@Steve Cooke-
Thanks for sharing that perspective. Disciplinarity in PhD writing is yet another issues that makes all this discussion valuable; thanks for sharing it. Tell me, does that mean that different doctoral researchers in your department all follow different outlines, due to this issue?
I also agree about sucking every last drop out of PhD creativity — I suppose people often want to standardize things to the extent that sameness gets rather dull, ehh?
Jeffrey