Below you’ll find a list of items I’ve found are absolute “must haves” for graduate students. Though many of these items are available in other formats (i.e. electronic and web-based versions), I find something very comforting about a hard-or soft-bound text.
- Roget’s Thesaurus available from American Heritage Publishing. Yes, you’re word processing software usually will contain a thesaurus. But it’s often not as all-encompassing as Roget’s text.
- Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary available from Merriam-Webster Publishing. This is a solid lexicon and the latest edition includes the newest American-English phrases.
- The Chicago Manual of Style available from University of Chicago Press; or the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Style Guide). These manuals contain information on the two most popular style methods for graduate-level writing.
- Anne Stillman’s Grammatically Correct: The Writer’s Essential Guide to Punctuation, Spelling, Style, Usage and Grammar from Writer’s Digest Books or a similar text. Even if you’ve just finished your undergraduate degree, it’s likely been a while since you’ve had an English writing course. Correct punctuation, spelling, word usage and grammar are essential for graduate writing. I would, however, rely on either the Chicago Guide or APA Manual for your elements of style.
- David Madsen’s Successful Dissertations and Theses : A Guide to Graduate Student Research from Proposal to Completion from Jossey-Bass. Unless you have an extremely involved supervisor/chair on your research committee, you’re likely to need something that will take you through the process of the thesis or dissertation step-by-step. Madsen’s book does this admirably.
Keep in mind, most of these items are still available in various versions. I do recommend that you purchase the most recent editionof a text, however, as methods—especially style/documentation methods—do change over time.
