Hours, days… months later and you are almost there. Yourhard work is there on a screen all 15,000 beautifully constructedwords – all positioned in such a manner that makes you thegreatest academic who ever lived. And then it dawns on you,you’re not done… and a wash of panic comes over you.You haven’t formatted your dissertation; you know you must,so you shall. You can do it one of two ways – yourself (Iremember doing my own formatting at undergrad level almost threw mylaptop out of my third story flat), or give it to a professional(My postgrad dissertation was formatted professionally). Correctdissertation formatting will give the impression that this piece ofwork is well structured, well-written and organised before it isread.We are going to go through the basics of formatting and why itis important. As always, nothing we write here overrides yourinstitutions’ guidelines – check what is expected ofyou.The cover page outlines who you are, what school you belong to(i.e., Humanities and Social Sciences), the title of yourdissertation and the date it is due in. This is important forobvious reasons, and there is a tool in word that automaticallycreates you a formatted cover page. Now before you create yourcontents page, format your margins first. As a rule a 1.7 leftindent works, as it leaves ample room for binding and forreading.The space of between your lines depends on your institutionsrequirements. They could insist on double lines throughout, withthe exception of long quotes that should be single lined, or theycould ask you to 1.5 space it. The font you use should beconsistent throughout – perhaps there is nothing moredistracting that reading half of a dissertation in 12 Times NewRoman and half in 12 Arial, it leaves the reader questioning yourformatting intentions rather than your argument.A dissertation is a long piece of work, typically it is no lessthan 40 pages, thus it is important to break it up into sectionsand format those sections accordingly into the chapters yououtlined on your contents page. These sections should be formattedin the header of your document.But more importantly and what could cost you the big marks isyour reference list. Every single source you mention in your workMUST be included in your bibliography/works cited. If you have notincluded a source, the worst case scenario is that yourdissertation will be marked as zero, and you will be invited in fora meeting and either invited to confess to plagiarism and/or askedto rewrite your work. Make sure it is in alphabetical order and itlooks exactly as the style guide says it needs to be. There arenumerous online guides on bibliographic formatting, in addition toyour institutions.If that all seems like far too much to be doing, let us formatit for you, it is so important that you get it right and we can putyour mind at ease.For more information about dissertation proofreading andproofreading tips, visit our website.
