How to Write Acknowledgement in Thesis
You can write acknowledgements in thesis to recognize anyone who provides professional or personal support to the completion of your dissertation or thesis.
The acknowledgements section appears at the introductory part of your dissertation between your title page and abstract. You can combine formal and informal styles in your acknowledgements if it is allowed in your academic essay.
Acknowledgements do not make up the main part of your work, and you can write something personal in this section. You need the right template to write acknowledgements in your thesis or dissertation.
Let’s see every vital detail you need to write perfect acknowledgements through this article. You can leverage simple starting samples provided much later in this article to draft engaging acknowledgements from scratch with ease.
How to Write Acknowledgements
Step 1: Start with your professional contacts
First, you need to acknowledge your thesis supervisor(s), department professors, and any other professional contact relevant to the dissertation. You can also acknowledge your god directly before thanking professional contacts in some colleges.
Step 2: Thank research groups and funding bodies
Next, you should acknowledge the contribution of research teams to the success of your thesis. You must properly thank funding bodies if you received financial support from them to complete your thesis.
Step 3: Acknowledge proofreaders and key friends and family
The next step involves recognizing editors and proofreaders of the final work. You can also thank anyone who typeset the thesis if you didn’t do it yourself. Create a new paragraph and thank all family members and friends who provided support to complete your thesis.
Who Should You Thank in Your Acknowledgements?
In professional acknowledgements, you can appreciate your:
- Supervisor(s)
- Funding organizations or sponsorship providers
- Professors
- Lab assistants
- Colleagues
- Research group
- Proofreaders
In personal acknowledgements, you can thank your:
- Partner
- Friends and family members (key persons only)
- Persons who inspire you or have a direct influence in your academic journey
- Any other person who provided vital assistance to your academic essay
Thanking the right people in your acknowledgements ensures every individual or group gets due recognition.
Some colleges allot marks to the introductory section of your thesis, and this part includes your acknowledgements. Drafting acknowledgements properly ensures you get full marks from your supervisor(s) and professors.
Do’s and Don’ts While Writing Acknowledgements
Do’s:
Taking these steps ensure you write acknowledgements properly;
Thank professional contacts first
Your acknowledgements will not be complete without thanking all your professional contacts first. The list of professional contacts includes your supervisor, professor, research group, or anyone directly involved in putting the thesis together. You can also add funding bodies directly after thanking your supervisors and professors in the acknowledgements.
Include full names, roles, and titles of professional acknowledgements
You cannot abbreviate names of professional contacts in the acknowledgements section. Your acknowledgements section must state the title, full name, and role of professional contacts.
For example, let’s say you want to thank your supervisor if the person is a doctor. You can write the acknowledgement this way:
I wish to thank Dr. Dietrich Hermann, Associate Professor of Physics, UCLA, for supervising this thesis, or
Many thanks to the supervisor of this thesis, Dr. Dietrich Hermann, for his invaluable contributions throughout this research
It’s worth noting that you can forgo the titles of professional contacts if the participants are in a group.
Anonymize group participants or team acknowledgements properly
You should properly anonymize members of a research group if you received external help to complete your thesis. Names in the research group might be too many to include, so you can name the team’s head and recognize other members as a collective.
Name funding bodies and the part of your project they funded
Did you receive funding from any organization before or during research to back your thesis? You need to recognize funding organizations behind financial support for your thesis and mention what the group funded.
Failing to mention funding bodies in your acknowledgements might look like a snub. You may never receive similar funding from such an organization if you fail to recognize them properly in your acknowledgements page.
Write in first-person
Your acknowledgements page should be in first-person format, since you should write it without external input. Writing with pronouns and verbs that aren’t first person makes the acknowledgements page hard to read.
Don’ts:
Write more than one page
Acknowledgements lose meaning when you add names of people that should not be in the page. You need to downsize your acknowledgements section to between 1 and 3 paragraphs. These paragraphs should contain direct, concise mentions of people important to your thesis.
Mention anyone who had little to no impact on your project
You do not have to mention every member of your family or all your friends in the acknowledgments section. Attempting to mention every friend or family member could take your acknowledgements over one page.
Use slang, nicknames, or informal language
Acknowledgements should never contain technical jargon or slang of any kind. You will be breaking protocol if you mention nicknames of your supervisors or professors and could lose marks.
FAQs
How long should acknowledgements be?
Acknowledgements should not be longer than one page in your thesis or dissertation. The acknowledgement page has no minimum length and could be one paragraph.
Must I thank my supervisor in the acknowledgements?
Yes, it is essential to thank all supervisors in your acknowledgements page. You need to thank your supervisors even if they did not contribute much to the final essay. A simple sentence with a mention of your supervisor and a ‘thank you’ could be enough.
Your supervisor will see this as a snub if you do not include them in your acknowledgements page.
Where should acknowledgements be?
The acknowledgements page should be at the beginning of your thesis. You can place it between your title page and before the abstract. Where your acknowledgements should be largely depends on your college’s guidelines.
Final Word
Learning how to write acknowledgements in your thesis helps you earn better grades or recognize vital bodies pivotal to the success of your project. You can write an acknowledgements page after completing your thesis.
Make a list of every individual or group to include in the acknowledgements and make proper pre-print changes to remove names with no contribution to your thesis.