The Importance of Signposting in Dissertation Writing: Writing for Readers
All forms of writing, personal or academic is meant for communication and should therefore must be written with audience in mind.Every good essay will be written with the knowledge of the psychology and the needs of its readers. It’s only when you know your readers will you be able to write a dissertation that is organized and effective .
A written text is a mode of communication between an author and a reader. Unlike a lecture or a speech, In a written text, the reader does have the opportunity to interrupt and ask for author’s interpretation and meaning if he/she so wants. Neither does the author has the freedom to explain him/herself beyond the written word. It is thus becomes the author’s responsibility to make his/her essay or dissertation in accordance to the readers’ level and expectations and guide the reader through the essay with appropriate signs and inferences.
Signposting, or a series of cues provided to the reader throughout a dissertation or a thesis, becomes mandatory in lengthy academic assignments which lasts more than a hundred pages. When wading through a dissertation writing of many pages, a reader might get lost if enough cues and summary is not provided. It helps the reader become aware of his/her progress in reading, at the same point helping him/her recapitulate the earlier reading and understand it better in the light of the current status.
However, it is equally recommended and useful in short assignments like essays or coursework, but is used subtly. While in thesis or a dissertation, there are bold structural signposts like preface, foreword, volumes and chapter divisions, appendix etc, in an essay of 500 words since an author does not have enough space to include words that do not contribute to the main argument, the signposts are generally grammatical giving a light indication of the essay’s development. The use of link words helps a great deal in signposting in essays. For example, the use of words; by contrast, however, in conclusion, secondly; will help reader understand the writer’s inference.
There are different kinds of sign postings which can be used depending on the length and complexity of a written assignment, whether you want to write an essay or a dissertation. Two of them, small-scale and large-scale signposting, a part of which as discussed above, (this is a small scale signpost), can be explained as one which is used subtly in essays and the other that is bold type used in dissertations and thesis respectively. In large scale signposting, the author uses full length sentences that provides information to the reader in advance, for example, “this dissertation aims to explore the effects of passive smoking”. The another two kinds of signposting that can be used in dissertation writing is structural and grammatical. Structural signposting boldly outlines the structure of the dissertation while grammatical signposting makes use of link words.
Thus, signposting are a kind of necessary reminders used by authors to guide their readers swiftly through the dissertation or an essay. It helps make a dissertation reader friendly.
