Scope. This page collects what I ask of students writing proposals, theses, and manuscripts. It grew out of a plan I wrote for one dissertation proposal, but almost nothing here is specific to that project. Most of it applies to any paper you submit anywhere.

Use any information here at your own risk. It comes with no guarantees, and where a journal or funder tells you something different, they win.

1. What the document must contain

Before worrying about how it reads, check that it exists. For a proposal or a thesis:

• [ ] Title
• [ ] Your name
• [ ] Your program
• [ ] The date
• [ ] Your advisor's name
• [ ] Background
• [ ] Significance, meaning why anyone should care
• [ ] General aim, and it says something beyond restating the title
• [ ] Specific aims
• [ ] Materials and methods, in every aim
• [ ] Results, preliminary results, or expected results, in every aim
• [ ] A closing section in every aim, matched to how far along it is (see section 3)
• [ ] References

The date and the program are the two easiest items in any document, and they are the two most often missing. That is not a coincidence. They are missing because nobody re-read the title page after writing it.