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Publishing a Master's Thesis or Dissertation with ProQuest (PQDT) : FAQ: Formatting Guidelines

Resources and guidelines for preparing and uploading a thesis/dissertation to the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database.

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Guidelines for Formatting your Document

DOCUMENT STRUCTURE

Some departments may have specific & different guidelines that may slightly deviate from this structure.

  • Title Page  *preliminary page   
  • Signature Page (unsigned copy of this page is included in the document submitted to PQDT) *preliminary page 
  • Copyright Page *preliminary page  
  • Abstract *preliminary page 
  • Dedication (if used) *preliminary page 
  • Acknowledgements (if used)  *preliminary page 
  • Table of Contents  *preliminary page 
  • List of Tables  *preliminary page
  • List of Figures  *preliminary page 
  • Main body/text of document
  • References
  • Appendices

 **View a generic template for preliminary pages from the box on the left. (MS Word documents)**

SUMMARY OF PROQUEST REQUIREMENTS

Fonts: Any legible font except script, italic, or ornamental fonts equivalent in scale to 10pt.  Arial and 12pt Times New Roman are acceptable. Italics may be used for non-English words and quotations.  These specifications apply to all text including captions, footnotes/endnotes, citations, etc.  Bold is not used for text. 

Margins: 1 inch for the LEFT, RIGHT, TOP & BOTTOM
These margin specifications apply to ALL text except page numbers.  Page numbers must appear within .75 inches from the edge but do not need to appear within the margins of the manuscript.

Line Spacing: Double-spacing is required for the body of the manuscript.  This also applies to the abstract, dedication, acknowledgements, and table of contents.  The exceptions are quotations as paragraphs, captions, items in tables, lists, graphs, and charts that should be single-spaced.  Footnotes/endnotes, bibliographic entries (dependent on CITATION STYLE), and lists in appendices may be single-spaced.

Multimedia Files and Formats: The following list describes what files and formats are acceptable for image, video, and audio files.

  • Images: GIF (.gif); JPEG (.jpg); TIFF (.tif)
  • Video: Apple Quick Time (.mov); Microsoft Audio Video Interleaved (.avi); MPEG (.mpg)
  • Audio: AIF (.aif); CD-DA; CD-ROM/XA; MIDI (.midi); MPEG-2; SND (.snd); WAV (.wav)

Embedded Fonts: Manuscripts must be created/saved using embedded fonts.  Documents printed from digital files can lose all punctuation and formatting if fonts are not embedded.  (Please review the tab with instructions on how-to embed fonts.)

Adobe PDF: Documents are submitted via the UMI ETD Administrator platform which is web-based.  Manuscripts must be uploaded as PDFs. PDFs must not be password protected, compressed, or contain a digital signature.  

Full guide to ProQuest Requirements:
http://media2.proquest.com/documents/UMI_PreparingYourManuscriptGuide.pdf 

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