As a small study task I was required to collect a range of dissertations and analyse their written form in order to learn more about an academic style of writing which I could then apply to my own works. I was tasked to look particularly at the written form including punctuation, grammar, referencing and tone of voice. I selected a range of dissertations randomly these included; Design for the tourism industry in Uganda by Andrea Cooper, An investigation into the branding Techniques, Marketing Strategies and business structure of Nazi Germany in comparison to those of McDonalds by Sam Lane, and How the mission insignia of the US space programme reflected on idealised notions of American Nationhood, culture and identity during the Cold War era 'Space Race' by Luke Rossiter. I will look at each of these dissertations individually to learn more about their individual written form and see if I can apply these techniques to examples of my own works.
Design for the tourism industry in Uganda by Andrea Cooper
I feel this dissertation is well structured with a clear contents at the from and left aligned chapters throughout, The introduction is objective and provides a succinct overview of the hypothesis and suggested research topics. There is clear use of appropriate data sources within the dissertation using numerical percentages that clearly cited in text adding to the vanity of the data. I feel the images that are referenced within the dissertation could be more logically compiled towards the end as they are a vast amount of images to support the arguments made within the text however they are separated half way though by the bibliography, I feel it would have been more affective to place all of the images before the bibliography as this is often the final thing in within the structure of academic writing.
An investigation into the branding Techniques, Marketing Strategies and business structure of Nazi Germany in comparison to those of McDonalds by Sam Lane
this dissertation is finished to a good standard, similarly to the previous example it includes a contents page with clearly labeled page numbers, this dissertation includes centrally aligned titles and sub headings which I feel works better as it instantly attracts the eye and separates this from the main body of text. there is double spacing between the main body of text and a notable quote in the introduction presumably to draw attention to the quote however I felt this could have been achieved more professionally with use of subtle italics The dissertation has a consistently higher lexical field making the body of text flow smoothly. I prefer this style of image referencing as there are multiple sources per page I feel this is more effective as they do not look oversized and gives the referencing an efficient feel.
How the mission insignia of the US space programme reflected on idealised notions of American Nationhood, culture and identity during the Cold War era 'Space Race' by Luke Rossiter
The final dissertation continues the convention of a contents page however the page numbers are placed at the top of the page which I feel is harder to reference looking at the contents page. This dissertation is not structured as well as the previous examples as there is a noticeable lack of paragraphing present within the body of text. This makes the dissertation look less inviting and harder to follow as ideas of often not clearly separated. In text citation is good and consistent within this dissertation which I feel aids the validation of statistics and data presented within the central arguments. Finally similarly to the second dissertation this example uses multiple images per page for the image referencing which I feel is more appropriate as it looks clean and efficient.
From analysing these dissertation I have observed that a well labeled contents page is an essential generic convention of dissertation writing however I feel page numbers should be placed at the bottom right of each page as this makes the whole process of reading the text far easier. Overall I felt the structure of the these examples was good however could still be improved this has highlighted to me just how important both the physical structure and the structure of the text can impact the ease of processing the body of text. Finally I have observed that referencing images typically comes after the bibliography which I would have not previously have conformed to with my own works, I have also determined that I personally feel multiple images per page for referencing looks cleaner and more efficient as when referring simplistic image such as logos. From this I can now look at applying these key features to my own works in order to improve the overall quality of my final submissions.
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