Doctoral thesis help: format and presentation

When you write your doctoral thesis, there are several specifics that you will need to meet. From the moment you begin working on the project, you should keep the formatting in mind. Eventually, the paper you create will be shared with a committee that will decide whether or not your paper is acceptable for graduation. Being able to follow the formatting and presentation guidelines is one important aspect of crafting this ever-important paper.

Follow Your College’s Specific Guideliness

Your college program should have specific guidelines for the format of your doctoral thesis. A copy of the requirements should be given to you when you begin working on the project. When you craft your thesis, you will have mandatory sections and some that are optional. The optional guidelines will vary from school to school, but most of the requirements will be the same. These are some of the sections that will need to be properly formatted:

• Title Page
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables, Graphs, and Figures
• Body of the Paper
• References

Pay Close Attention to the Requirements

If you do not follow the formatting guidelines for these common requirements, your committee members will ask that you make the adjustments and resubmit the dissertation. The longer it takes you to get your formatting correct, the longer it will be before you earn your degree. In most cases, the formatting steps involve fonts and sizes, spacing, page numbers, and margins. Other requirements will be needed based on the topic of your thesis. In some cases, you will need to meet word choice limits. For example, the abstract presented in the beginning of the thesis should not exceed a short number of words, like 350. If your abstract exceeds the limitation, then you will need to adjust it so it follows the instructions.

Guidelines Help Students Stay Focused

It may seem picky to have so much care and concern spent on the formatting of a paper rather than the content of the paper, but those who have worked on a thesis have found that even more concern is spent on the content. The formatting was created to give thesis papers a cohesive design and to help students know what to include and where to put it in the thesis itself. It may seem like busy work to be sure that your page numbers are all put in the proper place, but this requirement and the others are designed to take your focus off of the small details so you can work on the paper and your research.