Formatting Your Dissertation

Formatting your dissertation to comply with Yale’s guidelines is the final step before submission. If you’ve reached this stage, congratulations on being so close to such a huge achievement! 

The Registrar’s Office page on dissertation submission includes links, deadlines, FAQs, and official formatting guidelines. The video tutorial below guides you to the finish line by demonstrating how to execute several key formatting elements in MS Word.

Formatting Your Dissertation

Yale’s formatting guide outlines the requirements for dissertations. You can see what these look like in practice by downloading a few examples from Yale’s dissertation database.

The video below shows the steps for achieving some of the less self-explanatory formatting elements:

1. Formatting a table of contents
2. Labeling figures
3. Creating sections and numbering pages
4. Mirroring margins for bound copies

To view an MS Word doc that contains these elements, you can download the GWL’s Dissertation Formatting Template.