The overall presentation of the document itself may seem a minor consideration after the months of work that you have committed to it, however it is an important last step. The professional presentation of your document will help to elevate your hard work as well as demonstrate your professionalism and attention to detail.
It is very likely that you will discuss your dissertation project in interviews as it demonstrates your technical knowledge as well as a range of employability skills such as time management, communications skills, problem-solving, and project management. Your prospective employer may wish to see your final write up therefore it is key that your work is polished and presented professionally.
Word and Word Online have many features to make creating and formatting your dissertation document easier. It may be useful to set up the document before writing to reduce the amount of formatting you are required to complete before submission.
Word Online does not have all of the same features as MS Word so you may need to open your document in the desktop app to access many of them.
Outlining is a useful way of setting up your document initially, make changes to the order of sections and to review the flow of your sections periodically while drafting.
You can access the outlining view by clicking on the View menu ribbon and selecting Outline.
Once you have finished outlining, simply click 'Close Outline View' to return to the normal Word view and begin editing.
You can use Styles without Outlining by highlighting the text and selecting the style for example, 'Heading 1' on the Styles section of the Home Ribbon.
Multilevel lists are lists which contain items and sub-items so are a good way to organise the sections and subsections of your dissertation.
Explore the examples below and notice how the different 'levels' are numbered to make it clear where they fit within the document.
The video below explains how to set up multilevel numbering for your headings:
If you use Microsoft Word Heading Styles, you can automatically generate a table of contents with correct page numbers. Doing this in conjunction with the multi-level lists can give a structured numerical page as below:
Once your headings are styled using the Styles section of the Home menu ribbon, click References and Table of Contents.
Choose the most appropriate format from the drop-down menu, or choose Custom Table of Contents to customise the format to your needs. The generated table can be updated easily to reflect any changes you make in the document throughout the drafting process, by simply clicking on the table of contents and the option to 'Update Table' should appear at the top of the table. You can choose to update page numbers only, or the whole table.
The video below explains how to create a table of contents including the 'Heading 1' headings.
You may already know how to add page numbers in Word however for your dissertation, you may not wish for your pages to be numbered consecutively throughout. You might need, for example, Roman numerals for the initial pages (abstract, table of contents, etc.) and then the standard numbering afterwards.
Always check your guidance to confirm the expectations, but if you do require this you will need to use section breaks to limit page numbers to specific sections or pages.
Section breaks are not available on Word Online so you will need to open the document in the desktop application. To add a section break, click Layout and then select Breaks to open the menus:
If your project includes figures, tables, or equations, using the table and figure caption feature within Word can make naming and numbering them easier. It also enables you to automatically generate a table of tables or a table of equations, if these are required.
To add a caption to a figure, table or equation, select Reference and Insert Caption, or right-click on the item and select Insert Caption.
Using the label drop down menu, you can select equation, figure or table. The label will begin 'Figure 1' or 'Table 1'.
Each type of caption will automatically be numbered, for example 'Table 1', 'Table 2' consecutively throughout your work. These numbers do not update automatically but you can update them by highlighting the number, right clicking and then selecting 'update field'.
To create a table of tables, figures or equations (sometimes called a Table of Authorities), click the References Menu ribbon and select Insert Table of Figures:
Your final report will require a cover page. You may be given specific information to include, for example, student number, title, word count, so please check the guidance provided.
You can insert a cover page by clicking on the Insert Menu Ribbon and selecting Cover Page. This will open a drop-down menu to select a predesigned cover page:
Remember, your cover page should not have a page number, so you may need to update the page numbering in this section. Double click on the footer containing the section page number to open the Header and Footer menu then choose the option Different Front Page:
Word allows you to integrate referencing management software such as Zotero. This means that you when you are drafting your work, you can include in-text citations and then generate a list of references.
You can find out more information about using Zotero in the blog below:
Once the Zotero Word add on is installed, you will have an additional Ribbon Menu named Zotero. Within this, you will find add/edit an in-text citation feature which connects your text to your reference library. The add/edit bibliography button will generate your bibliography based on these in-text citations.
It is very important that your referencing is accurate, so please check this thoroughly, even if you are using specialist software. Ultimately, the software will only update the information that it holds about the source, so if it is incomplete or incorrect, this will be reflected in your referencing. To ensure your referencing is correct, always check:
The link below will take you to the Cite Them Right Online site and the ScribeHow link will provide further instructions for using the website.
Checking your work thoroughly before submission is an important stage in your writing process. There are some features within Word which can help with this.
The Editor
This feature allows you to check for spelling and punctuation errors, as well as offering suggestions about word choice. You can access this feature by opening the Review menu ribbon and selecting Editor.
This will open a menu on the right-hand side of your page which offers a range of suggestions for review. Click into the categories to review the suggestions and either accept or ignore them.
Although these features can be helpful, please do not just accept whatever suggestion is made.
Read Aloud
Spotting our own errors when proofreading can be challenging, especially when we have spent so much time looking at the document. You can use the Read Aloud option to try to hear any errors as opposed to seeing them.
The Read Aloud feature is a text to speech reader found in the Review menu ribbon.
The feature will read your work aloud as well as highlighting words as it goes so you can read along with it.