    • Some people follow the measure twice cut once principle and get the writing right first time. I find it much easier to get a draft down and then get to improving it.
    • Don’t spend a lot of time early on getting your style right; focus instead on getting the substance down

  • Principle: Write from the inside out. Get your core results, write them up, then write deepening sections and design section, then intro and conclusion. Exception: write abstracts first.

  • Principle: Allocate chunks of time to tasks. Figure out what chunk length is best for you: 30 minutes? 3 hours? Protect the time and assign specific tasks for that chunk.

Fine tuning

  • Principle: seek advice from friends and colleagues and use it well.

    • Ask others to read your work and be clear whether you want feedback on substance or style.
    • No point getting help with fine editing if content is likely to change.
    • Feedback that seems wildly irrelevant to you can also be informative as it shows what parts of your argument people have a hard time following.

  • Principle: Don’t be afraid to cut.

    • Most writing has flab. Near the end as you go through you can ask, for each paragraph: Is this paragraph adding content? Would the piece be any weaker without it? If, not then cut, no matter how lovely the writing.