For universities and graduate schools. Demo University is fictional. The guide below is a sample formatting guide written for doctoral candidates, and the TAU Format demo checks every sentence of it, quoting the sentence on each finding. To see the demo, or how your own requirements would be implemented, go to tauformat.com/demo.
This guide tells you how your dissertation must be formatted. Each requirement is one sentence; the paragraphs around them explain why we ask for it and how to meet it. The university’s dissertation template, available for Word and for LaTeX, has every requirement built in, so a dissertation written in the template meets them from the first page; the requirements still apply to anything you change by hand.
1. Parts and order
A dissertation is read front to back by your committee, by the library that keeps it, and by readers who will find it years from now, and all of them expect its parts in the same order. The template creates the required parts in their places and offers the optional ones.
- The title page, the copyright page, the abstract, the table of contents, the dissertation text and the bibliography are required.
- The dissertation has these parts, in this order: the title page, the copyright page, the table of contents, the abstract, the dissertation text, and the bibliography.
- The dedication, acknowledgements and preface come before the table of contents; the lists of tables, figures, appendices and abbreviations come after it, before the abstract.
- Bibliography or reference sections may come at the end of each chapter or at the end of the dissertation.
- The required section headings keep the titles the template gives them.
2. The title page
The title page is the record of your degree, and the library catalogues your dissertation from it. Fill in the five facts about yourself exactly as they should appear in the record; the lines the template prints between them stay as they are.
- Give the complete dissertation title.
- Give your name without honorifics or courtesy titles.
- Give the full name of your degree.
- Give the name of your graduate program.
- Give the four-digit year of your degree.
- The title page keeps the template’s own lines: “by”, the degree statement and the “Doctoral Committee:” heading.
3. The copyright page
The copyright page records who holds the rights to your work and how to reach you after you graduate. Your university email and your ORCID iD are the two addresses that will still identify you when your student account is gone.
- The copyright page carries your full legal name, your Demo University email address, your ORCID iD and the copyright line.
- Give your full legal name as it appears in university records.
- Use your @demouniversity.edu email address, not a personal one.
- Give your ORCID iD. If you do not have one yet, register for free at orcid.org.
- The copyright page names the copyright holder and the year.
- The copyright line stays in place.
4. The committee
Your committee appears on the title page in a fixed order so that readers can tell who led your work. Enter the members with their titles and roles and the template writes the list for you.
- List your committee members with their correct titles.
- The committee has at least three members.
- The committee is led by one chair or two co-chairs.
- List the chair or co-chairs first, then the other members alphabetically by family name.
5. Margins
Margins keep your text clear of the binding and the trimmed edge of a printed copy, and they give a reader room to annotate. The template sets them for the whole document; the wider top margin on the first page of a chapter marks where a new part begins.
- Use margins of at least 1 inch on all four sides of every page.
- Use a 2 inch top margin on the title page.
- Use a 2 inch top margin on the first page of every chapter and major section.
6. Fonts and spacing
One font, one size and one line spacing throughout make a long document easy to read and easy to compare with every other dissertation in the collection. The template’s styles carry all three, so keep writing in the body style rather than setting them by hand; the smaller text allowed in notes, captions and tables still has to stay readable.
- Use one legible font throughout the dissertation; the template’s font is Aptos, and you may choose another as long as it is used consistently.
- Body text is 12 point.
- Body text is black.
- Use 1.5 or double line spacing for the body text.
- The abstract keeps 1.5 or double line spacing.
- Use single line spacing for bibliography entries, with a blank line between entries.
- Footnotes, endnotes, captions, table text and equations may be smaller than the body text, but no smaller than 10 point.
7. Headings
Headings organise your argument for the reader and build the table of contents by themselves, as long as each one carries the heading style of its level. A heading made by hand from bold text does neither, and a level skipped breaks the outline a screen reader follows.
- Headings are no larger than 18 point.
- Use the built-in heading style of the level that matches each section and subsection.
- Do not skip a heading level.
- Every chapter has text under its heading.
8. Page numbers
Page numbers let a reader cite your work and let the library check that nothing is missing. The template numbers the front matter and the text as two series and restarts the count where the text begins; you do not need to touch them unless you add or move a section break.
- Number the front matter in lowercase Roman numerals; the title page counts as page i but shows no number, so numbering appears from ii.
- Number the dissertation text in Arabic numerals starting at 1.
- Place every page number at the bottom center of the page.
- Page numbers run consecutively within each series, without gaps.
9. Lists of tables and figures
The lists at the front are built from your captions, so they are only worth having when there is something to list. Build them with Word’s own list tools so that they update when your captions change.
- Include a List of Tables when the dissertation has two or more tables.
- Include a List of Figures when the dissertation has two or more figures.
- Remove a list that would have nothing to list.
10. Tables, figures and captions
A caption in the Caption style numbers a table or a figure, places it in the lists at the front, and gives a screen reader something to announce. Insert captions with Word’s caption tool rather than typing them, and keep a table’s caption above it and a figure’s caption below it.
- Give every table a caption in the Caption style.
- Give every figure a caption in the Caption style.
- Every caption belongs to a table or a figure.
- Use the Caption style only for captions.
11. Accessibility
Your dissertation will be read by people using screen readers and other assistive software, and the final PDF is checked for accessibility before it is accepted. Most of these requirements take a few seconds each in Word: a language setting, a marked header row, a sentence of alt text, a real list instead of typed bullets. A few are judgments only you can make, such as whether an image is decorative or whether a complex figure is explained in the text.
- Set the document language to English.
- Make hyperlink text blue.
- Make hyperlink text underlined.
- Every figure has alt text that says what it shows.
- An image that conveys nothing is marked decorative so a screen reader skips it.
- A complex figure is explained in the text, not only in its alt text.
- Every table marks its header row.
- The header row holds the column names.
- Every data table carries a description that says what it shows.
- No table sits inside a cell of another table.
- Data rows keep one cell per column, with no merged or split cells below the header rows.
- Content stays in the text flow, never in text boxes or floating objects.
- Color is never the only way meaning is conveyed.
- Link text says where the link leads, never a bare web address or the words click here.
- Set the file’s Title and Author properties to match the title page.
- Build lists with Word’s list formatting, never typed bullets or numbers.
- Space between paragraphs comes from paragraph spacing, not empty paragraphs.
- Headings use heading styles, not body text made bold or capitalized.
- Colored text keeps a contrast of at least 4.5 to 1 against the page.
- Equations are Word equations, not pictures of equations.
- Footnotes are real footnotes, linked to their references.
12. Before you submit
The last steps are the ones most often forgotten, and each of them leaves a trace in the file that reviewers and the library will see.
- Export the final PDF with accessibility tags and heading bookmarks.
- Accept or reject every tracked change and delete every comment before submitting.
- Build the table of contents and every list before submitting.
How these requirements are implemented. The template builds each rule in, so a dissertation written in it meets them from the first page; Review & Fix reports anything changed by hand, names the page it read, quotes the sentence above, and offers a safe fix where one exists; Save PDF runs the review once more and exports an accessible PDF. For your university it is the same with your guide and your template. See it at tauformat.com/demo.