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 updated 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:
- Copying chapters & citations into the dissertation doc
- Numbering Pages
- Formatting a table of contents
- Labeling figures & creating a figures list
To view an MS Word doc that contains these elements, you can download the GWL’s Dissertation Formatting Template.
[Note: the formatting template and video below do not reflect changes made to Yale’s formatting guide in the fall of 2026. We’ll post an updated template and video later in the fall.]
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