# Your Thesis/Dissertation title and length here, please. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 3, 2003, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344 "2003-09-03T16:30:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/41 "2003-09-08T06:41:30Z")
“_The Pivotal Role of Great Swiss Naval Battles in European History_” A breeze at five pages. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/42 "2003-09-08T06:59:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zenster \* > \*\*“_The Pivotal Role of Great Swiss Naval Battles in European History_” > > A breeze at five pages. \*\* Another example of academic verbosity! 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/43 "2003-09-08T08:17:51Z")
“From Beowulf to the Silver Surfer: The role of the superhero in literature.” I think there may have been a couple more adjectives in there, somewhere; it’s been a real long time. I knew I had forgotten something. Must throw a superhero into my next mystery novel. Possibly as a sidekick. ---
**Author:** ![Billdo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/billdo/32/315_2.png) [@Billdo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Billdo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/44 "2003-09-08T11:12:38Z")
It’s not exactly a thesis or dissertation, but I’ll post the Note I wrote in Law School (a Note is a student-written article in a law journal). _The Problem of Withholding in Response to Breach: A Proposal to Minimize Risk in Continuing Contracts_, 62 Fordham Law Review 163 (1993). It weighed in at 41 pages published, and was 155 pages manuscript (um, computer printout manuscript, I didn’t write it by hand). 229 footnotes! ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/45 "2003-09-08T12:37:44Z")
LL.B. major paper: “Aboriginal Title and the Common Law in Canada” LL.M. major paper: “Habeas Corpus, Prospective Overruling, and the Role of Federal Courts” (Titles aren’t quite right, but you get the idea.) ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/46 "2003-09-08T12:59:00Z")
“Graph Coloring Analogues With a Condition at Distance Two: L(2,1) Labellings and List [symbol]l[/symbol]-Labellings”. Ph.D. dissertation in mathematics, University of South Carolina, 1993; 88 pages. Shows that you don’t need to be a liberal-arts type to run on at the mouth in your thesis. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![VunderBob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/839c29/32.png) [@VunderBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VunderBob)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/47 "2003-09-08T13:06:33Z")
_Effects of Studded Snow Tires on Domestic House Cats_, 178 pages ---
**Author:** ![DaddyTimesTwo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f07891/32.png) [@DaddyTimesTwo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaddyTimesTwo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/48 "2003-09-08T14:38:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Erroneous \* > \*\*I should probably know the title, shouldn’t I, given that it’s due in 7 weeks? Probably something like ‘Analysis of a Midden Deposit from Pulu Islet, Torres Strait.’ It should be between 13,000 and 15,000 words, probably. Speaking of ‘shoulds’, I should be working on it right now. Which means that it’s…time for a lunch break, yeah! > > (I am one of the world’s worst procrastinators) \*\* I must say **Erroneous** , that you sound like one of the world’s _ **best** _ procrastinators. 😃 And hat’s off to you! I’ve never written a paper longer than say 20 pages or so, and that was in high shchool. I had to write a few papers my past two semesters in college as they were implementing stricter writing requirement outside of English class. The longest was still under 10 pages. On a side note, in the History of Music (a 100 level elective with mostly freshmen) class I took as senior, the instructor told us that the tests would have at least one essay question. He apologized and said it was new university policy. There was much groaning: “This isn’t English class!”. Like answering a question with a couple paragraphs was going to kill someone! Stupid freshmen! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![ASD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c68b51/32.png) [@ASD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASD)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/49 "2003-09-08T16:40:44Z")
Honors B.S. Chemistry: A Novel Approach to the Detection of Aqueous Pesticides Using Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (about 45 pages I think) M.S. Geography: Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Coal Combustion in Central Pennsylvania: Addressing Vulnerability Through Technological Options (about 120 pages) ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/50 "2003-09-08T17:25:02Z")
“The Nazca Lines: Pathways to the Gods?” NCNSA Award thesis in archaeology. “The Spread and Diversification of Cuneiform,” M.A., Linguistics. ---
**Author:** ![overlyverbose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/9dc877/32.png) [@overlyverbose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/overlyverbose)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/51 "2003-09-08T17:27:07Z")
Forgot to include pages: This one - “The Nazca Lines: Pathways to the Gods?” - was 143 pages. This one - “The Spread and Diversification of Cuneiform” - was about 200 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Machine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Ice\_Machine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Machine)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/52 "2003-09-08T18:09:01Z")
Ah, here it is. My, it sure is dusty. “Solubility of Na2CO3 and Na2CO3/NaNO3 Mixture in Supercritical Water”, Master of Science in Engineering, 1998, 115 pages ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/53 "2003-09-08T19:38:54Z")
If there’s a prize going for the _vaguest_ title, I suppose I’m in with a shout: “Topics in Perturbation Theory”. It was mainly about QCD, but it was really several different things sort-of-elegantly bolted together, hence the title. Came to somewhere between 100 and 200 pages. ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/54 "2003-09-08T20:30:59Z")
One of my friend’s for his undergraduate: “How I learned to stop hating and love the Kalashnikov” approx 120 pages on the changes in the African small arms trade after the Cold War ended. Its an inspiration. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2003, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/55 "2003-09-08T20:51:02Z")
Thesis (BA Linguistics): Schizophrenia and Syntax. 70+ pages. Showed that the writing of schizophrenics was intrasententially intact for deep grammar though intersententially compromised for semantics. Thesis (MA Writing): The Fall and Spring of Ikaros. ??80 pages. Short fiction and poetry. **No thesis for a master’s degree in counseling psychology goes here** …though I did write a nice long paper during my internship comparing sexual identity formation in a demographically-matched lesbian versus heterosexual woman. Dissertation (Clinical Psychology): HIV+ Gay Men’s Processes of Making Their Own Panels for the AIDS Memorial Quilt. 250 pages. Still the only study of its kind, reaping me no benefits whatsoever but a certain panache. ---
**Author:** ![g8rguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7cd45c/32.png) [@g8rguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/g8rguy)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/56 "2003-09-09T00:17:57Z")
Gaa. _Aspects of Short-Range Correlation: the Basis Set Problem in Molecular Physics_ is the working title. I’m about 100 pages into it, shooting for about 250 total. Have yet to write an original thought. Largely as I’ve yet to _have_ an original thought. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/57 "2003-09-09T01:47:04Z")
For M.A. in the immensely practical field of Russian & East European Studies: “Language of Dissent, or Language of Compromise? Native Language, Ethnicity, and Bilingual Education Policy in the North Caucasus.” 46 pages plus maps/appendices. Could easily have been a multi-volume series, if we hadn’t had a maximum word limit. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/58 "2003-09-09T02:32:28Z")
Oh, and the lengths: Sc.B. – **Biomechanical Study of a Karate Strike** – 68 pages M.S. – **A KCl:O2- Laser** – 132 pages Ph.D. – **A Study of Vibrational Emission and Excitation Transfer from Substitutional CN- Molecular Ions in Pure and Doped Alkali Halides** – 208 pages ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/59 "2003-09-09T03:19:47Z")
_Implicit User Feedback in Adaptive Educational Systems_, MS in Computer Science, still in progress. Well, should be started any day now, to be finished April 2004. I’m aiming for 75ish pages, but with diagrams and graphs, it’ll probably hit 100. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [September 9, 2003, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344/60 "2003-09-09T03:52:32Z")
Recognition and Rejection of Victimization in the Novels of Margaret Atwood. 150 pages. M.A. (English). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-thesis-dissertation-title-and-length-here-please/199344.md?page=4)