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Thesis and Dissertation Formatting Checklist

Written by the MicroTools Hub team · Updated

Formatting errors are among the most avoidable reasons for a thesis being returned. Every institution publishes its own rules, which always take priority over general advice, but most share the same structure. Use this checklist to organize your final checks, then compare each item with your own template.

Related tools: Thesis Format Checker, Title Page Generator, Citation Generator. They run in your browser, with no account.

Start with your institution's rules

Find your graduate school or department's thesis guidelines and any official template before you write. Note the required page size, margins, font and size, line spacing, heading style, order of front matter, and citation style. Checking these early is far cheaper than reformatting a finished document.

Page setup

  • Page size: US Letter or A4, depending on your country and institution.
  • Margins: a one-inch (2.54 cm) margin on every side is common, but many institutions need a wider left margin for binding.
  • Font and size: commonly a 11 or 12 point serif or sans-serif font, used consistently for body text.
  • Line spacing: often double spacing for body text, with single spacing allowed for block quotes, captions and references. Check which applies.
  • Page numbers: position and format vary, and front matter is often numbered with lower-case Roman numerals.

Structure and headings

  • Use the built-in heading styles of your word processor instead of making text bold by hand. This keeps the hierarchy consistent and lets the table of contents update automatically.
  • Do not skip levels: a Heading 3 should sit under a Heading 2.
  • If you number headings, number them all in the same way.
  • Typical sections include an abstract, introduction, literature review, methods, results, discussion, conclusion and references, but your discipline may differ.

Front matter and back matter

  • Title page with every required field such as title, author, degree, department, institution, supervisor and date.
  • Abstract, acknowledgements and declarations, if required.
  • Table of contents, and lists of figures and tables if you have them.
  • References or bibliography, followed by appendices.

References and citations

Use one citation style throughout and make sure every in-text citation has a matching reference entry and the reverse. Check that author names, years, titles and page ranges are complete and consistent, and that references are sorted as your style requires.

Final checks before you submit

An automated format checker can read page size, margins, fonts, spacing and heading levels from a DOCX file, which catches common slips quickly. It cannot know your institution's exact rules or judge content, so treat its findings as a prompt to look, not as approval.

  1. Update the table of contents and any lists of figures and tables.
  2. Check that figures and tables have numbers, captions and are mentioned in the text.
  3. Run the spell checker, then read the document aloud or ask someone else to read it.
  4. Export to PDF and look through the PDF page by page for broken layouts, orphaned headings and missing images.
  5. Compare the result with your institution's checklist one last time.

This guide is general information for study purposes. Check your institution's own requirements, which take priority.

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