General Regulations  Submission of Approved Master's Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation  Thesis Style and Format Guidelines 

Thesis Style and Format Guidelines

The thesis/dissertation must be double spaced throughout. The print size must be standard throughout and not less than 11 point.

Copies prepared for the defence may be double-sided.

All margins must be a minimum of one inch. The first line of every paragraph should be indented a standard half inch.

Abbreviations may be used (if conventional in the particular discipline) but must be defined the first time they are used.

If there are alternative correct spellings of a particular word, either form may be used, but such use must be consistent throughout the thesis.

The organizational sequence should be as follows:

  • Title page of the thesis
  • Abstract
  • Acknowledgments
  • Table of Contents
  • List of Tables (if appropriate)
  • List of Figures (if appropriate)
  • Text of the thesis
  • Endnotes and/or footnotes (may be included in the text)
  • Appendices (if appropriate)
  • References

The thesis pages should be numbered in consecutive order with Arabic numerals, starting with the first page of text and continuing through to the last page of the entire thesis, including endnotes/footnotes, appendices and references. Pages preceding the text, starting with the first page of the abstract should be numbered consecutively with lower-case Roman numerals.

The title page of the thesis must contain the Universal Copyright Notice©.

The title page must be organized as follows:

(TITLE OF THESIS/DISSERTATION)

by

(full name of the author)

(undergraduate/graduate (if applicable) degree, university, year)

THESIS/DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Department/Faculty of ___________________

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for

(Degree in full, e.g. Master of Science/Doctor of Philosophy in _____)

Wilfrid Laurier University

© (full name of the author) 20___