A navigation test is important for the following two reasons:

• It is hard to structure writing coherently: It hardly happens at the first attempt. Therefore, a proper assessment of the consistency of the structure of your manuscript can help to identify areas of improvement as well as critically reassess what has been written.
• So far you probably wrote your thesis (following an IMRaD structure) thinking that your reader will read it from the beginning to the end. Also this will happen, it is usually not the first way your reader will approach your masterpiece. Probably he/she will jump around in search of information in order to get a feeling of what you did and only afterwards will decide to read it in a more complete manner.

What I am suggesting is a test that can assess the status of your work from the point of view of the reader and the aspects described before. You can do this navigation test alone but it works better if you are doing it with a friend, maybe with a fellow student that is familiar with your field of study but not with your thesis.

The test is relatively simple but requires you to take notes and keep a humble attitude as you will find unexpected surprises. These are the steps:

1. Meet with a friend that is familiar with your field of study but not with your work.
2. After a drink of their choosing, give him/her your thesis outline (the index that contains the subsections as well). Make sure that each subsection has the pictures and the tables that you would like to have in your final thesis. Alternatively, you can share your entire work but make sure that he/she will not spend more than 10 minutes browsing the document.
3. Tell him/her that you will ask her a few questions and that he/she can use the manuscript for answering. He/she will not have to retrieve the complete answer but tell you to which section(s) he/she will jump to search for more information.
4. Take notes on how they react to the questions and the sections they decide to visit. You should not give any suggestions and you should repeat this process for each question.

Here you can find an initial set of questions:

• What it this thesis about?
• What is the research question?
• Did you collect your own data or use an existing dataset?
• What kind of methodology did you use for validating your research questions?
• How can you reuse my data for your own thesis/research?
• Can this research be considered concluded or is further research needed?
• Who else has done research in a similar topic?

If you have time, you can also ask the following questions:

• What can you learn if you read the thesis?
• How can you get access to my data?
• What code/tool did I use for analyzing my data?
• Does this thesis have industrial relevance?
• Did you do an internship in conjunction of this thesis?
• If someone does not have time to read the whole thesis, can you give this person a short description of it? (Follow up question: If someone already read the executive summary, can you give them a short version of the thesis that is a bit longer than the summary?

Now it is time to check your notes and critically assess (with or without the help of your friend) the following points:

• How easy was it for him/her to find the answers?
• Was the selected section(s) the most appropriate one? Why?
• Does the text of the selected section(s) deliver(s) the answer in a simple and complete manner?
• Do the identified sections live up to other expectations of the reader?

Remember that you are suppose to take the perspective of your friend. They were confronted for the first time with your thesis and this is what they understood.

I am sure that this exercise will give you the opportunity to critically reflect on your work and implement the proper corrective actions. If you have the time, you can repeat the exercise with a different friend.

The Navigation Test: a simple test that can improve the quality of your #writing in you #Thesis or scientific #paper. #writingtips
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1: Outline and indexes

The structure of your document plays an important role and is often the first thing that your reader checks. Therefore, it is your chance to make a good impression. Consider the first level index and the second level index separately.

• First level index: make sure that it follows a variation of the IMRaD structure and consider making an outline of the whole manuscript in the first chapter. Take all the space that you need, in particular if you are not bounded by word limits. Make a dedicated section in Chapter 1 with a bullet list, one for each chapter, appendix included. In addition, describe the content in 1-3 sentences.
• Second level index: look at the title of each chapter and each section and imagine that they are the only thing that will be read of your thesis. How easy is it to follow the story that they are telling? Is the story and the logic easy to grasp or is something missing? Should you merge together or divide one or more sections?

2: Table and pictures

Tables and pictures are also part of this writing rules checklist. As matter of fact, after the index, they are the second thing that will be noticed by your reader and are as important as your outline. Each table and picture should have a text description. No exception. In addition, when describing these items consider the following “3 layers” of comments:

• Layer 1: present the obvious. Imagine describing a table to a blind person: What is in the x? What is in the y? What is the meaning of each column of the table?
• Layer 2: present what is objective. In other words, present the facts. Can we observe a correlation between X and Y? Is A greater than B?
• Layer 3: present what is logical. In other words, present your interpretation of the facts. What can we conclude from the fact that A is greater than B? What are the implications of X and Y being correlated? Here you can be moderately speculative and give your best, educated guess.

Whenever possible, make your own pictures (the same applies to tables) instead of reusing the pictures that you find in other papers. This does not imply that you have to “regenerate” the same pictures. Re-elaborate them and make sure that they represent your own original thinking. If you end up using a picture or table that has been published in another paper or book, give credit correctly.

In addition, assuming that you already did the work mentioned at the first point of this article, look at the table and the title in conjunction with the subsection where they are presented. Do they match well? Do they complement each other?

3: Bullet Lists

Bullet lists are very important in your scientific report. You can use them to simplify and structure the text that you are writing. Using bullet lists will make sections become more logically coherent. At the same time, you should resist the urge to create sections that contain only bullet lists. They should always be surrounded by “plain text” that describes why that particular list/categorization is important. If you find yourself in some sort of “writer’s block”, start by introducing the bullet list and then provide its point.

4: Appendixes

The thesis should contain all the material that is necessary for documenting your scientific claims. At the same time, there is always some preparatory work or test work that you performed for initial validation of your ideas or to clarify to yourself the intermediate steps. Appendixes are perfect places for this: Carefully assess all the material that you have produced to your thesis and try to see how it could be packaged in an appendix. In other words, if you have done the work and it is some how related to the main claims of your thesis, why not show it? At the same time, you should consider an appendix like any other chapter and not a place where to park pictures and tables. Consequently, all the previous remarks of this article apply to them as well. In addition, every appendix must be refereed in one or more chapter of your thesis for further explanation.

5: No empty section allowed

This point is relatively simple and clear: no empty sections in your thesis. In other words: (for example) do not start a chapter with “section 2.1” but use the section “2.0” for describing what the chapter is about. Maybe you can give an outline of the follow-up sections here?

6: Consider a grammar check, style check and plagiarism check

A plagiarism check is the process of locating instances of plagiarism or copyright infringement within a work or document. There are several resources freely available in the internet: Use one or two. Make sure that the content of the chapters and the appendixes is not flagged. However, you should not worry about references and/or portions of code.

In addition, you can easily find tools in the internet that check style and grammar, and some may also be available at your library. I would suggest you to spend a few hours with them and try to reflect on the changes that they recommend. Consider their output as an opinion and an opportunity to reflect on how you wrote certain aspects of your work. Not all the suggestions are good, but some may be worth incorporating.

A Final comment on writing rules and next steps

Reflecting on the writing rules presented in this article will help you in structuring your work and making it more accessible to your reader. I would encourage to implement all of them and take a 24h break from writing. Then, you can revisit these points one more time and see if you still would like to make some changes. After a couple of iterations I would suggest to perform a “navigability test” as described in this article.

Simple #writing rules that can improve the quality of your #Thesis or scientific #paper. #writingtips
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This article (Simple Writing Rules that can improve the quality of your thesis) is part of the miniseries on how to do a good thesis, you can see the full list of post at the following links:

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The first 2 talks are given by Larry McEnerney from the University of Chicago. He advocates a reader centric approach where the main goal of the writer is to deliver value for the reader.

Practical actionable advice is based on viewing the scientific community as a collection of groups of individuals that speak a particular language and have agreed to advance the field into a particular direction. Taking into account this situation, you may want to consider the following advice:

• Learn the jargon of the community and use it in your writing.
• Learn the goals of the community and write from the point of view of how your work can help them (your readers!) advancing their understanding of the topic.
• Before pointing out a particular fallacy, consider praising the work done by other members of the scientific community.

This first talk targets young scholars such as Master and PhD students:

This second talk addresses the writing needs and styles of practitioners in their particular field of expertise. You will find some degree of repetition here, but also new opportunities for reflecting.

This last talk is given by Steven Pinker on December 9th, 2014 at Harvard, together with and Jill Abramson. The title is “Mastering Style: The Learning and Teaching of Writing”, and the talk is based on Pinker’s book: “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century“.

Especially this last talk can serve as an excellent inspiration for high-quality writing. It presents interesting reflections on the way we cognitively process reading and writing.

It also outlines two different styles:

• the Classic style
• the Postmodern/Self-Conscious style

The first (Classic Style) focuses on helping the reader in seeing the objective reality. This goal can be accomplished by focusing on “the thing being shown” instead of presenting “the activity that happens when studying it”. With this style, it is important to avoid clichés and “metaconcepts” (concepts about concepts), among other recommendations. If you feel lost by now, just listen to the talk -it will clarify all these aspects.

On the other hand, academic papers are frequently written in a postmodern or self-conscious style. These approaches encourage techniques like apologizing and hedging.

In summary:

As a final remark, please remember that writing is supposed to bring value for the readers. It is fundamental to adopt this mindset as well as the point of view of the readers. This task looks intuitive and simple. However, it is far from easy. A proper internalization of this core message can serve as a starting point for increasing the quality of your writing.

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