Hi All

Possibly this is an incredibly basic question but it's been giving me trouble so why not look for advice from those whose experience I greatly value? Corny but true!

I am busy writing up, hoping to sumit late summer. My supervisor has recently returned two chapters I submitted to him electronically. He used 'track changes' which is good as his actual handwriting is tiny. We have also had two meetings where we discussed his suggestions, therefore I have additional handwritten notes.

My question is this: how best to re-write the two chapters?
What I did was keep my 1st versions in a folder marked '1st drafts' (for safe keeping really). I then re-saved them as '2nd drafts'. I also saved his 'track changes' chapters separately. I have been working for a few days with two chapters open, ie supv's comments and the new 2nd draft. I also printed out his 'track changes' chapters with the comments down the side - there's an awful lot of them!! Would anybody do things differently?

I'm in the social sciences, not hard science so have no experiments to re-do. Neither do I have to do any additional fieldwork. It's a mixture of editing, expanding, moving, rethinking etc. Any advice greatly received, even if it's just 'get on with it'!

Thanks a mil

A

Editing and rewriting can be a challenge! The issue is how and where to start! Editing is a learned skill, just like research---only no one seems to spend any time telling us HOW to edit. I really like the book "Legal Writing in Plain English" by Bryan Garner. Although its about legal writing, his systematic and easy to grasp tips on how to edit are invaluable for any kind of writing. He gives a very straightforward analysis of what to edit, in what sequence, and why. I have not come across any other book that does this, and I would recommend this book for ANYONE who does any kind of academic writing. There are usually relatively inexpensive (£5 or so) used copies on Amazon.

Hope this helps.

Thanks so much for that recommendation, Olivia, you always have good book recommendations I've noticed :-).

I have just put in an order via Amazon, along with a couple of crime books!! Not sure where they fit into my thesis, but you never know!

Hi Ady, I did just the same as you for my sups comments. He provided them in track changes and I had his doc open and my thesis, working between the two. Some of his comments I added as he had suggested, some were modified versions and some I argued against! I guess the quicker, alternative is to go over his comments via track changes and then cut n paste the entire section into your thesis, deleting the old section. This is assuming that your sups returned version is exactly the same as the one you have. In my case the sups version may be slightly older if it has been a few weeks before it was returned to me!

My other sup suggested having the file in 'dropbox' in a shared access file. My sup could look at it and make changes to the current doc rather than older versions sent via email. The only major drawbacks of this is 1. not knowing what changes have been made and 2. accidental deletion by sups!!! I use dropbox to share but do not keep the current version there incase it gets lost.

I will look at this thread for any alternative ideas too.

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Thanks Dunni, good to know somebody much further down the line than me has done it the same way :-)

While I have dropbox I don't think my supv is familiar with it. Only the other day he was asking me if I intend cutting up my interview transcripts with a scissors and spreading them all over the floor to analyse! A valid technique admittedly but not one I am going to pursue!!

You are welcome, Ady, I hope the book is helpful! :) oooh crime books sound nice--some reading for fun is always a good thing!!! :D