Some Insights For Writing Dissertations Contents Properly
Your dissertation is an important paper that you will be asked to write near the end of your degree program. It is designed to show that you have a good handle on the overall issues that your major discusses. It is the point where a student becomes a scholar. It is very important to make sure that you format your paper correctly so that you can get it approved and complete your degree program.
The contents page is designed to give your reader an idea of what the paper includes. It tells your reader where to find various parts of your paper. They can use that information to locate the parts that they are interested in reading. This task seems easy enough but you do need to know what sections of your paper to include. Here is a quick guide to help you understand what to include and what to leave out of this section of your paper.
- It should be a chronological listing of the various chapters, appendices, tables, illustrations, diagrams, and bibliography. It helps make your paper easy to use as a reference for others. They can easily find the sections that they are looking for. You would list what page your reader can find the information on.
- Check with your word processor to see if they have an automatic option to help you create your table of contents. Many of the programs will have this options. You can follow the steps and it will format this section for you.
- Be sure to see what formatting style you need to use for this paper because each one formats this part of the paper differently. You need to make sure that you format it in the correct style so refer to the formatting guide for specific information on how to accomplish this task.
- Include chapter titles and possibly subtitles. Make sure to align the chapter titles differently from where you align the subtitles. Indent the subtitles a little so that they can be distinguished from the main chapters. Some formatting styles may not have you include the subtitles.
- You may use bold text for various sections of your table of contents to help distinguish the chapter titles. You would have to refer to your formatting guide to see if they require that you use any bold text or if you should keep it all the same.
These tips should help you successfully complete this portion of your paper. You would need to determine the formatting style that your school requires that you use and follow those specific instructions to make sure that you format your paper in accordance with the selected style.