Many institutions reject dissertation submissions outright for formatting non-compliance, regardless of content quality. The rules are often stricter and more specific than general academic style guides. And they vary meaningfully from one university to the next.
"Formatting" sounds like the least intellectually demanding part of a dissertation, which is exactly why it gets neglected until the week before submission. And exactly why it causes so many last-minute panics. This guide covers the broad, cross-institutional conventions: how APA, Chicago, and MLA style actually differ in a dissertation context, how heading hierarchies work, and how front and back matter are conventionally ordered. If you need the narrower, administrative side of formatting. Binding requirements, PDF submission specs, embargo options, and ProQuest or institutional-repository requirements. See our dedicated submission standards guide, which covers that ground in depth so this page can stay focused on style itself.
| Element | What to Check |
|---|---|
| Margins | Often 1" or 1.5" on the binding side. Confirm your institution's exact spec |
| Font and size | Many require a specific serif font (e.g. Times New Roman 12pt) throughout |
| Heading levels | Consistent formatting per heading level (often following APA or a custom style) |
| Front matter order | Title page, abstract, acknowledgments, table of contents. Specific sequence required |
| Page numbering | Front matter often uses roman numerals, body uses arabic. Confirm the switch point |
| Table/figure formatting | Caption placement and numbering conventions, often field- or style-specific |
Most students learn one citation style as undergraduates and assume it will simply carry over to their dissertation. It usually does, but dissertations apply that style across a much longer, more structurally complex document than a typical course paper, which surfaces differences that rarely come up in a fifteen-page essay.
| Style | Typical Discipline | Distinctive Dissertation Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| APA (7th ed.) | Social sciences, education, nursing, business | Structured abstract with keywords, running head conventions (varies by version), levels of heading (1–5) applied consistently across every chapter, author-date in-text citations |
| Chicago (Notes-Bibliography) | History, humanities | Footnotes or endnotes rather than in-text parenthetical citations, a separate bibliography distinct from the note list, no page number displayed on the title page |
| MLA (9th ed.) | Literature, some humanities programs | Works Cited rather than References or Bibliography, author-page in-text citations, less rigid heading-level system than APA. Often left to the institution's own template |
The practical difference that trips people up most is not the citation format itself, most students can look up how to cite a journal article, but how each style handles the document's overall skeleton. APA's numbered heading levels (Level 1 through Level 5) are meant to be applied with total consistency: every Level 2 heading in chapter three should look identical, in font, weight, and spacing, to every Level 2 heading in chapter five. Chicago and MLA are comparatively loose about heading hierarchy and defer more to whatever structure the institution's own graduate school template specifies, which is why the template, not the style manual, should always be the final word when the two disagree.
A dissertation typically uses somewhere between three and five heading levels: the chapter title itself, major sections within a chapter, subsections within those, and occasionally a fourth or fifth level for fine-grained organization in a literature review or results chapter. The specific visual treatment matters far less than perfect internal consistency. A Level 2 heading that's bold and centered in chapter one but bold and left-aligned in chapter four is a formatting error a committee member will notice even if they can't immediately articulate why something feels off.
The safest approach is to build a simple heading style sheet before you start drafting chapter one: write down, in one place, exactly what font weight, size, capitalization, and alignment each heading level uses, and refer back to that sheet every time you add a new heading, rather than trusting memory across a document you'll be working on for a year or more. Word processors' built-in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) are worth using specifically because they enforce this consistency automatically and also power an auto-generated table of contents. A detail that matters a great deal at the end, covered next.
Front and back matter are the parts of a dissertation that have nothing to do with your actual argument, and precisely because of that, they're the parts most likely to be assembled last, in a hurry, and out of the order your institution actually requires. A typical front-matter sequence looks like this, though the exact requirement always comes from your graduate school's own template rather than a general style guide:
Back matter is comparatively simple: references (or bibliography, in Chicago), followed by appendices (raw instruments, IRB approval letters, additional data tables too long for the body), and occasionally a glossary of terms if your field uses specialized vocabulary a general reader might not know. The one detail students consistently miss is the page-numbering switch point: front matter is conventionally numbered with lowercase roman numerals (i, ii, iii), while the body of the dissertation restarts at arabic numeral 1 on the first page of chapter one. Getting this switch wrong, or forgetting it entirely, is one of the most common reasons a otherwise-finished manuscript gets bounced back by a formatting reviewer.
Imagine a student drafts chapter one in the spring, using Word's built-in "Heading 2" style for subsections. Over the summer, they draft chapter three on a different laptop, and instead of applying the same built-in style, they manually bold and center a subsection title because it "looked close enough" at a glance. Individually, that's a thirty-second shortcut. Multiplied across a hundred subsections written over a year of on-and-off drafting, it becomes a document where the table of contents, which only picks up headings tagged with the actual heading style, is missing several chapter-three entries, while the visual formatting looks subtly inconsistent to anyone who compares two chapters side by side. The fix at that point means manually auditing every heading in the document, which takes far longer than it would have taken to apply the correct style the first time. This is exactly the kind of problem a dedicated formatting pass exists to catch before a committee, or a graduate school's automated template checker, catches it for you.
Get your university's actual template document, not a general style guide. APA or Chicago style covers citations and general formatting, but most universities layer additional, institution-specific requirements (margins, page numbering, required front matter) on top. The template, not the general style manual, is the authoritative source.
Margins, headings, front matter, and citation mechanics, checked against your university's actual template.
Yes. Send us the template or format guide and we apply it consistently throughout your document, including front matter and heading styles.
Formatting addresses structural compliance (margins, headings, page numbers); proofreading addresses surface text errors (typos, grammar). Most final submissions need both. See our proofreading guide for that piece.
Not always. Some institutions require APA citations but their own separate formatting template for everything else. Check your handbook; we apply whatever combination your program actually requires.
This page covers style itself. How APA, Chicago, and MLA differ, heading hierarchy, and how front and back matter are conventionally ordered. Our formatting standards guide covers the narrower, administrative side: binding and PDF submission requirements, graduate-school template compliance, embargo options, and ProQuest or institutional-repository submission. The part that happens after the style questions are already settled.
Yes, strongly recommended. Built-in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) enforce visual consistency across a document you'll be editing for a year or more, and they let you generate and update a table of contents automatically rather than retyping page numbers by hand every time a revision shifts the pagination.