INTRODUCTION
Please read this Thesis and Dissertation Guide (Guide) carefully before preparing your thesis or
dissertation. Staff members in the Admissions and Enrolled Students area of The Graduate
School are available to assist you in preparing and submitting your thesis or dissertation. You
are encouraged to visit the Admissions and Enrolled Students Contacts website and contact
Graduate School staff if you have questions about these guidelines.
This Guide is not meant to be an exhaustive manual. For specific questions of style, consult
the most recent edition of the style manual used in your disciplinary field (e.g., Kate L. Turabian,
A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations; The MLA Style Manual; or the
American Psychological Association (APA) Style Manual). When using a style manual, follow the
specifications for published documents, but do not include typesetting notations often used
when submitting manuscripts to a publisher. For assistance with style manuals, consult the
following library resource site, or visit a campus library or the Writing Center.
For assistance formatting your document in Microsoft Word, visit the
Microsoft Office support
site and search online for various elements, such as customized table of contents, section
breaks, and footnotes. For assistance formatting your document in LaTeX, you may want to
visit this LaTeX resource site, or review this tutorial guide for text formatting. There may also
be formatting workshops offered through The Graduate School’s Professional Development
program. Please note that The Graduate School does not offer technical support for Microsoft
Word, LaTeX, or other word processing programs that students may use. It is each student’s
responsibility to ensure that his or her document is formatted appropriately according to the
requirements set forth in this Guide.
Pay careful attention to spelling, punctuation, and grammar in your thesis or dissertation, as
your work will be available for others to access online. The Graduate School will not review
your thesis or dissertation for proofreading and editing purposes. The Graduate School will
check your thesis or dissertation for proper formatting only.
Please note that the work in your thesis or dissertation must be your own. Consult the Honor
Code or the Graduate School Handbook if you have questions about plagiarism. See Section IV
of this Guide for information on Copyright.
If there is a discrepancy in formatting between a style manual and this Guide, the regulations
set forth in this Guide take precedence. Please do not use another thesis or dissertation as a
model for your work since a particular style or example in a previous year may not meet current
guidelines. Also, certain commonly used software packages may require format modifications
in order to comply with current guidelines. It is your responsibility to ensure that your thesis
or dissertation is formatted correctly before you submit it to The Graduate School.
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