Writing literature review is one of the important step of thesis or dissertation or paper. Process of writing literature review starts right from reading literature.
I assume that you already know the topic on which you want to write literature survey.
It starts with taking notes of important part/points from each literature. Then connecting literature survey to form a seamless story (yes Story), here story means connecting key points of each paper into a one single story where you can visualize each paper as each character of story. Once this is done you all set up to write Story oops I mean Literature survey. Now writing survey can be divided into 3 parts
- Writing what you have understood during the entire survey: It should contain clearly, why survey was done (why was it necessary), what the survey about, findings of the survey and conclusion. Every body will say this or very much similar things. The main thing that differentiate between good and bad survey is in “clarity, proper flow and punchy vocabulary” . To organised literature you may take help of some software which will really help you in not only in managing literature but also in complete process of referring this article in Dissertation editor ( like MS Word) see Chandraprakash Gupta’s answer to What is the best tool to organize papers? .You can make use of free Word plugin like Mendeley to import citation directly form web/offline-files, manage reference, refer in text and make bibliography apart from searching content in all your reference from 1 place see Tired of importing, inserting and managing reference citation? Do all this in just 1 click.
- Writing survey: Once the above things are done, the other part important is writing it in MS Word/LaTeX/Open Office (I personally prefer MS Word over LaTeX, see Chandraprakash Gupta’s answer to What is the best software to write my master’s thesis? ) which many consider as secondary task. However this is equally important and time consuming. With just 1 free MS Word Plugin, you can do all the boring, things in just 1–2 clicks. Tired of importing, inserting and managing reference citation? Do all this in just 1 click. This 10 min video will definitely save your days of hard work and time which you can spend in important things like improving flow of information, bringing clarity and literature survey.
- Automating most MS Word: You may require some of them but here is complete list of things that you can automate in MS Word to save time and effort for important stuffs. I wasted lot to time in doing it manually which i could have left to MS Word.
- Different formatting of Chapter Name & number (manual update), Different format and numbering for each level of heading (1.1 , 1.1.1, 1.1.1.1) was done manually each time however I could have automated it just as it can be done automatically see this Formatting office report / papers – Intro + Heading
- Numbering of Figure and Table was manually done. Numbering of table and figure manually is easy and even to refer that number in text is also too easy. However every time when I had to add/delete some figure/table. I had to manually update each of the other figure/table number and also at the place where it was referred. Inserting/Deleting of new figure/table is inevitable during thesis writing. But effort and time of editing could have been reduced to almost 0 if I followed this method see video Formatting MS office report / Journal papers – Numbering Figure / Table
- Reference numbering is similar to Figure numbering (any deletion/addition could lead to cascading effect of editing other linked numbers which is really boring). Other thing of typing paper fields like Author, Title, Journal, Issue, Volume, Date etc is also a pain. Moreover which content is from which paper too consumes lot of time if you want to verify even if already managed during literature survey. All this could have been done smartly by using a free plugin called Mendeley and used as shown in this video Tired of importing, inserting and managing reference citation? Do all this in just 1 click.
Overall process of survey writing similar to LaTeX (in terms of easy, fast and simple) see Automated formatting in Ms Word document for Journals, Papers, Magazine etc
Had some body guided me in all the shortcut of writing survey I could have definitely saved at least 2–3 weeks in overall process of making report. And more than that it would have been a really good mental peace during the frustrating phase of writing report and completing project in limited time.
Link for other important video for writing thesis, dissertation and research paper
Most people will say that you need to learn LaTeX to make good thesis however I completely disagree with that statement. Now a days MS Word has almost all the features and in fact more than what LaTeX provides. Moreover you need to learn LaTeX which is time consuming task if you are new to it.
These video will definitely help you to write Thesis in most efficient way and in least time. My friend didn’t listen to me and had to pay price in terms of time and effort required for regular editing which could have been done automatically in word like changing figures no/referred figure, bibliography, typing equation, making table of content and all others things that could be automated. This video technique will help you not only now but in your future carrier and I bet you will save lot of time (days) by doing things intelligently.
They don’t have official LaTeX suport, but you can do almost 99% of what LaTeX can do and much more that LaTeX cannot do
- Once click formatting of any text in Word using Headings/styles.
- Automatic numbering of Figures/Tables/Equation (all types of captions) in MS Word. They also update automatically in you add or delete figures tablesequation in between
- Complete guide on smartest and fastest way to type equation in MS Word
- Short guide on how to type equation in MS Word
- Shortcut for typing Accents in word
- Smartest way and shortcut for typing Subscript and super script like LaTeX in MS Word
- Smartest way to type Greek symbols or Shortcut for typing Greek symbols in word like LaTeX
- Complete tutorial or work flow for formatting scientific manuscript | Thesis | Dissertation | Word document
- Best free reference manager for importing, tracking, searching inside reference, bibliography maker in MS Word
- Top 5 shortcut of MS Word that every one should know .
This shortcut will definitely be useful in various stages of research paper , thesis, dissertation writing
C P Gupta is a YouTuber and Blogger. He is expert in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. His YouTube channel @pickupbrain is very popular and has crossed 9.9 Million Views.