Writing The Thesis Acknowledgments: The Etiquette of Thanking

Breakdown (Kino Praxis)

by Susan Carter, Doctoral Writing: http://doctoralwriting.wordpress.com/2013/04/18/writing-the-acknowledgments-the-ettiquette-of-thanking/

Acknowledgements pages show the essence of the thesis author and their experience.

If you look through a dozen or so at a time, you will hear the screams, the manic laughter, catching the sombre tragedy and the sense of awe and agony that underpins the doctoral life span.

Acknowledgements are non-consequential in that a student is not evaluated on them, unlike the rest of the prose they have laboured over.

Some acknowledgement pages give away the secret of their authors’ difficulty with formal prose, and it doesn’t matter - by the time anyone reads them, the author has been found acceptable.

But acknowledgements do matter because in amongst the celebration the right people need to be thanked in the right sort of way.

The acknowledgement pages I have looked at vary considerably. Most thank funders, supervisors, close colleagues and family. Possibly supportive friends. This means it is effectively a snub if someone important is not thanked.

Typically the structure moves from thanking the most formal support to the least formal thanks as detailed above - funders, supervisors, other academics, colleagues, and finally family.

This makes sense according to the logic of incremental progression because the informal thanks to family are often the most heartfelt. Close family members are often the people who gave the most (although some supervisors are likely to feel this is not true).

It is important that a student acknowledges the formal carefully, though: any person or institution that has contributed funding to the project, other researchers who have been involved in the research, institutions that have aided the research in some way.

They should also acknowledge proofreaders and editors - that is a requirement at the University of Auckland where I work, and a good one in terms of honesty in authorship. Such formal thanks are usually in the first paragraph or two.

Interestingly, our Guide to Theses and Dissertations states that you should “Only acknowledge people or institutions that have contributed to the content of your thesis” (14).

Yet no one follows this advice. I have seen people thank their dog for sitting at their feet for hundreds of hours, the cat for its companionable choice of the thesis draft as a place to settle down for a nap, and God for creating a magnificent universe available to be studied.

It is possible to thank people for more specific regional rather than global help throughout the thesis too. I like doing this, because it cheers me up to remember the kind, wise colleagues who have helped me along with my thinking.

If footnotes are used, the work can be done there, for example, with footnotes that state “I am indebted to xxx for several discussions that helped me to focus this section”. Without footnotes, more formal provision of a ‘personal conversation’ reference will do the same work.

Students may choose to namedrop in these internal thanks too: if a big name in the field gave feedback after a conference paper or in conversation, acknowledgements strengthen the student’s academic authority and insider status.

Acknowledgements vary in length, and the effect of a very long acknowledgement - I have seen a nine-pager - is to dilute the thanks. I have also seen one that simply lists five names, which was blunt, but powerful.

So it is good to start a draft within six months of submission, and revise it for the full satisfaction of a job well done on graduation, with all dues paid.

The usual structuring principles apply: those who gave most should be given the most thanks. Supervisors will know the sad truth if the cat gets more lines than they do.

Thanks are best when concrete.

I really like thanks to supervisors that carry a sense of who they were in the drama, like “My supervisor, who kept a sense of humour when I had lost mine”; “my supervisor, whose maddening attention to detail drove me to finally learn to punctuate prose”; or “my supervisor, whose selfless time and care were sometimes all that kept me going.”

A precisely-worded acknowledgement like a perfectly chosen gift. It fits. It matches.

Some supervisors tend not to give advice on acknowledgments, because they expecting to be thanked, so it feels preemptive.

Do others feel, though, that the end result is happier all round if supervisors offer to critically read the acknowledgements too? Or would it be more appropriately a place where academic advisors could give objective advice?