How to Use Online Dissertation Templates
You’ve finished the toughest parts of writing a dissertation – research, analysis, writing, and editing. Now you’re left with a very long document that needs to be appropriately formatted before submitting it to the committee. Several online dissertation templates might just make doing this much easier. Here are a few things you should know about using online dissertation templates:
- Check your institution’s dissertation requirements. Before searching for generic online dissertation templates, be sure you understand your institution’s submission requirements. Some institutions may have their own dissertation templates available for download, while others will list guidelines or a list of acceptable templates for you to use.
- Make sure the template has the correct citation style. As you probably know there are several different citation styles to address the specific needs of different disciplines of study. By the time you are writing your dissertation you should be quite comfortable with your discipline’s citation style. But to make things easier for you, you should find a dissertation template that already incorporates a citation style you can use.
- Make sure you download the correct format. After you’ve checked your school’s requirements and have found a dissertation template you could use, make sure you download the correct format for either PC or Mac. Although, you probably won’t be able to open the incorrect file on your computer or laptop, you will save the time from having to download the correct template file later on.
- Follow installation and transfer instructions perfectly. Just like any other file you download from an online source, you want to follow the installation instructions exactly. You also want to be sure you read directions for transferring the dissertation content from your file into the template. While you can repeat this step several times if the text doesn’t look right or doesn’t appear in the right place, you wouldn’t want to spend hours trying to fix a problem that could have been avoided if you had taken the time to read the instructions.
- Read your dissertation cover to ensure proper transfer. There’s never any harm in re-reading your dissertation one more time. While you should have hopefully completed all of your edits, you want to keep your eyes open for misplaced headings, incorrect page breaks, incorrect paginations, incorrect citation formatting or any of a number of other things that could have gone wrong when applying your file to the template. Due diligence is always important!