Dissertation/Thesis Format Guidelines

Before Beginning the Manuscript

• Formatting Requirements
• Publication and Copyrighting
• Use of Copyrighted Material
• Inclusion of Publications in the Dissertation
• The Abstract

Manuscript Format Requirements

• Order of Parts
• Margins and Fonts
• Spacing
• Pagination
• Sample Pages

Guidelines: Format Checklist
How to: Section Breaks and Pagination
 

Before Beginning the Manuscript

Formatting Requirements

The student’s department determines the style for footnotes, bibliographies, tables, chapter headings, etc. The student and the thesis/dissertation advisor are responsible for the content of the manuscript and for assuring that the manuscript is edited for spelling, grammar, organization, stylistic consistency, correct sequence of pages, and agreement between the table of contents and the contents of the manuscript.

The Graduate School is responsible for monitoring formatting requirements of dissertations and theses. The specifications of Wayne State University’s Graduate School for dissertation manuscript formatting are primary requirements and take precedence over all styles and other guidelines for margins, spacing, pagination, order of parts, etc. Questions should be addressed to the PhD Office:  313-577-2170 or phdstudents@wayne.edu.

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Publication and Copyrighting

Students are required to have the dissertation/thesis published so that the manuscripts are available to the entire academic community. It is recommended that students have their dissertation/thesis copyrighted as well. These processes are completed at the time of the format check, when the student submits his/her manuscript to the Graduate School via the Electronic Thesis/Dissertation (EDT) Administrator web site of ProQuest/UMI, the publisher of theses and dissertations.

View dissertation publishing information from Wayne State University's Graduate School

View more information from ProQuest/UMI

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Use of Copyrighted Material

If previously copyrighted material is included in the dissertation or thesis, that is, material that cannot be reproduced using information in the public domain, the student is required to obtain written permission from the author or the publisher and attach the written permission to the Publishing Agreement Form.

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Inclusion of Publications in the Dissertation

If doctoral students have published work in discipline-appropriate refereed journals, and if the student's doctoral committee approves, these published materials may be incorporated into the dissertation. To include such published work in the dissertation, the Ph.D. candidate must be the principal author or have made the major contribution to the work. In cases of co-authored papers, the text of the dissertation, most likely in the summary and conclusions, must make clear to the reader the original contributions of the author. In addition, when a paper is co-authored by others than the Ph.D. candidate and the advisor, approval should be sought from those co-authors for inclusion of the published materials in the dissertation.

Students must reformat a published article for incorporation within the body of the dissertation. In all instances the remaining sections of the dissertation (e.g., abstract, introduction, and conclusion) should conform to the format requirements outlined in these guidelines. Additionally, these sections should reference the published materials when appropriate but may be less detailed than those dissertations that do not incorporate published materials. Students should be advised that incorporation of material published elsewhere requires copyright permission from the copyright holder.

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The Abstract

ProQuest/UMI does not have a word limit on the abstract included in the thesis/dissertation manuscript. However, for inclusion of the abstract in the print indices published by ProQuest/UMI, there is a 350 word limit for doctoral dissertations and 150 words for master’s theses. Abstracts will be truncated at these limits for the print indices, and only text can be included. Students should limit the length of the abstract if this is a concern. The abstract will NOT be altered in the published manuscript.

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Manuscript Format Requirements

Order of Dissertation/Thesis Parts

The dissertation or thesis manuscript falls into three main sections or divisions: the preliminary pages, the text, and the reference materials. Parts of some of these sections are optional, but the order is as follows:

• Title page (required)
• Copyright page (optional)
• Dedication or Acknowledgments (if appropriate)
• Preface or Foreword (if appropriate)
• Table of Contents (required)
• List of Tables (if appropriate)
• List of Figures, Maps, Charts, Diagrams, and Schemes (if appropriate)
• Text, including the introduction and all chapters (required)
• Appendix (if appropriate)
• Bibliography or References (required)
• Abstract (required)
• Autobiographical Statement (required)

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Margins and Fonts

The manuscript margins should be 1 to 1.25 inch(es) at the top, bottom, left and right to facilitate ProQuest requirements for the mandatory publishing and optional binding. The bottom margin may be wider if illustrations or tables cannot be placed with the text and have to be placed on a separate page, or if section headings would otherwise be left standing alone; section headings should remain with the paragraph to which they refer. The font should be a common, publishable font, such as Ariel or Times New Roman, and consistent throughout the manuscript.

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Spacing

All preliminary pages, the body of text, and the references should be double spaced. The text should be fully justified, and new paragraphs should be indented. Quotations four lines or fewer should be double-spaced; quotations exceeding four lines should be indented, without quotation marks and single-spaced (unless otherwise specified by the specific format being used: MLA, APA, etc). Footnotes/endnotes and captions/legends for tables and figures should be single-spaced.

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Pagination

Preliminary Pages: The title and the copyright pages are not numbered. The dedication, acknowledgments, preface, table of contents, and lists of tables/figures are numbered in consecutive lower case Roman numerals at the bottom center of each page, starting with "ii".

Text: The text uses Arabic numbers beginning with "1" on the first page of the text and continuing throughout the manuscript, including the appendices, reference material, abstract, and autobiographical statement. The page numbers should be on the top center of the page throughout the text, and they should be within the top margin, approximately 0.5 to 0.75-inch from the top edge of the paper.

The chart below summarizes the order of parts and their pagination requirements:

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Sample Pages

The pages shown in the Sample Pages (PDF) document are examples of what the manuscript sections should look like when properly using the required formatting.

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Guidlines: Format Checklist

The Guidelines: Format Checklist (PDF) document summarizes the Graduate School manuscript formatting requirements while addressing the most common problems found in submitted dissertations and theses. Students should check their manuscripts carefully for conformance with all requirements.

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How to: Section Breaks and Pagination

The How to: Section Breaks and Pagination (PDF) document explains what section breaks are, how they differ from page breaks, and how to properly set them up in Microsoft Word. It also covers How to put a portrait header for a page number, on a landscape page.

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