Dissertation Guidelines for Doctoral Students

Dissertation Formatting Guidelines

Why do we have formatting requirements?

National College of Education has an agreement with a company called ProQuest to publish your dissertation as an image file. This file is available to the broader academic community. Doctoral dissertations are publications and ProQuest is a way of making your work public, which means that the copies you submit undergo certain physical processes - binding and imaging for the manuscripts, optical character recognition for the abstract - which necessitate the formatting requirements.

National College of Education sets formatting requirements so that dissertations written here are uniform in appearance and so that they match the appearance of dissertations from other institutions. Some of the requirements make the document look like a dissertation. For example, dissertations are double-spaced; this is part of what makes them look like dissertations instead of books or bound essays. In this sense, some of the rules are arbitrary. For this reason, too, all students should use the same style guide, the most recent edition of Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Also, the formatting process is an important pedagogical exercise for students earning doctoral degrees. All publishing houses, journals, and conference proposals require that authors follow their style sheets. In most cases, they expect submissions to be formatted correctly before they will even be read, refereed, or considered for publication. Students going on to do scholarly work will need to know how to read a style sheet and format a document using its rules, and they will need to know how to do this without help.

General Format and Style

Items must be placed in the following order:
Frontispiece (optional) facing the Title Page (not numbered)
Title Page - see Example I
The Signature Page - see Example II
Copyright Page
Abstract
Preface (optional)
Acknowledgements (optional)
Dedication (optional)
Table of Contents - see Example III
List of Tables (if any)
List of Figures and Illustrations (if any)
List of Plates (if any)
List of Symbols, Abbreviations, Nomenclature (if any)
Epigraph (optional)
Body of Text
Endnotes (if any)
References
Appendices (if any)
Index (optional)

Frontispiece

A frontispiece is an optional item. If used, it must be placed facing the title page. It will not be numbered, and it will be microfilmed as the first page of the thesis.

Title page - see Example I

Set the margins (1 ½ inches on the left, 1 inch everywhere else) before you center the text. Do not put a page number on this page. The date you include should reflect the date your degree will be conferred, not the date that you prepared or submitted the material. Use the same month and year that you chose on the application to receive a degree. There are only four months that degrees are conferred: March, June, August, or December followed by the year.

The signature page - see Example II

Copyright page

Nothing else should go on this page.

Abstract

An abstract, which is no more than 120 words, should clearly summarize the problem, method, results, and conclusions. You should not include any other information such as the title of your project, or your name. The Abstract page should be numbered in lower-case roman numerals in bottom center.

Preface (optional)

A preface contains material which is introductory but is not included in the introduction. For this reason, not everyone needs to include a preface. You should also show the page numbers on the bottom center. Keep in mind that all the pages before this count in the page count, even if they are not printed on the page itself. These page numbers should be in lower-case roman numerals.

Acknowledgements (optional)

This section is optional, but most students find they would like to thank the various people in their lives who helped them to prepare the project, or supported them during the time in which they prepared it. This is also the place to thank institutions, funding sources, libraries, archives, and any anonymous readers or editors. The pages of the acknowledgements should show a number in roman numerals on the bottom center of the page.

Dedication (optional)

The text on this page should be simple and short. It does need to be labeled "Dedication" as the text makes this clear, and it does not require explanation (such explanations are for the acknowledgments). Nothing else should appear on this page, including a page number.

Table of Contents - see Example III

The Table of Contents must include a listing of all items in the thesis. You should not list the title page, the copyright page, the dedication, the epigraph, the table of contents, or the approval sheet. Headings and sub-headings must be consistent between the Table of Contents and the body of the text. All capitalization, punctuation, abbreviations, etc., must be consistent amongst the titles in the Table of Contents and Lists of Tables and Figures, and the actual titles as they appear in the body of the text. The Table of Contents should show page numbers as lower case roman numerals at the bottom center. The top of each page of the table of contents should have a one inch margin; the top of the first page should show the title, all in caps: TABLE OF CONTENTS. All the page numbers should be aligned and flush right.

List of Tables (if any)

List of Figures and Illustrations (if any)

List of Symbols, Abbreviations, Nomenclature (if any)

Epigraph (optional)

An epigraph is a short quote relevant to your whole project. Like the dedication, it stands alone and without further explanation. You may choose to provide the source, though the expectation is that a reader will recognize it if you do not. No other text should appear on the page, including a page number. Example:

The ‘Enlightenment,’ which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

Body of text

You should divide the main text of your dissertation into chapters. These divisions should reflect both the internal logic of your project, and also facilitate your reader's experience of the text. The first page of the body of text should be marked "1" at bottom middle page. Use heavy white bond paper 20 lb., 8 ½ by 11 inches. Erasable paper is not acceptable. Recycled paper can be used if it is as white as white bond paper, without any flecks, and of the required size and weight. A clean copy is required. Type size should be 12-point.

Generally, all textual material should be double-spaced (this includes spaces between sections). However, single-spacing may be used in setting off long quotations (40 or more words), interview excerpts, and field notes. The left-hand margin must be large enough for binding (1½ inches); a 1-inch margin should be used on the remaining sides of the page. Be consistent with font. Recommended fonts: Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana, and Garamond. All the references must be in the text; do not use footnotes. Do not underline. Don not use bold. Do use italics. Insert only one space after period. Align text to the left.

Headings. Use levels of headings properly and consistently (See APA for guidance.) Be consistent in your use of headings across the chapters of your work. If you include a level of headings (1st, 2nd) in the Table of Contents for one chapter then you must include that level of headings for all chapters. Do not end a page of text with a heading.

Example:

CHAPTER TWO (HEADINGS ARE CENTERED IN ALL CAPS)

The Review of the Literature (Headings Are Centered and Require Standard Capitalization)

Use This One for Sub-Headings (Headings Are Italicized, Flush-Left with Standard Capitalization)

Avoid hanging quotations. It is a quotation without introduction; it just "hangs" there. Introduce quotations with specific information in one or two sentences. These sentences provide context for the quotation and enable your reader to understand why the quotation is important. As a ubiquitous imaginary researcher Smith (2008) argues:

Use quotations at strategically selected moments. You have probably been told by teachers to provide as much evidence as possible in support of your thesis. But packing your paper with quotations will not necessarily strengthen your argument. (pp. 21-22)

Once you have inserted your quotation, along with its context and attribution, do not stop. Your reader still needs your assessment of why the quotation holds significance for your study. And this was a nice example of the points we wanted to make.

And here is more advice:

Introduce a block quotation with your own words followed by a colon or comma.
Indent. You normally indent 4-5 spaces for the start of a paragraph. When setting up a block quotation, indent the entire paragraph once from the left-hand margin.
You may use single space within the block quotation; the font size remains the same
Do not use quotation marks at the beginning or end of the block quote - the indentation is what indicates that it is a quotation.

Follow up a block quotation with your own words.

Keep periods and commas within quotation marks. For example:

According to Jones (2000), students "dread APA style," but many of his colleagues urged him to "keep teaching it, regardless" (p. 19).

Place colons and semicolons outside quotation marks. For example:

Williams (2002) described APA style as "a must in dissertations"; her colleagues agreed.

Place a question mark or exclamation point within closing quotation marks if the punctuation applies to the quotation itself. Place the punctuation outside the closing quotation marks if the punctuation applies to the whole sentence.

A student asked, "Do I really need APA?"

Does Dr. Hairsplitter always say to her students, "You really need to use APA"?

Each of your tables and figures should have a number, and they should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript. That is, the first table is table 1, the second table 2, and so forth, even if they appear in different chapters or sections. You should also give your tables and figures descriptive titles, which you should single-space. You may also choose to include a short description of the table with the title; it too should be single spaced. This material should appear on the same page as the table itself, and you should try to format the table and its accompanying text so that there are no large empty spaces in your manuscript.

Example:

Table 1
Correlation coefficients between Gender (G), Age (A), and APA proficiency test (APAPT)

Figure 1. The popularity of APA formatting style across USA universities.

Illustrations

Because many microfiche readers do not permit the rotation of images, illustrations should be positioned as the main text (the type reading across the 8-1/2 inch dimension). If figures or tables cannot be printed in the same direction as the text, they can be rotated to landscape orientation in such a way that the top of the figure is oriented to the inside (1-1/2 inch margin side) and the caption placed at the bottom (along the right-hand side of the page). The page number must appear in the usual place. Illustrated material will reproduce well if drawn in dark, opaque ink. On a microfilm, colors appear as varying shades of gray. Therefore, labels and symbols should be used rather than colors to identify the lines of a graph, e.g., cross-hatching, provides sharper contrast to shaded areas to indicate countries on a map.

Colored photographs

If a dissertation includes colored photographs, the photographs in the copy that is to be submitted to the ProQuest should be replaced with black and white photographs of the same subject, or, if necessary, black and white photographs reprinted by a photographer from the colored photographs. Black and white photographs with a full range of contrasts reproduce well. Those with limited contrast reproduce satisfactorily on positive microfilm. Photographs with a glossy finish or with a dark background do not reproduce well.

References

Follow the guidelines of the current Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

Appendices (if any)

This is the place to include materials to which you would like your reader to have access, but which are not necessary to the main narrative of your argument. This is the place, for example, to include your raw data, letters of permissions, the texts of surveys or other materials you used in your research, translations or editions of primary texts which are not published, and so forth.

If you do include appendices, you should give them both a generic and a descriptive title (e.g. Appendix A: Yet More Stuff about the Formatting). The title is centered, and the material is included on the same page.

For a dissertation process and procedures, please consult the NLU Doctoral Handbook, available at www.nl.edu/academics/nce/programs/Doctoral/

Plagiarism

All work that is not your must be documented by proper citation of sources. Offering the work of another as one's own, even unintentionally, is a serious offense covered by the NLU policy on academic integrity, and is especially problematic in a research document which purports to be original work. Consult NLU Student Handbook, 2005-2006, p. 26. See Student Guidebook and Calendar for more information.

Proofreading

It is your responsibility to insure that the dissertation is properly formatted and thoroughly proofread. You should always proofread after using the spellcheck, as many errors may be missed by automated spellcheck functions. A dissertation submitted to the Program Director, which shows an obvious lack of proofreading will be returned to you for additional revisions.

Sample Attachments