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I am presently writing up a PhD with a very imminent deadline (next week!), so please go fairly easy. My thesis is of a technical nature.

In each chapter I have a results subsection which is divided into subsubsections (I'm using Lyx/Latex) for each topic within that chapter. For example, I vary a bunch of parameters within a chapter, and have a results subsection for each parameter. This is mirrored in the discussion section; within each discussion subsection I have subsubsections for each relevant result.

This has resulted in my discussion subsections being essentially more elaborate versions of the results subsections.

I'd like to have a more general area within each discussion subsection - after the individual subsubsections - that can discuss things more cohesively.

I'm not sure the best way to do this - another subsubsection for "General Discussion" is a little clunky. I don't have time to rewrite everything so am looking for a solution that I can add rather than rework.

This may simply be a question of finding an appropriate subsubsection name, or perhaps there are better ways to divide my discussion up without formalising it into subsubsections. I was thinking perhaps I could use some kind of break - like a few lines of empty space after the last subsubsection, any ideas would be very well received.

E.g. I have this:

Chapter N
- Methodology
- Results
* Variation of X
* Variation of Y
- Discussion
* Variation of X
* Variation of Y
* ?? How to discuss results of both X and Y

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  • ...*Synthesis*.
    – aparente001
    Feb 21, 2017 at 21:39

1 Answer 1

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The word "Summary" comes to my mind for the subsection heading under Discussion to combine the results of "Variation of X" and "Variation of Y" to present a cohesive argument on your parametric studies.

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  • I had discounted summary since that shouldn't introduce any new ideas, this is more of a general discussion that can still raise new points.
    – mike
    Feb 21, 2017 at 20:57
  • In that case, is it possible not to have any subsections in the discussion section? If you coalesce all the subsections into just one discussion, the last paragraph could be the one for general discussion. This will work if the discussion section is not overly long.
    – hpc
    Feb 21, 2017 at 21:34
  • I am leaning that way, I could just remove the headers and the discussion is organised into subsections but not formally. I will keep this open and see if there are any other ideas, but I think this could be the way forwards. I do have one discussion section with 3 sub sections, one of those has 3 subsubsections and two of those each have 3 labelled paragraphs..
    – mike
    Feb 21, 2017 at 21:41
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    Three other possibilities I can think of: epilogue, postscript and closure. Of these, postscript sounds the best to me for a thesis of technical nature.
    – hpc
    Feb 22, 2017 at 0:38
  • I'll mark this as closed and thanks to you hpc. I have a few suggestions and not sure which I'll go with, but each of yours sound reasonable.
    – mike
    Feb 22, 2017 at 8:49

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