What should you bear in mind when submitting your Word document for the layout of your thesis?
Good thesis design starts with the submit of a good Word document. By this we do not mean readability or grammar, but how the Word file is structured. This does not mean it has to look attractive; after all, we at Persoonlijk Proefschrift will take care of that. So don’t worry about fonts, alignment, margins or line spacing, but there are a number of things that are important to make the document clear and workable for our designers.
1. Be consistent and make the structure of the text clear.
As designers, we do not focus on the fonts, alignment or line spacing in Word, but rather on the structure of a document. The structure of the text must be consistent; otherwise, a designer may become confused whilst formatting the document. To make or keep a Word document consistent, you can use formatting styles. With Word’s formatting styles, you can distinguish between chapter and paragraph headings (main and subheadings). An added benefit is that, if you do this properly, it is very easy to generate a table of contents automatically.
To apply formatting styles, select the chapter or paragraph heading in Word and then click on ‘Heading 1’ under ‘Home’ -> ‘Styles’. Generally, ‘Heading 1’ is used for chapters, ‘Heading 2’ for section titles and ‘Heading 3’ for subsections. If your thesis has a different structure, you may use other formatting styles. Please ensure that you apply these consistently.
2. Figures from a thesis in Word
When typesetting a thesis, the typesetter does not usually use the figures inserted in Word. The reason for this is that images are compressed in Word, which compromises the quality of the thesis. Please bear the following points in mind when submitting a Word document containing figures.
Please provide the original files for the illustrations.
To ensure the highest possible quality of your thesis, we recommend that you send the original files for your figures along with the Word document. These original images may have various file extensions (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .eps, .ai, .pdf, etc.). Our designers can work with almost all file formats. So please gather the original files for all your figures; this will greatly increase the likelihood that the quality will be right straight away when you submit your files.
Indicate where figures should be placed within a text.
If you include the original figures with a Word document, it is advisable to leave them in the Word document. That way, the designer will know where they are meant to go. The designer will then take this into account and format the figures and text so that they are positioned as required.
3. Tables in a thesis written in Word
Many people will be familiar with tables in Word. To insert a table, click on ‘Table’ in the ‘Insert’ menu and move the cursor over the grid until the desired number of rows and columns is selected.
If you want to add more than 10 columns or rows to a table, you can use the ‘Insert Table’ option by clicking on ‘Table’ and then ‘Insert Table…’ in the menu.
A few tips on using tables in a thesis:
There is no need to split a table when it spans several pages. This results in two separate tables, which our designers then have to merge back together. It is therefore better to simply let large tables run continuously.
In addition, we recommend that you do not format a table beyond simply adding the headings. The formatting conventions for a thesis are usually different from those for a Word document. The designer will ensure that a table is laid out attractively and fits appropriately on a page of the thesis. It is therefore a waste of time to spend a lot of time formatting tables in Word. However, it is important to make the structure of a table clear. You should therefore, for example, display headers in bold.
There is no need to submit tables separately. We can edit them directly in Word. Even if you copy a table from Excel and paste it into Word, we can format it.
