GUIDE TO WRITING AN MEng/MSc DISSERTATION

Dr Grant M Campbell
So, you are about to do your research project and dissertation. Over the next four
months, you are expected to make a new contribution to knowledge. Your dissertation will
then report that new knowledge to the rest of the research community. It is their duty to
disbelieve your finding until it is proved to them. So the goal of your dissertation is to
persuade your readers that your findings are a true and worthwhile contribution to knowledge.
The product of research is not the new knowledge. It is the written communication of
that knowledge. Until your findings are written down, until they are in a permanent written
record, until they have been read and scrutinised by others, you may as well have not done
research.
Thesis: A proposition to be maintained or proved Oxford English Dictionary
A dissertation (a mini-thesis) is an argument. It is a logical progression of ideas,
aimed at persuading another person to reach a particular conclusion.
The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe. David Hare
A dissertation is about beliefs. When you discover new knowledge, at first you are
the only person to believe it, by virtue of the fact that it is new. You need then to pass that
belief on to your readers, by persuading them to believe it too.
But at first your own beliefs are somewhat hazy. They are based in part on your
experiments (which are probably imperfect), and in part on what you have read (which is
partly wrong!). So to start with, you need to sort out what you actually believe, from the
literature and from your own experiments. You need to assimilate this into a coherent belief,
and then set about communicating that belief to others. The act of writing your dissertation
will help you to decide what you actually believe.
The approach to writing a dissertation presented here is not the only way. Yes, people
have different styles. But at your stage, they are mostly wrong ones! What you will learn
here is one particularly good way of presenting a clearly argued dissertation. Once you have
mastered that and are safely gone from your poor supervisor, then you can start adding your
own style. But at this stage, be humble and learn something. Your poor supervisor has to
guide you quickly and efficiently through this learning process; it will be much easier for you
both if you accept the years of experience your supervisor offers.
Writing a dissertation teaches you invaluable skills about written communication of
new and difficult ideas. It teaches you how to think, how to structure your arguments, how to
present them clearly in written format. You will seldom get the opportunity to write such a
substantial, worthwhile document again. Make the most of it.
Structure, structure, structure
The three most important things about writing a dissertation are: structure, structure
and structure. I say this three times, because structure operates at three levels:
i) the overall structure of the dissertation (the superstructure)
ii) the structure of each chapter (the macrosctructure)
iii) the structure of sections within a chapter (the mesostructure).
June 1998

Satake Centre for Grain Process Engineering

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

Earlier in your educational career you learnt about sentence structure and paragraph
structure I am not going to revise these elementary, microstructural things here. Now you
need to think on a much more mature scale than just sentences and paragraphs. The three
levels of structure listed above are much more important to your thesis than sentence and
paragraph structure getting the structure right at the large scale will cover a multitude of
sentence-level sins.
The Brontosaurus theory of structure
The structure you should bear in mind throughout writing each section, chapter and
the whole document, is the structure of the Brontosaurus.
The Brontosaurus is narrow at one end (its head), broad in
the middle, and narrow at the other end (its tail). So must
your chapters be, and indeed, your whole dissertation.
You must start out narrow, just giving the outline of what
this section, or chapter, or dissertation, is about, and why it
is included in this dissertation and at this point. You must
then broaden out, to give the detail that your reader
requires, all the while making sure it is clear to them how
this information carries your argument along. Finally, you must draw it all together again,
summarising what you have covered and bringing it all together to a final point, which leads
naturally and logically onto the next section or chapter. Start small, broaden out, draw it all
back together such that it moves the reader on. Apply this strategy to every section, to every
chapter, and to the whole dissertation, and your argument will be as clear as a Brontosaurus.
With this in mind, the easiest way to ensure you do this at the chapter level is to make
sure every chapter starts with a section called Introduction, and ends with a section called
Summary. If you do this, it will force you to write an introduction which is appropriate to
introduce the whole chapter, outlining what the relevance of this chapter is and what it will
cover. And it will force you to write a summary which reviews what was covered in the
chapter, draws it together into a conclusion, makes the contribution of the chapter to the
whole argument obvious, and prepares the reader for the next chapter. Put an Introduction
and Summary section in every chapter. Write it in your Contents section. Do it now!
Contents
Speaking of Contents, your reader ought to be able to see at a glance from your
Contents page what your dissertation is about. How many times have I come across a
dissertation with a Contents page as follows:
Abstract
Introduction
Literature Survey
Mathematical Modelling
Experimental Methods
Results and Discussion
Conclusions
A good structure, but what is it about!!?? It could be about anything at all. Make
your chapter titles informative. Yes, you survey the literature what is the thrust of your
argument as you make your review? Let your title indicate that. Yes, you did experiments
what did you study? Let your title reflect that. The Appendix to this guide includes some
Contents pages study them, and you will see that the titles for each chapter are informative.
(You will also see that each chapter contains an Introduction and Summary.)
February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

Make your dissertation tell a story. A good story should not give away everything up
front, but should start at the beginning, carry the reader along, and bring them to the end such
that they feel theyve been taken on a journey.
Or even better, make your dissertation a court case. Throughout the dissertation, you
are a barrister, arguing a case, trying to persuade your jury (the research and industrial
community) to accept your argument. Therefore, like a barrister, you must first open by
reviewing the precedents (the Literature Survey). You then explain to the jury how you will
lead them through the evidence (Experimental). You then present the evidence (Results),
then offer persuasively your interpretation (Discussion), before finally summing up
(Conclusions) and telling the jury what they must do (Recommendations for future work).
And use the Brontosaurus approach at each step.
We have indicated above the typical chapters that occur in a dissertation. These will
be fairly familiar to you, being larger versions of the sections in a typical laboratory report.
But lets give some careful thought to what the function of each chapter is. Each chapter has
a very different and specific purpose, and it is all too easy to put material confusingly into the
wrong chapter. If you are clear on the purpose of the chapter, you are much less likely to
include material that should be in another chapter.
When you hand your chapter drafts in for comments, if I am your supervisor, I will
ask you What is the purpose of this chapter? If you are unable to tell me, I will not read
your draft.
Abstract the birds eye view for the busy reader
The Abstract or Summary is the most important page in the dissertation, because it is
frequently the only page that is actually read. If the reader cant deduce from the Summary
whether this dissertation contains useful information, they dont have time to read the whole
thing in order to find out; equally, a well written Summary which is specific about the work
and its findings can save them from having to wade through the whole dissertation.
Unbelievably, I have seen business reports from expensive management consultants that do
not include a summary. How is any manager supposed to know what a report tells him, or
whether it is of any use at all, if he has to read the whole thing to find out? Similarly, some
summaries describe in vague terms what was done, then dont give the result effectively
saying This is what I did but Im not going to tell you what I found! Again, to find out
the result (which was surely the whole purpose of doing the work!) the manager has to dive in
and read the whole thing.
The Summary of a report or dissertation describes the content of the report and its
major findings and conclusions. If its an important part of the report, it should be in the
Summary. Important things include why the work was done, how it was done, what was
found, and what it means; your Summary should include at least these things. However, your
Summary should also be brief, no more than one page in fact, for a dissertation, exactly one
page is about right, as it gives enough detail without being superfluous. Write a Summary
that is exactly one page long.
Incidentally, on Summaries, it is a good idea to include everything on that one page to
make it a self-contained record of the work. This includes the dissertation title (at the top,
followed by the word Summary or Abstract), and your name, date and the degree for
which the dissertation is being submitted (at the bottom). This way, if anyone needs a
summary of the dissertation, a photocopy of this one page will tell them everything they need
to know.

February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

Introduction setting the scene

Getting the reader on board
Chances are, your reader does not know much about the subject of your dissertation.
You should consider them an intelligent non-expert. They can understand things if you tell
them (they are intelligent), but you cant assume much beyond general knowledge (they are a
non-expert). Even if they do have some knowledge of this subject area, chances are they have
not fully appreciated the life-altering importance of the particular aspect you have been
studying. If you mentioned it to them in passing, they might dismiss it as trivial or
unimportant, certainly as not an obvious area for study (if it were obvious, someone would
have done it already obviously!). They might even be hostile, prejudiced from the start
against this subject. So while they might be intelligent, possibly not completely lacking in
expertise even, they almost certainly need persuading first off that this is a subject worth
studying, and moreover, that this is a dissertation on the subject worth reading.
This is the purpose or function of the Introduction setting the scene as to why this
aspect of this subject is an important area for research, and how this dissertation contributes
to knowledge in this area. That is all the Introduction must do. It doesnt review the
literature in detail, beyond setting the context. It doesnt describe specific experiments. It
doesnt give results or draw conclusions. It simply persuades the reader of three things:
that this overall subject is important
that this specific area within the subject represents a lack of knowledge and offers an
opportunity to do some worthwhile research to make a useful contribution to knowledge
that the approach taken in the dissertation is likely to achieve this goal
With this in mind, the Introduction should have two sections. The first section gives
the context of the subject area and makes the argument that a specific part of that subject area
requires research. This section should have an appropriate title, along the lines of
_________, an important but neglected aspect of ______________. The second section
should then be called Scope of the dissertation or Overview of the thesis. Having
established the argument that this subject area should be studied, you then give the reader a
brief overview of how the dissertation approaches this challenge.
In the first section, you need to take the reader from where they are (generally but not
specifically knowledgeable) to where you want them to be (in agreement with you about the
importance of this area and the opportunity to address it). You are persuading them this is
an argument, which requires logical steps from a starting point to a conclusion. Your starting
point is their general knowledge, and you should start with an opening statement with which
they cannot reasonably disagree: _________ is an important part of modern industry,
representing a global market worth _____ and contributing to X, Y and Z aspects of modern
life. If your reader can relate to your opening sentence, then they are in a position to be
taken from there to the next step, and eventually to your conclusion, which is This aspect of
______ should be studied ... to do so would give these benefits ... there is an opportunity to
study it in this new way ...
A taste of things to come
Having convinced your reader that the subject is worthy of study, your next task in the
Introduction is to persuade them that your dissertation actually addresses the subject usefully.
So you outline the Scope of the dissertation, in such a way that they can see how you have
approached the problem, and reassuring them that to read the dissertation will reward them
with a fair chance of valid, new knowledge. Once again, to tell the reader that your
dissertation contains a literature review, experimental methods, results and conclusions will
not surprise, inform or impress them at all every dissertation has these. Be specific.
Chapters 2 and 3 provide a context for the research. Chapter 2 reviews the background of ...
February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

(the industry and the processing methods commonly used), while Chapter 3 reviews the
current state of knowledge about ... (the fundamental principles underlying the subject and the
particular research tools we are going to employ) And try to give your overview a sense of
coherence and progression: Chapter 4 describes the experimental equipment constructed for
this work, which comprised... Experimental techniques included ... Chapters 5 and 6
describe the results of (preliminary investigations) and (detailed studies), respectively.
Finally, give your introductory chapter an informative title. The title should basically
make the same point that the chapter is trying to make: this (what?) is an important subject.
Be creative, and be succinct.
Literature surveys placing your research in the context of current knowledge
Knowing right from wrong
No man is an island, and neither is your dissertation. What you say will be neither the
first word nor the last on this subject. You will benefit from the knowledge already brought
to light by others you will perhaps see further than they did, but only because you will
stand on their shoulders. Your own work will be critiqued in the light of existing
knowledge, and indeed you must do this yourself.
In fact, to be honest, you know very little that you have discovered yourself, and most
of what you do know you have simply accepted from some suitably authoritative source. This
is perhaps the first time you have actually been required to discover something that is not only
not known by you, but not known at all. You are venturing into the unknown. And you are
about to discover something that not everyone finds comfortable. And that is, that at the
forefront of knowledge, at the cutting edge of research, much of what we know is wrong.
Research involves gathering new facts (data) and synthesising them into consistent
patterns (theories or models). (N.B. A particularly good approach to research is to
develop your theory first, perhaps in the form of a mathematical model, then design the
experiment to generate the data to test your theory. Another good approach is to formulate
hypotheses, then design the experiment to generate the data to test your hypothesis.) The
purpose of theories or models is to simplify large quantities of data into more manageable
concepts, and to provide predictive understanding of some aspect of the universe. And some
of the models or theories you will meet in the literature are wrong. They might be wrong
because the data were wrongly collected, or interpreted based on wrong assumptions. Some
models might be correct within only a limited (and unacknowledged) range of application.
Some hypotheses might be overstated as models, with only limiting supporting evidence. So
prepare yourself half of what you read in the literature is wrong. The trouble is, you dont
know which half.
While you are doing your research, you are a detective, looking for evidence. Some of
that evidence comes from the literature, and some from your experiments. Like a detective
interrogating suspects, you cant believe everything you are told nevertheless, you have to
start with the belief that there is useful information (evidence) in the literature. And like the
detective, initially you dont necessarily know what you are looking for to start with, you
are gathering information, trying to build up a picture of what has gone on. The question is,
Will you be the Inspector Morse or the Inspector Clouseau of research?
Later, having gathered your evidence, you hand it over to the barrister who presents it
in court and makes the case. This is the role you take on when, having completed your
investigations, you write the dissertation.
How do you decide what is wrong and what is right? In other words, how do you
form an opinion, or belief, regarding the true, scientific description of this or that part of the
universe and its workings? This is not trivial, but essentially through a combination of your
own experience (i.e. your own experiments), a foundation on well-established scientific truth
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Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

(the fundamental principles of conservation of mass, energy and momentum, for example),
and consistency within the literature.
Patterns before your eyes
This development of your own beliefs, which will form the basis of your argument,
will not happen overnight in fact, you would be wise to shed your preconceptions as much
as possible straight away, and approach your subject initially with an open mind. It is an
iterative process, in which you initially discover what some people believe, accept some
suggestions and reject others, compare with other peoples results, do some experiments,
confirm or refute your expectations, modify your beliefs, re-read the literature with a more
informed understanding, devise more experiments, and so on.
An appropriate metaphor to bear in mind at this stage is that of wrestling with the
literature. The literature is there to be understood, but you must master it. Understanding
will not come easily it will be confused by difficult concepts, conflicting theories, poor data,
complex systems and a breadth of previous research. Wrestling with these can be an intense
and physically exhausting experience. You will not master the literature, you will not
understand your subject, unless you wrestle with it.
Three things will help here. The first is key papers. Some papers are key to your
subject area, either because they define the key understanding which underpins the subject, or
because they review the literature on the subject and draw it together. As you read the
literature, keep an eye out for these papers, and read them carefully and repeatedly. At the
very least, master these.
Secondly, books serve to synthesise large bodies of literature, and are essential to
mastering the context and placing your work in this context.
Thirdly, identify patterns in the literature. A way to do this is to get your list of papers
and try to classify them into major categories. Start by identifying a few obvious categories,
and place each paper into a category. Any that dont fit in, put them to one side, then revisit
this smaller pile later any new categories appropriate for the remaining papers will then be
easier to spot.
Having spotted the patterns in the literature, you are then in a position to make
general, authoritative statements Many workers have studied (this subject) using (that
technique) and to substantiate your claim with a list of references.
And this brings us to the whole point of surveying the literature to use the literature
to substantiate your claims. You are presenting an argument (remember?). Part of that
argument is carried by your experiments. But much (most?) of the argument actually relies
on previous knowledge as reported in the literature. The purpose of the literature survey
chapter(s) is to present your argument, and to support it by reference to the literature.
Let me say that again: The purpose of the literature survey chapter(s) is to present
your argument, and to support it by reference to the literature. This is not to say to support an
insupportable argument by being selective in your referencing. You have developed a set of
beliefs. One is that this is a subject worth studying show this by reference to the literature.
Another is that this aspect is not understood support this claim by reference to the literature.
A third belief is that some earlier findings throw useful light on the problem identify these
and explain their contribution to the understanding you are trying to demonstrate. (Later,
when you discuss your findings both their validity and their meaning you do so with
reference to the literature. You continue to draw on previous knowledge to support your
argument regarding your new piece of knowledge. Your use of the literature does not end
with the literature survey.)
Your literature survey is not a summary of the literature. The last thing you must do is
present a stream of paragraphs which essentially act as a list of papers, with each paragraph
summarising a paper. Dont do it! Instead, decide what understanding or argument you are
February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

trying to get across. Write paragraphs which develop that understanding or argument. Put
references in your paragraphs which support what you are saying. If important references
dont support your argument, explain why you disagree with their argument.
Credit where credit is due and learning at the foot of the masters
Another thing about references as we noted earlier, much of what you know, you
only know second hand from another source. Unless what you are writing is your own
contribution to knowledge (either your own data, or your own interpretation of existing data),
or is so well established as to be common scientific knowledge, reference it. It is dishonest to
report facts or conclusions as if they are your own when they are not.
Also, in reading the literature, observe how people make reference to other papers,
and emulate them. For example, NOBODY who writes a professional, scientific article
includes initials in their citations in the text they write (Campbell, 2009), NOT (Campbell
G.M., 2009). But students frequently adopt the latter. Why? Why invent your own, new,
non-conventional system instead of simply doing what every professional scientist does??
More generally, in reading the literature you are not just learning your subject, you are
learning how to write. Dont miss that opportunity and dont show that youve missed it by
doing stupid things that underline how unobservant you are!
A purposeful objective
Now, we mentioned earlier the importance of knowing the purpose or function of each
chapter what each chapter uniquely contributes to your argument. Heres the first real test
what is the purpose of the literature survey? Be very clear about this. You are not writing a
textbook. You are not writing a review article. These would both review the literature, but
with a different purpose because neither of these is written in the context of a report, and
neither of these leads directly to the reporting of a new piece of research. In the context of
your research dissertation, the literature survey serves a different purpose to a review article
or a textbook, even though it may review the same material. What is that different purpose?
The purpose of the literature survey is to lead logically to the objectives for the
research.
Therefore, these chapters must lead towards a sentence that begins Therefore, the
objectives of the current work were: If your literature survey doesnt include this sentence
or its equivalent, then you probably dont understand what a literature survey is, and you
probably havent presented an argument. More positively, if you understand this purpose,
then you are in a much better position to know what to include in your literature survey and
how to include it. With this clear understanding, you are able to ask, at each point:
What is my argument at this point? (Overall, within the literature survey, your
argument is that the objectives for the project are appropriate and worthwhile. The
strength of your argument is based on demonstrating that these objective arise
logically from a consideration of the literature.)
What is this sentence contributing to my argument?;
How can this paper be used to support my argument?;
What background knowledge and understanding does my reader need to have in
order to follow and understand my argument?

February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

Divide and conquer

Now, there is a great breadth of literature, and you will struggle to present it all
clearly. You will need to bring quite diverse subjects to bear on the particular problem you
are studying. Your main strategy here is to divide and conquer.
A good approach is to have two chapters which are essentially literature survey, but
which are quite different in purpose. (A note of caution: This advice is probably more
appropriate for a PhD or MPhil thesis than for an MEng or MSc dissertation, which is shorter
and less complex. However, its worth knowing about it might help you to structure your
argument more clearly, possibly combining the purposes of these two chapters within a single
chapter.) The first presents the general background information on the subject that the reader
needs to know before they can understand your particular bit. The second chapter presents
the detailed knowledge required to understand the particular aspect that you are studying. For
example, if you are studying aeration during bread dough mixing, the first of these chapters
would describe the breadmaking process and some background about dough rheology,
chemistry and mixing. The second would describe the current knowledge on aeration aspects
of breadmaking and the specific tools available to study this area. If you are studying
separations in flour milling, the first chapter would describe the flour milling process and the
structure of the wheat kernel, and the second would describe separation theory and the current
understanding of cereal separations. In both cases, the second chapter contains detailed
information which the non-expert could not understand without the background given by the
first chapter. The first chapter contains a breadth of understanding, and the second a depth.
Both chapters will make extensive reference to the literature, and both will form part of your
specific argument, but the first contributes a broad background understanding and context,
and the second a deep, specific review of the particular element being researched.
In conclusion
Finally, each of your literature survey chapters must have an introduction, outlining
the scope and purpose of the chapter. Each chapter must then have a summary, which
reviews the chapter, draws it all together into a conclusion which forms part of the overall
argument and sends the reader logically to the next chapter. The reader must feel he is being
taken on a journey, and at each step must feel a sense of progress. Tell them what the
progress is thus far. And dont forget to make your titles indicative of how each chapter
contributes to the progress.
Experimental what you did
There is no simpler way to put it the experimental chapter describes what you did.
No more, no less. It is the written record of your experiments, told in the past tense (because
it records what you did, in the past), in such a way that another person could repeat your
experiments exactly and get your results. So it will need enough detail, accuracy and clarity
to serve that purpose.
The temptation you will face, and must not succumb to, is to describe each experiment
immediately followed by its results and a discussion of what it means. If you do this, you will
have a very disjointed, confusing account. Basically, what you would like to say is Figure X
shows (a result). Think how much easier it will be to do this if you dont have to describe all
the detail behind each result as you present it. Well, you can do that in the next chapter, if
you have given all the detail already in this chapter. So keep the details and the results
separate. It will give a much clearer account.

February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

Clarity begins at home

And speaking of clarity, while the most important part of a dissertation is structure (at
all its several levels), the second most important part is clarity. The structure helps the clarity
a logical structure will carry the argument along clearly. A number of points will help: keep
your sentences and paragraphs short; have introductory and concluding paragraphs for every
section; for every sentence, ask yourself What is this sentence contributing to my
argument? If its there just for information, if its not part of your argument, it shouldnt be
in your thesis.
You are not writing a textbook. You are writing an argument. At no point should
your reader be asking Why am I reading this? Many dissertations contain information and
detail for its own sake, especially in the literature survey chapters. We know you want to
impress the reader with how much youve read, but the reader knows you can read what
they wants to know is, can you assimilate what you read into a sound understanding, and
apply that understanding to generate further knowledge?
But in your quest for clarity, dont fall into the opposite trap of writing notes. Here, as
elsewhere, you need to write complete sentences and paragraphs.
Another enormous aid to clarity is pictures and diagrams. Students seem very
reluctant to include diagrams, but they are worth 1000 words. If in doubt, include a diagram!
Also, improve your clarity by being consistent in your formatting, of figures, tables,
references, headings, and your use of et al., i.e., e.g., etc. And keep your formatting simple.
This is not an exercise in the variety offered by your word-processor.
The best way to improve your clarity is to get somebody else to read your drafts, and
for you to read theirs. As you read their work, you will understand why short sentences and
introductory and concluding paragraphs are so important. And then, at last, you might put
them into your own work
Distinguished company
Your experimental section will be easier to follow if you separate the content into
logical and clearly distinguished sections. It is difficult to write and confusing to read a
description that says, all together in one paragraph: This factor was investigated, using this
equipment, these materials, with analytical measurements done in this way, and interpreted
thus. Not only is there too much diverse content to take in all at once, much of this (the
equipment, the materials, the techniques) will need to be described for the next set of
experiments also, making the chapter very repetitive.
I highly recommend separating your experimental chapter into:
Materials used
Equipment used
Analytical techniques used
Experiments performed
This way, each experiment can be described succinctly, with reference to materials,
equipment and techniques that the reader has already assimilated. Give each experiment an
informative title, then use the same order and titles in your Results chapter. And of course,
give the whole chapter an Introduction that briefly indicates that the chapter covers these
things, and a Summary that succinctly reinforces the rationale for these studies.
Results, observations and discussion your 15 minutes of fame
This is it, the moment you have been waiting for proudly presenting your results.
Surveying the literature is all very well you may have identified new patterns or brought it
all together into a new perspective but the heart of your contribution is really here, in your
results.
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Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

10

As ever, you will need an informative title, which will broadly describe what these
results are about, and an introduction, which will briefly remind the reader of the outline of
your experiments, free from the detail. Then, systematically, you can present your results.
Now, the best way to present a result is to start your paragraph with Figure X
shows.... Dont write As can be seen clearly from the first experiment, , the results of
which are shown in Figure X. Dont, as some students do, start a lengthy discussion of what
a particular experiment means, and then put the result at the end! Figure X shows..., Table
Y shows is the clearest way to present your results. And dont write (See Figure X.), in
brackets as if it were incidental! You should also report your observations (what you saw
during the experiment which is worthy of note) along with the quantitative results (the data
generated by the experiment). You can then have a brief discussion of what it all means, and
perhaps how it relates to previously reported work, before moving on to the next results.
Having presented the results for several related experiments, so that together they
form a coherent piece of work, that is then the time to have a lengthier discussion about the
meaning of it all. Some discussion is relevant at the single experiment level, but most of your
discussion should cover a group of experiments. And at this point, you must relate your
results and observations back to the literature. Many students feel that the literature should
only appear in the literature survey maybe its the title that influences them but the
literature gives your work a context both before and after you do your experiments. You look
at the literature to see what needs doing and to get some guidance about how you might
approach it and that you describe in the literature survey chapters. You then look at the
literature to help you interpret your own results and that you do here, in the Results and
Discussion chapter. Do your results confirm the hypotheses in the literature? Do they
explain contradictions or confusion? Do they extend previously reported understanding? Is
your contribution new? how will you know this unless you refer to what is already
known!?? So, having presented your results, interpret them in the context of the literature.
You may have done a lot of experiments, on different aspects of the problem. In that
case, it may be best to have two results chapters, perhaps the first presenting preliminary
results, and the second more detailed studies. For a longer thesis, one would certainly require
more than one results chapter, and probably several chapters covering experimental method
development and application.
Conclusions evidence that demands a verdict
The argument has been presented. You have looked at the evidence, in the form of
other peoples work in the literature and your own experimental work, and you have argued
for the acceptance of a new contribution to knowledge. It has been a detailed, non-trivial
argument. The intelligent non-expert may not have been able to assimilate it all on a single
reading. Now you need to summarise it for them.
At this point, you are the barrister summing up, and your readers, the wider research
and industrial community, are the jury. Like a barrister, you have been trying to persuade the
jury on the basis of evidence. In the summing up, the barrister reminds the jury of what
evidence they have seen, and therefore what they must do. That is your task in the
Conclusions chapter.
The Conclusions chapter is not the same as the Summary. It gives an overview of
similar material, but in the Conclusions you are a barrister, reviewing evidence and
persuading, while in the Summary you are a news reporter, relating the facts of what this
dissertation contains.
So, review the argument, present the evidence in brief, and show how it links together
into a coherent case for accepting a new piece of knowledge. And part of that new
knowledge is the knowledge of what the wider research community must do next, to take this
February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell

Guide to writing an MEng/MSc dissertation

11

work further. They are your jury. In your recommendations for further work, tell them what
they must do.
I rest my case.
Writing a dissertation, in brief
The dissertation is your argument for the research community to accept a new contribution
to knowledge.
Focus throughout on the structure of the argument: the superstructure, macrostructure,
mesostructure and microstructure. Use the Brontosaurus structure at each level.
Make your dissertation tell a story give it a sense of progression.
Argue your case, on the basis of evidence, from the literature and from your experiments.
For every chapter, have an informative title.
For every chapter have a Introduction section and a Summary section.
Ask yourself What is the purpose of this chapter, in the context of the overall argument?
Write a one page Abstract that covers everything that is an important part of the report,
including the findings and conclusions, along with the title, your name, degree and the
date.
In the Introduction, take your reader from where they are (ignorant) to where you want
them to be (persuaded that this subject area is worth studying), and give them an overview
of what the dissertation contains.
The purpose of the literature survey is to lead logically to the objectives for the research.
Anything you say that is not your own work or your own deduction, reference it.
Emulate the scientific writing style in the literature you are reading learn how to write.
Keep your experimental methods and your results separate.
Present your results first, then discuss them in the context of existing knowledge.
Be consistent in formatting, of figures, tables, references, headings, et al., i.e., e.g., etc.
Use diagrams to describe and explain a picture being worth 1000 words.
Summarise your argument so as to persuade your jury, the research community, of what
they should do that they should accept your new findings and should act on your new
direction of where they should focus their research next.
There are many guides to writing dissertations, and I recommend reading them they contain
many other points that I dont wish to repeat here. Some other personal bugbears and tips of
mine are as follows:
Dont use numbers for references, use Brown et al. (1994). If you use numbers, you will
only have to change them when you insert a last minute reference. (Learning how to use
Endnote may be a worthwhile investment but its quite hard to use properly, so unless
you plan to go on to do a PhD, you may find that its a time-consuming distraction.)
Use full justification (in this age of high technology, there is no excuse for leftjustification). Some people may argue they dont like it. Not a single professional
publisher in the world uses left justification go to the library and select a book at random
to confirm this. If its good enough for every professional publisher in the world, why do
you continue to insist that your aesthetic judgement is right and theirs is wrong?
Put Figure captions under the figure, Table captions above the table. Write Figure and
Table completely (not Fig. 1).
In your References list, reference fully all authors, full paper title, full page range.
Its only has an apostrophe when it means it is or it has, not at any other time!
Have consistent formatting throughout. Decide on your formatting early it will save
introducing inconsistencies later. Find someone elses dissertation with attractive
formatting, and emulate it.
February 2009

School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science

Dr Grant Campbell