Dissertation Format Guidelines

Graduate students preparing to put down their format dissertations need to have the dissertation format approved by me. Now are the main things you need to know:

1. Pursue the dissertation formatting and other commands in the Graduate College's Thesis Requirements.

2. Users of Microsoft Word should dissertation format chapter and segment headings, and the table of contents, like the Graduate College's sample thesis pages. This implies, for example, that section headings in a chapter are in block capitals and left aligned. (Users of LaTeX don't need to concern themselves with these sorts of details.)

3. On other formatting matters, follow the 15th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS). The online edition is free with a uiuc internet connection and there are non-circulating paper copies in many campus libraries, including the History, Philosophy, and Newspaper Library.

4. CMS describes two systems for bibliographic citation: (a) notes and bibliography, and (b) the author-date system. See the online citation guide, or sections 16.1–16.4 of CMS, for an overview of these. You may use either system. Comments:

a. The author-date system is used extensively in philosophy, contrary to the impression you might get from remarks in CMS.

b. In the notes and bibliography system, the bibliography gives full details of each work and the notes contain only shortened citations. See the rules for shortened citations in sections 16.42 and 16.45 of CMS.

5. It is much easier to produce a correctly formatted dissertation with LaTeX than with Word. Errors that I see in dissertations produced with Word, and that can't happen with LaTeX, include:

· Chapter and section headings that aren't correctly formatted; see point 2 above.

· Bibliographic citations that aren't in the bibliography, or don't match what is in the bibliography.

· Entries in the table of contents that don't match what is in the body of the thesis, either because the chapter or section headings don't match or because the page number in the table of contents is incorrect.

· Page numbers in the table of contents that are not aligned.

· Footnotes that don't begin on the page where they are cited, or that spread across multiple pages even though they would fit on the page they started on.

Also, in Word you have to manually specify all the format rules required by the Graduate College, whereas with LaTeX you just invoke the package uiucthesis.

6. Other common formatting errors, which no software will prevent, include:

· Inconsistent capitalization in chapter and section headings, and in titles of works cited (sometimes capitalizing all main words, other times only the first word).

· Inconsistent use of single and double quotation marks. If you follow the rule in CMS 11.33, you will use single quotation marks only for quotations within a quotation.

· Inconsistent abbreviation of page ranges (e.g., 101-8). It is not necessary to abbreviate but, if you do it, it needs to be done in a consistent manner. See CMS 9.64 and 9.65 for a discussion of abbreviation methods.

· Author-date citations misplaced; see CMS 16.112--16.114.

· Ellipsis points (...) at the beginning or end of a quotation; see CMS 11.54.

7. When you are ready to have me check your formatting, put a printout of your dissertation in my mailbox; include everything except the departmental dissertation format and committee approval forms. Email me to let me know it is there. Normally I will give you a decision within three days by email. It is practically certain that there will be errors that need to be corrected, so get it to me at least a week before you plan to deposit.