On this page you find different resources that could be useful when you are going to write a paper, report or thesis. This list is not meant to be complete, but to work as an example of different types of resources. In other words, there are many more resources available than can be mentioned here, so do look for more on your own.
Individual support
Most universities offer individual support to students regarding, for example, academic writing, study skills and reference management. You can find information about it via your university’s website. If you search for ”workshop” or ”support” and what you need help with, you should find the way.
Templates
Report writing for engineers (in Swedish)
Gunilla Åkesson-Nilsson, senior lecturer at BTH, has produced this thorough instruction, in Swedish, on report writing for engineers. It can also be useful for students in other programs, since there are several general sections on basic principles of writing. It should not be used as a template for student theses.
Dictionaries and encyclopedias
When you read scholarly texts for your writing assignment you will come across words and terms which are not commonly used. To fully be able to take part of these texts, it is necessary to look up these words and find out what they mean.
Dictionaries
English
Oxford Dictionaries from Oxford University Press.
English – Swedish / Swedish – English
Norstedts ord.se have English – Swedish / Swedish – English dictionaries.
Swedish
The Swedish Academy Dictionary, Svenska Akademiens ordbok, is a comprehensive historical dictionary, and The Swedish Academy Glossary, Svenska Akademiens ordlista, is the (unofficial) norm for the spelling and inflexion of Swedish words. They are both free online Swedish dictionaries from the Swedish Academy which you can search simultaneously.
Encyclopedias
At Refseek you can find a list of online encyclopedias, most of the available for free.
Writing together, sharing documents and spellchecking
There are several possibilities for collaborating on, and sharing documents. The Linneaus University has compiled a guide with tips on suitable online tools for sharing, storing and editing documents. In Office 365 and Google Drive there are spell checkers and several other text tools.
You can also enable the spell-checking functionality directly in your browser.
Study skills
Four short films on study skills by Björn Liljeqvist. Use the Playlist to see the content.
Reference management
Reference management is about keeping track of references to books, articles and other material you want to refer to. It is also about presenting the references correctly, in the text, as well as in the list of references. Reference management software will help you manage your references throughout the whole writing process, from information seeking to the publishing of your completed text. Read more about reference management in the Writing guide.
In the Writing guide, there is also a section on reference management tools.
Here are a couple of films from Lund University with basic information on why to use references and how references work.
Why references (5 min.)
The parts of a reference (7 min.)
Translation
Sometimes you may need to translate parts of texts when you write your thesis. In academic texts there are usually many technical terms and specialized language, and if English is not your native language, it may be useful to translate the texts into your native language, to increase your understanding of what you are reading. Another example is if you want to translate a quote which was written in another language. In these cases, remember to always add to the reference that it is your own translation, for example (Stevens, 1998, my translation).
Keep in mind that you cannot fully trust the result from an automatic translation service! Therefore, always check the translations carefully before you use them in your text. On the web there are many different translation services, for example Microsoft Translator and Google Translate.