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Monday 26 September 2011

General Steps for Formatting a Dissertation

A dissertation project, or treatise or also known as thesis could be written by undergraduate degree students or by master's degree students. But the basic or general steps or guidelines in formatting the treatise would still be the same regardless if the student is taking up a bachelor's degree or a master's degree. The formatting of dissertations would be based on the style guide or style manual that is specified by the lecturer or the supervisor of the project. The style guide is the written set of standards to follow for the design and writing of academic documents, including dissertations.

For example, a particular style manual could have the specific dissertation formatting guidelines for the paper of the document. The guidelines would include the type of paper such as an A4 paper, using double-sided printing for the soft-bound or hard-bound documents of the dissertations, font size of 11 to 12 for the text and 10 for the footnotes, and font type of Arial or New Times Roman. The other technical aspects for the formatting of the document would include the typing font and font size, in-text citations, quotations, referencing, listing of sources and the details of sources, the margins of the paper, and the style of presentation of figures, tables, graphs, images and other visuals.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

The Importance of Making Good Dissertation Titles

Dissertation titles are very important for dissertation writing since it will be the first thing that readers will see about your dissertation. Dissertation titles function just like the title of a book or article in the sense that it catches the reader's attention and gives an idea of what readers can expect of the discussion provided in the dissertation. In addition, the best dissertation titles will show the comprehensive research done for the dissertation. The dissertation writing process will have allowed the student to gain an area of specialisation in a particular subject area, which should also reflect in dissertation titles.