22 Thesis Elements and Formatting

To be accepted, your thesis must be properly formatted and include all required elements at the time of deposit.  You can find a list of required and optional elements and our formatting requirements on our website.

Our formatting requirements aim to help you achieve a cohesive, professional-looking thesis.  Ensuring a professional appearance will help your readers engage with your thesis as effectively as possible once it is published.

Our requirements are based on two principles: consistency and professional appearance. Consistency means things like making sure all of your chapter titles are formatted the same way.  That spacing around subheadings is consistent throughout, and that captions all appear in the same place, in relation to the tables or figures they’re describing.  Professional appearance means formatting the thesis in a way that looks polished and complete.  This can be a trickier quality to define, but mostly it means presenting your work in a way that is well put together.

The thesis templates on our website can help with formatting in a number of ways, including pagination and preliminary page layout.  Included in the template are Styles that govern the appearance of headings, table and figure captions, the Table of Contents, and the Lists of Tables / Figures. The Styles in the Word template are also important because they can make your PDF much easier to navigate.

If you have questions about formatting, need help assembling your thesis, or would like a formatting precheck, contract Erin Kaufman, Thesis Manager, at erin-kaufman@uiowa.edu.