- Not starting to write early enough: Don't underestimate how long it'll take you to write up your dissertation - this is often worth a substantial proportion of your final grade and the last thing you need is to make a rushed attempt because you ran out of time.
- Not planning: It's essential to plan the sections of your dissertation at an early stage. This allows you to break your writing into manageable sections, rather than being faced with one big task. Planning your dissertation also gives you a focus for your writing.
- Setting an unrealistic timetable: It's important that you set yourself realistic goals and make sure you stick to them. You'll feel a sense of personal achievement when you meet your deadlines, but make sure you set realistic deadlines and that you stick to them.
- Not being critical enough: Both of previous researcher's work and of yours. A good literature review and discussion is reliant on your ability to discuss, make comparisons and critically analyse previous researchers' work. You should also be able to recognise shortcomings in your work and suggest how you'd approach the same issue differently next time.
- Figure/table/plate legends not descriptive: Your reader should be able to decipher your figure/table/plate from its legend without referring back to your text. A common mistake is to keep the legend short which reduces its effectiveness.
- Writing your reference section last: There are bound to be a few, if not lots, of references you've borrowed and returned, or lent to someone else. Not to mention the ones you cant find! It can take hours to track down all your references, and there's always a couple you can't find at all. It's not unusual for examiners to cross-check your citations with references, and they must match.
- Giving your supervisor the first and only draft the day before it's due for submission: Apart from the fact your supervisor will be extremely busy, you need to give them enough time to look through it properly. Needless to say when it's returned there'll be comments on how you can improve it, which will take time to action.
- Contents page not matching with page numbers: You should make sure your contents page matches up with the correct section headings and page numbers. When you change anything in your dissertation, you must change it in your contents page. If you've set Word to automatically generate your contents page, you should always double-check it. It wouldn't be the first time it's made a mistake!
- Printing out the night before it's due in: You'd be surprised how long it takes to print out your dissertation. And you can be guaranteed that your toner/ink cartridge/paper supply will run out at 9pm, just as the shops are closing! You should also give yourself enough time to read through your work one more time, to check that your graphs have printed out properly and your section headings correspond to your contents page.
- Not proof-reading your final copy: It's tempting to miss this stage out - you've spent the past few months writing your dissertation and the last thing you want to do is read it again! You should make sure you read it one last time before you print it. The key here is to concentrate on the editorial factors - spelling, punctuation, page numbering, etc. It's not uncommon for students to pick up on minor (spelling) or major (missing sections) errors before they hand in.
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