How to Write a Thesis
by Umberto Eco, Caterina Mongiat Farina, Geoff Farina · first published 2015
64% recommend36% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A practical guide to planning, structuring and writing a thesis, with advice that also applies to organizing cross-disciplinary work beyond academia. Suits students and researchers starting long academic writing.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…unfair comparison, but if you want to read amazing technical writing, try reading "Everything and more: A compact history of Infinity" by David Foster Wallace. Or contrast PG's essay with Umberto Eco's "How to write a Thesis"[2]. It's hard to escape the conclusion that PG's writing would not survive a double-blind test where someone didn't see his name attached. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html [2] It's a whole…
on “An interview with Paul Graham on writing” ↗…in the humanities, writing is the difference between mere 'accumulation of knowledge', which we all know will eventually be forgotten, and understanding. I would actually recommend Umberto Eco's book How to Write a Thesis as a great foundation for how to structure your cross-disciplinary studies and synthesize, again even if just for yourself. If you do start a blog, however 'cliched', you can also start to seek validation…
on “Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?” ↗You want to read Umberto Eco's seminal "How to write a thesis". Not quite the same as an essay. But it does contain tons of good stuff on writing.
on “How to Write Usefully” ↗…developers are rare these days. Algorithms Unlocked, Thomas Cormen, 212 pages The Art of Readable Code, Dustin Boswell & Trevor Foucher, 180 pages How To Take Smart Notes, Sonke Ahrens, 151 pages How to Write a Thesis, Umberto Eco, 223 pages How Charts Lie, Alberto Cairo, 193 pages
on “Ask HN: Best books under 200 pages for developers?” ↗…http://www.criticalreading.com/ Look into universities and approaches from Professors: Jordan Peterson’s writing approach is based a lot on drill: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://jordanbpeterson.co... Umberto Eco’s "How to write a Thesis"
on “How to get better at painting without painting anything (2015)” ↗…imagines that kind of a thing, is a room filled with people wearing his own mask. You asked for books that might help. I’m not sure what your project involves, but I can suggest a few that I have enjoyed. How to Write a Thesis and Six Walks in the Fictional Woods by Umberto Eco. Strong Opinions by Vladimir Nabokov.
on “Ask HN: Finally ready to share my personal work, how to manage expectations?” ↗…the books I read. From there I move on to the more advanced stuff I gathered and use my old habit of following bibliographic references for more. Umberto Eco has a book on how to write a PHD thesis, How to Write a Thesis . I think a lot of the techniques described in that book are valuable for any kind of research, whether your aim is to write a thesis or just to learn something new.
on “Ask HN: How do you learn and research every day?” ↗…mnemonic systems, philosophical systems, and the occult during the Renaissance). Matthew Butterick's Practical Typography and Typography for Lawyers. Bryan Garner's The Winning Brief. Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis. Adler's How to Read a Book. Pierre Bayard's How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read. I could go on. Book posts are my favorite posts on HN, but they always lighten my wallet and at home I'm surrounded…
on “Ask HN: What books have been worth your time?” ↗And Umberto Eco wrote a book on this model before Greene. "How to Write a Thesis"
on “The McPhee method for writing deeply reported nonfiction” ↗Apologies, missed this response. Do you have an email address I can reach you at? It depends somewhat if you’re really interested in the “human” or “social” sciences, but I really do recommend that Eco How to Write a Thesis book regardless. It conveys the old secrets of how to enter humanistic scholarship — and was originally written to allow even working class Italians who might only have access to a library for an hour…
on “Ask HN: I'm interested in so many disciplines, but what can I do with that?” ↗…I find his filing system for everything else to be a bit lacking. I've supplemented it with ideas from The Card Index System¹, traditional library card catalogs, and Umberto Eco's recommendations in How to Write a Thesis. At the moment, my card index fills most of my center desk drawer. It may outgrow that soon, but I have no intention of culling it down; it's quite literally an index into my own memories, to help me…
on “The Cornell Note-Taking System” ↗Umberto Eco discusses that very issue in his book "How to Write A Thesis". Question: "My advisor is an arsehole." Answer: "Dude, you knew that before."
on “Statistics, we have a problem” ↗I'd speculate he might have picked it up from Umberto Eco's Come si fa una tesi di laurea (1977 - English translation: How to Write a Thesis, 2015)
on “Luhmann's Zettelkasten” ↗Your comment reminds a bit of Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis. He gets down into details of using colored pens and index cards. Craft. https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-...
on “The missing semester of CS education” ↗Umberto Eco wrote a little (229p) volume titled How to Write a Thesis in 1977. In the introduction to the revised 1985 edition, Eco describes the book as one that "focuses on the spirit, mentality, and research methods required to write a good thesis, rather than on its…
on “How to Read a Paper [pdf]” ↗