XobaWrite How to format a dissertation or thesis
A dissertation is the longest document most people ever write, and the formatting problems that appear at 10,000 words are not the ones you meet at 2,000.
Your institution's regulations override everything here. Dissertation formatting is one of the few things universities specify precisely, often down to the binding margin, and submissions do get returned over it. Find your handbook first. This page covers the conventions that are near-universal and the problems that only appear in long documents.
Front matter, in order
Not every degree needs every one, but the order is standard:
- Title page
- Abstract
- Declaration — that the work is your own
- Acknowledgements
- Table of contents
- List of tables
- List of figures
- List of abbreviations
Then the body, then references, then appendices.
Page numbering, which trips everyone
The convention almost everywhere:
- Front matter uses lowercase Roman numerals — i, ii, iii. The title page counts as i but the number is not printed on it.
- The body restarts at Arabic 1 on the first page of Chapter 1, and runs unbroken to the end, appendices included.
Two numbering schemes in one document means a section break between them, not a page break. This is the single most common formatting problem in a dissertation: a page break carries the numbering forward, and a section break is what lets it restart. If your numbering refuses to restart at 1, that is why.
Layout
| Binding margin | Usually 3.5–4 cm on the left, wider than the others, so text is not swallowed by the binding |
|---|---|
| Other margins | Usually 2–2.5 cm |
| Line spacing | 1.5 or double for the body. Quotes, captions, footnotes and references are usually single |
| Font | A readable serif at 11–12 pt, used consistently |
| Alignment | Left aligned. Justified text produces rivers of white space in long documents |
| Chapter openings | Each chapter starts on a new page |
Use real heading styles
Do not make a heading by bolding a line and increasing its size. Use the document's heading levels — Heading 1 for chapters, Heading 2 for sections, and so on.
This is not fussiness. Real heading styles are what make possible:
- A table of contents that generates itself and updates when pages move
- Consistent formatting across 80 pages without setting it by hand each time
- Navigation through the document while you write
- An accessible PDF that a screen reader can move through
Manually formatted headings mean a contents page you have to type and retype every time anything shifts. At dissertation length, that is hours, and it will be wrong at submission.
Tables and figures
- Number by chapter: Table 3.1 is the first table in Chapter 3. Inserting one later then does not renumber the whole document.
- Table captions go above the table; figure captions go below the figure. This is a real convention, and markers notice.
- Captions describe the content: “Figure 4.2: Mean recall by sleep duration”, not “Figure 4.2: Results”.
- Every table and figure is referred to in the text before it appears.
- Anything reproduced from a source is cited in its caption.
Long quotations
Over roughly 40 words, a quotation becomes a block: indented, single spaced, no quotation marks, with the citation after the final punctuation. Your referencing style sets the exact threshold — APA says 40 words, MLA four lines.
Problems that only appear at length
- The file gets slow. Usually images inserted at full camera resolution. Resize before inserting rather than dragging the corner.
- Headings stranded at the foot of a page. Set headings to keep with the following paragraph.
- A single line alone at the top or bottom of a page. Widow and orphan control handles this; most editors have it on by default.
- References drift out of alphabetical order as you add sources late. Sort the whole list again before submitting.
- The contents page goes stale. Regenerate it as the final step, after all editing — not before.
Back up somewhere that is not your laptop. Every year someone loses a dissertation the week it is due. Cloud storage, an external drive, or emailing yourself the file — any two of those.
A checklist before you submit
- You have read your own institution's regulations and followed them where they differ from this
- Front matter in Roman numerals, body restarting at Arabic 1
- Contents page regenerated after the last edit, page numbers correct
- Every chapter starts on a new page
- Table captions above, figure captions below, numbered by chapter
- Every table and figure referenced in the text
- Binding margin wide enough
- References alphabetical, complete, and matching the in-text citations
- Exported to PDF and checked — page breaks move when fonts are substituted