ABSTRACT

Imagine someone about to embark on a substantial written project, for example, writing a thesis using a word-processing package. The person has to make a decision about whether to start to write immediately and go back later on to ensure that titles, headings, figures and tables are formatted appropriately, and then to extract that information to construct a table of contents. An alternative strategy is to begin the piece of work by setting up appropriate style sheets. This latter method allows the writer to change his or her formatting easily, but requires effort to be expended at the beginning, rather than getting on with the actual writing. These are two clearly distinct strategies which can both lead to the same end result: a thesis. Why do individuals use different strategies?