Acknowledgments

Writing acknowledgments in an article or thesis shows that you are a polite person, and appreciate when someone helps you.

Often people who help others in life, especially if they are ajarns or librarians, do not receive thanks, so if this happens, they are always pleasantly surprised. Yet the acknowledgments section of any article or thesis can be a danger zone because it involves writing which is quite different from the rest of your research. Few people have much experience with written thanks in English, so it is useful to devote a few moments to getting this challenging task right.

Spell it right.

If the rest of your article is in British English, then you must use the British spelling for the word, acknowledgements. However, if what you have written is in American English, then delete the extra e and spell it acknowledgments. As with the rest of the challenge of separating British from American spellings in whatever you write, the spell check program on your Word documents may not help very much. You must take a little time to Google “British and American spellings” or “UK vs. US spellings” and you will find helpful lists such as these:

http://www.tysto.com/uk-us-spelling-list.html

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/british-and-american-spelling

If you have doubts about a specific word, or your spell check device seems to refuse a spelling you have used, just Google the word in question and see what the results are. It may be that you have spelled the word neither in acceptable UK or US English, but rather in odd Thai English, in which case it will be incorrect and must be changed.

Who to thank first?

If you are writing a thesis, then of course you have more room for thanking people, and since you have worked on it for years, indeed you probably will have more people to thank than if you just wrote an article.

1. Who paid for it? Generally as a researcher, the first person or institution you thank is the one providing financial support for your work. If you received a scholarship or fellowship or grant that made your research possible, then show gratitude to that source first.
2. Who made it technically possible? If someone allowed you to use technical elements, or offered expert advice about them directly related to the subject of what you have written, then thank them next.
3. Who gave you good ideas? If someone provided lots of good feedback, guiding your thinking about a subject – and it is to be hoped that someone did – then thank them here.
4. Who helped you write this? If your work received advice in terms of its structure or style or the English was corrected by someone, then you may wish to thank those people here. It is only honest to acknowledge assistance of this kind, and if your English is still terrible after this assistance, then your ajarn will know who to blame.
5. Who made life worth living? This is the place to express gratitude to your friends and family, your household pets, or anyone or anything else who inspired you.

Note that the above order is only appropriate for a thesis. In an article, because it is shorter and took less time, only 1 & 2 are necessary, so you would not thank anyone for ideas, writing help, or personal niceness to you.

How to phrase it.

Expressing thanks is a difficult thing for some people because while you want to seem sincere and serious, if you use too many words or sound too excited, the whole thing seems false and insincere. Worse, it can seem as if you are thanking people because you feel you must, not because you really want to. Thai writers of English should keep in mind that thanks are best expressed in as few words as possible, making sure that you do not repeat the same words over and over again in an acknowledgments section until they become tedious. Students who try to invent prose poems or creative writing exercises instead of acknowledgments wind up with something unreadable and even sometimes embarrassing. Just say thanks, or hearty thanks, or I am grateful, or I owe much to X, or some phrase like that. Avoid writing something like “the most marvellous person in the world, who saved my life on numerous occasions, and whom I will never forget because of all the splendid assistance that changed my life forever in an unforgettable way.” It is fine to offer a simple list of people, as in the phrase “I would like to offer hearty thanks to Professor X, Dr. Y,…” It is a lot more risky and not necessary to write more complex things, mentioning specific things that each person did, for example. The longer your acknowledgements section is, the more likely you will make multiple mistakes in English. Be sure to write out the full words “Professor” or “Associate Professor” since using abbreviations (Prof.; Assoc. Prof.) makes it seem like you are in such a rush to write your thanks that you are probably not sincere. Also, if you cannot decide which person to thank first, thanking people in alphabetical order, according to last name, is fine.

Make sure the person is okay with being thanked.

Since you are writing for publication, it is considered polite to make sure that the person you are thanking agrees to be mentioned in your research. Some academic journals even insist that you provide proof that the people you thank are aware of your research and approve of it. Otherwise, presumably some students or ajarns could thank Stephen Hawking or another famous scholar who had nothing personally to do with their research. Apart from your family, friends, and household pets who will probably approve of being thanked by you, it is therefore a good idea to let your professional contacts know that you plan to thank them, just in case one or another does not wish to be mentioned in print, for whatever reason.

Call people by their right names.

It may seem a basic rule of politeness to call people by their right names, but Thai writers of English sometimes work with an ajarn for years without getting much experience spelling his or her name in English very often. To be absolutely sure you know how the names are spelled, do a Google search to see how the ajarns in question spell their names in publications, on official university websites, or other serious places. Do not assume that you know how to spell people’s names in English just because you have worked with them for a while. Never create a phonetic spelling in English based on how the name sounds to you. Also do not assume that if you must cite a name more than once in what you are writing, for example in the acknowledgments as well as the bibliography, that you have spelled it the same way everywhere. Check each name each time, otherwise you may find yourself spelling ajarns’ names one way in one section of your research, and then giving a different spelling later on. This is very confusing for readers who are not accustomed to the wild and often bizarre variety of Thai English spellings.

Adopt international forms for names.

Since the 1970s in the international academic community, women have been described with the honorific term “Ms.” instead of “Miss” or “Mrs.” This is because whether a woman is married or not is not considered pertinent to achievement in study or the workplace. Also because “Mr.” does not tell us whether a man is married or not, nor should we care. While it is safe to describe female ajarns as Dr. or Professor, it would be a mistake to refer to any other woman who helped you as “Miss” or “Mrs.” This is a small detail, but it will prevent you from seeming forty years behind the rest of the English-speaking world.

There are no private thanks in a published article or thesis.

In a world of social media where people put their private lives on the internet without a second thought, it may seem odd to remember that a published article or thesis is not considered a private venue. That means it is better not to thank your friends in a casual or informal way that could be embarrassing years from now if a prospective employer looks up your work. It is fine to offer thanks or appreciation “to my friends X, Y, and Z,” but it is better not to mention “My friends X, Y, and Z who picked up me in the street after I fell on my face during Songkran because I was so drunk…” Keep it formal but polite.

Try not to forget anyone.

For example, if you thank your dog but not your parents, there may be trouble later on. So after you have written a list of people or animals you feel you must thank, make sure that you have included everyone. This is especially important in terms of financial support, since forgetting to mention the name of a foundation, or spelling its name wrong, can seem very rude, even if it was merely an unintentional oversight, and discourage them from being so generous in the future.

(all images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)