Project Thesis NIU: It's in the Guidelines

If you haven’t visited us in the Thesis Office or attended one of our workshops, then you may not know that you can’t finish a thesis or dissertation without referring to the guidelines. It’s important to know how to utilize the guidelines and how to use them most effectively to make formatting your thesis or dissertation simpler. You will need to learn several Microsoft Word functions which you may not have ever needed to use before completing coursework and may never need to use again, so allot time to familiarize yourself with the software in your completion schedule. To begin with, download and or print the guidelines so you can refer to them quickly often.

Begin implementing the formatting outlined in the guidelines during drafting. Don’t wait until the entire document is completed to reformat. Remember, while you’ll need to follow the conventions of whichever citation style you’ve chosen, conventions of the Graduate School precede those of all other citation styles and will sometimes conflict. The guidelines alone may be difficult to understand without referring to them in conjunction with the templates and example pages also available on the Thesis Office website. Of all the procedures outlined in the guidelines, the two which often present students with the most confusion are page numbering (including section breaks and suppressing the page numbers) and leader dots. Dedicate the most time to mastering these two functions of Microsoft Word first. Separate adding and deleting section breaks and suppressing page numbers into two different learning tasks.

It’s likely you’ll need to also supplement the guidelines with Microsoft Office’s support website to view step by step illustrations to complete both tasks. Bookmark, save, and/or print the examples and templates from the Thesis Office website along with Microsoft Office’s support website’s examples and you will have all the resources you need to make sure your page formatting is correct! Do the same for adding leader dots to ensure your Table of Contents is formatted correctly as well. Video tutorials over leader dots and section breaks are on the Thesis Office website as well to supplement the guidelines. Microsoft Word several templates for title pages, tables of contents, etc. These templates will make formatting your document according to the guidelines more difficult, so don’t try to implement them, though they seem to present a ready-made, time-saving fix, they will create a headache for you.

The guidelines cover any issue that may come up during the formatting process, so refer to them first as the definitive source along with the other supplemental sources mentioned. Of course, if any other questions or concerns arise, we at the Thesis and Dissertation Office are very familiar with the guidelines and are happy to help you navigate and utilize them effectively and are available M-Th 10 am – 2 pm and by appointment in Adams 104.