A thesis acknowledgement is one page thanking your guide first, then your committee, university, funders, helpers, colleagues and finally your family, in plain words.
For the chapters there are rules on method and evidence. For this page there are no such rules, and still almost everybody reads it. Your guide will read it, and your parents too. The examiners also go through it, and years later somebody may read it out at a function. Give it one proper hour. Many scholars write it in ten minutes the night before printing, and it shows. Many Indian acknowledgements sound the same because they use the same stock phrases. We list those phrases below, with the usual order of names and the normal length.
Who to thank, and in what order
Indian theses mostly follow one order. You start with the formal thanks and end with the personal ones. You can change it a little, there is no hard rule. Only thing is, if your guide finds their name only in the fourth paragraph, they will notice it, and so will the committee.
- 1. Your research supervisor
Your guide always comes first, and mostly this is the longest paragraph also. If you have a co-guide or joint supervisor, thank them right after, in the same paragraph or in the next one.
- 2. The doctoral or research advisory committee
Give the names of the members along with their designations. They are the ones who read your drafts and signed your progress reports each time.
- 3. The university and department
The Vice-Chancellor, the Registrar, the Dean of Research or the Director of the research centre, and your Head of Department. In many Indian theses this part is only one or two formal lines.
- 4. Funding bodies
Your fellowship or grant. Write the scheme name and the award number exactly the way the sanction letter gives them.
- 5. People who helped with the work
Lab staff, librarians, the statistician, translators and field assistants. Also the experts who validated your questionnaire, and the respondents or institutions who gave you data.
- 6. Colleagues and friends
The other scholars who sat with you in the lab or the room. Some of them may have come with you on the long bus rides to the field.
- 7. Family
Family mostly comes last, and many times it is the warmest paragraph. Parents, spouse, children, and anybody who took over your share of work at home while you were busy with thesis.
Some scholars start with a line thanking God, the family deity or a spiritual teacher, even before the guide. This is quite common in Indian theses and it is fully your choice. Just keep it to one or two lines.
How long it should be, and where it goes
For a PhD thesis one page is normal. At thesis spacing that comes to around 250 to 500 words. Some scholars write two pages. I would not go past two pages. After that the examiner feels he is sitting through a function speech.
The acknowledgement goes in the preliminary pages. In most Indian theses you will find it after the declaration and the supervisor’s certificate, and before the abstract or the table of contents. In some universities the format sheet itself gives the page order. Then go by that only. If yours is silent on it, look at the page order in a recent thesis from your department.
Normally this page does not get a page number in Arabic figures. If your format numbers the preliminary pages, it takes small Roman numerals like iv or v, same as the others.
Getting the tone right
A good acknowledgement reads like the scholar is talking to you. The weak ones mostly just join the same stock phrases one after another. You must have seen “deep sense of gratitude” in twenty theses by now. Your examiners have seen it in hundreds.
What helps is specific detail. Don’t just thank your guide “for valuable guidance”. Write what that guidance actually was. For example, “Dr. Lakshmi read every chapter twice and pushed me to rerun the analysis when I wanted to stop.” One line like that is better than five lines of adjectives, I feel. Same for your family. A line like “My wife managed two school admissions and a house move in the year I was in the field” tells the reader what she actually did for you.
The table below has some common stock phrases and simpler ways to say the same thing. You need not remove every formal phrase, because a little formality suits this page. Only see that each paragraph has at least one detail which only you could have written.
| Instead of | Try |
|---|---|
| I express my deep sense of gratitude and indebtedness to my esteemed guide… | I thank my supervisor, Dr. [Name], for… |
| …without whom this thesis would not have seen the light of day. | Write one specific thing that person did for you. |
| …for his constant encouragement, valuable guidance and timely help. | Think of one day when that person helped you. Maybe your guide read a draft in one night, or found you a contact for field work. |
| I am thankful to one and all who helped me directly and indirectly. | Give the names of the people who helped, and drop the catch-all line. |
| Last but not least… | Just start the paragraph directly, for example “My parents…” |
Using “I” on this page
Many theses are written in the passive voice or with “the researcher”. Even there, the acknowledgement is mostly in the first person. “I thank…” and “I am grateful to…” are normal here. If you write “the researcher expresses gratitude to the researcher’s parents”, it reads very strange. I have not seen any guide asking for that.
Keep the tenses simple. Use past tense for what people did (“Dr. Lakshmi read every chapter”) and present tense for your thanks (“I thank her”).
Thanking funders correctly
If a fellowship funded your PhD, you cannot skip the funding line. It is a record. Some funders expect it in the thesis and in papers from it. Copy the scheme name and the reference number exactly as printed on your award or sanction letter. Over the years the scheme gets renamed. Many scholars type from memory and end up putting old name of the fellowship.
Name the funding body plainly, like UGC, CSIR, DST, ICSSR or ICMR, and write the scheme the way the letter calls it. Maybe a state government scholarship paid you, or a project grant held by your guide. Thank that also, with the project number. Your guide knows how the grant is worded in the papers, so take it from them.
What to leave out
Complaints. Your file was stuck in the department for months? One committee member made life hard? Whatever you write about it stays in the bound copies and on Shodhganga for good. Better to leave it out.
Private jokes and nicknames. In the lab everybody knows who “Kutty” is. For the outside examiner it means nothing. Write the real name of the person.
Long lists of everyone. I have seen pages with thirty names in a row, like the attendance register in class. Group the people instead, for example “the scholars of the Department of Commerce, especially Arun and Fathima”.
Wrong titles and spellings. Check every name, designation and title against an official source. Small mistakes stay in people’s mind. Calling an associate professor “Prof.” is one. Getting the Vice-Chancellor’s name spelling wrong is another.
Similarity, editing and the final read
As per clause 7 of the UGC 2018 plagiarism regulations, acknowledgements are among the parts excluded from the similarity count, along with references and the table of contents. Even then I would say don’t lift lines from your senior’s acknowledgement. Your guide may have read the same lines before, in somebody else’s thesis.
Read the page aloud to someone who knows the people you have named. They will catch a missing name faster than you can. If you want someone to check this page and the other preliminary pages, our thesis editing and proofreading covers them also. The thesis abstract usually comes on the next page or two, and our guide on it explain its own word limits.
Questions scholars ask
Can I thank my parents before my supervisor?
Yes, you can. Some scholars are doing it now. Still, in Indian theses the supervisor usually comes first, and if you change the order somebody will probably notice. One line at the very start thanking God or a teacher is a common exception.
Should I write a dedication as well?
Only if you want. The dedication goes on a page of its own, apart from the acknowledgement. Mostly it is a single line, placed before the acknowledgement. “To my mother” is enough. See whether your thesis format allows a dedication page.
Do I thank people who helped with editing or statistics?
If they helped you, then yes, name them. There is nothing wrong in thanking the statistician or the person who edited your language, it is the honest thing. Some universities also ask you to declare outside help in another part of the thesis, so check your declaration form once.
Can the acknowledgement be in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or Malayalam?
When the thesis is in English, the acknowledgement is normally in English too. One line for your family in your own language is usually fine. Still, if you are unsure, ask your supervisor once before printing.