how to format a dissertation

The Neumann Library provides Microsoft Word templates to help you compose your dissertation in the format required by the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Templates define the correct pagination, margins, font size and style, and other formatting settings according to the guidelines specified in the guide.
Why use a template? Templates automate much of the dissertation formatting, saving you time. They make use of Styles, which are on the Home ribbon in Microsoft Word. A Style is a command used to format your text with predefined settings, including font size, spacing, indentation, and so on. If you highlight some text and click a style button, it will format that text according to the style. The Table of Contents will pull from these styles to automatically update the headings and page numbers.

The Table of Contents (TOC) is an organized listing of the chapters and major sections of your document. Readers will immediately be able to see how your manuscript is organized and then skip down to sections that are most relevant to them. A clear, concise, and well formatted TOC is the first indicator of a good research paper.
Please let us know if there is anything we can do to improve the information on this page or this site. Email us at nglthesis @shsu.edu .

This section is designed to help you set up your document’s parameters BEFORE you start typing. It will make the creation process easier if you do this first.
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The MLA Handbook does not provide guidelines for formatting a thesis or dissertation—or for preparing the parts of such a project, like a preface, dedication, or acknowledgments page—because most schools maintain their own formatting requirements. Although the MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, out of print since 2016, summarized some of these requirements, it did so only in a very general way.

References:

http://shsulibraryguides.org/thesisguide/tableofcontents
http://shsulibraryguides.org/thesisguide/SettingupyourDocument
http://style.mla.org/formatting-thesis-dissertation/
http://learn.solent.ac.uk/mod/book/view.php?id=116233&chapterid=15279