Writing and styling a dissertation can be one of the toughest tasks if you have not done this before and have no idea of doing it the best way. However, you cannot submit the dissertation to the teacher if you have not properly formatted or styled your dissertation as it will be either rejected by the teacher or get only passing grades. Students need to understand the significance of dissertation writing task during the academic years as this is the only way that they can look forward to impressing the teachers with their hard work and efforts and gaining good grades at the year end.
Most of the students have no idea what writing or styling a dissertation is all about and they feel really stressed as they don’t know what to do to make this task easy. Most of them want to do it as well as they could but due to lack of knowledge as well as expertise in doing the task, they end up doing it the wrong way and it lands them into further problems.
This article is a guide for all those students who face problems in styling their dissertation perfectly and brings them some key tips on how they can work on their academic paper the best way to enjoy good grades in class.
General style
It is necessary to know that you can only use a single font throughout the entire paper whether it is for captions, tablets, footnotes, bibliography or page numbers etc. The most widely used and accepted is the twelve-point font size (12 pt) and you should only use this to prevent any trouble later.
Margins
The margins on all pages are required to be in the following style:
Left: 1.5 inches (with the space for binding)
Right: 1 inch
Top and bottom: 1 inch
There should be no print visible except the page number in the margins as per the dissertation styling norms.
Justification
It is necessary to ensure justification throughout the body of the dissertation without the text veering off to right, left or center just to decorate the paper. All the text must be justified to the left, expect for the section titles such as Abstract or Acknowledgements that are required to be placed in the center for the purpose that they need to be seen or highlighted.
Page numbering
Every page in the dissertation has to be numbered except the first one also known as the title page; even though it is not numbered visibly yet it is counted as the first page when you begin the numbering
Preliminary pages such as cedications, abstract, table of contents are numbered with lower case roman numerals and centered to catch the readers’ attention
The page numbers are positioned in the lower right of the page, one inch from the lower and right margin but they should be in the same typeface of the text.
Line spacing
The entire dissertation should use 1.5 spacing except for the figure and table captions, footnotes and chapter titles that take more than one line but they should all be single spaced
The references should also be written with single space but without any indentations and use 1.5 spacing between them
The first line of every new paragraph must be indented by five spaces
Figures and tablets must be separated from the text with triple space
Captions/numbering tables/figures
Every table and figure, photograph or illustration must contain a caption indicating what it is representing
Tables must be numbered properly throughout the dissertation with proper headings or titles
Figures, photos and illustrations must be numbered properly throughout the paper containing required captions
Headings and subheadings
Headings are important as they indicate the organization of the paper and also guide the reader on what is about to come in the ensuing text
Every dissertation must use consistent and clear headings as well as subheadings as they are significant and they must be placed in the same manner that aligns with dissertation rules containing proper font style
Citation style
It is important to check out the dissertation guideline that has been provided by the teacher or use the one that has already been recommended to ensure that citations are done properly.
There are a number of things that go into the proper styling of the dissertation and you can only work on making your dissertation better if you go through the guidelines closely and keep them in mind while writing the paper. Make sure to understand what a dissertation is all about so that you can style your paper perfectly and look forward to good grades in the long run.