Dissertation Layout

The way you layout a dissertation is the first factor that would matter to your examiner, as it will demonstrate how competent you are and to what extent you have adopted your institution’s regularities. That is why it is very important to work exactly as specified in your university guide for dissertation layout style.

Remember that your dissertation contributes to your university’s level of research, and the governing body cares that its standards are maintained. If you do not comply with every of your institution’s requirements while writing your dissertation layout, you are sure to be penalized.

The Basics of Dissertation Layout

The general requirements, such as line spacing, margins, numbering and font style are easy to accomplish within modern electronic formatting.  But at the same time, if you commit any mistakes you will be punished more severely than previous generations of students.

The constituent parts of your dissertation layout should be the following:

• Title page, including the title of the dissertation, your name, the degree, the date of submitting and the university.
• Contents page, which is a list of everything that your dissertations comprises. While writing this page, make sure it is fully comprehensive.
• Abstract, giving a short summaryof your dissertation.
• Preface, containing acknowledgement of help and thanks.
• Introduction, giving your thesis statement.
• Chapters, listed in sequence.
• Conclusion, summing up your argument and giving suggestions for further research.
• Appendix, containing complementary information.
• References, listingthe sources that were cited within your chapters.
• Bibliography, including all sources consulted.

Working on a dissertation layout, many students do not know for sure how to write an abstract, so the rest of this paper will be devoted to it. Though it is usually placed at the beginning of a dissertation, it is reasonable to write it last. This is because an abstract is a presentation of your whole research in brief, and you cannot write if before you know the content of each chapter. Of course, it is not easy to enclose your dissertation content within about 400 words, but the examiners are aware of it, and your supervisor will surely help you write it. Still, you should prepare an outline of each chapter and the conclusion; provide a general idea of the basic texts which you used in your dissertation.

We hope that the information in this paper will be useful for you and will help you write a dissertation layout.