Thesis template

It has been a habit for most of students to start typing their thesis work without applying any style formatting. I must tell you that, it is very tempting to jump and start typing your work but it is also very painful to apply formatting to an already typed document. I am saying this because I have suffered a lot in the past when writing a report which is merely 40 pages plus. Fortunately, I used the below tutorial when writing my 2013 thesis and found it very useful. 

I learned this in a hard way … you don’t have to learn that way too. Follow the below tutorial and your life will be easier. 

First things first. Create an empty word document file in which you want to create your thesis template.

From the home tab, click the multi level list icon to open up a drop down menu.

Down below the menu, click “Define New Multi Level List …”. The following menu will appear:

Click the button “More>>” below the menu to expand so as to obtain the following expanded menu:

In the right corner of the menu there is a list of 9 levels. Let’s assume that we are creating a document that will have only three levels named Level One, level two and level Three.

To create level 1numbering as follows:

1. Click the number 1 in the left
2. 2Select Heading 1 for the “Link level to style” which is found in the right of the menu
3. 3Select Level 1 in the “level to show in the gallery” found in the right side of the menu
4. 4Delete whatever appears in the “Enter formatting for number” and type the word Chapter and press space
5. 5Without removing the cursor, select the appropriate numbering format 1, 2, 3 …
6. Select 1 from the selection box named “Start at”.

The resulting settings will be as seen below. Notice how settings have changed from number 2 to 6.

Create level 2 numbering as follow:

To create level 2, follow the following steps.

1. Click number 2 found in the left of the menu.
2. Select heading 2
3. Select level 2
4. Click in the “Enter formatting for number:” box and delete whatever is in it
5. Select level 1 in the “Include level number from:”
6. Type a dot separator
7. Select number style for this level as 1, 2, 3, …
8. Select level 1 in the “reset list after” selection box.

Create level three numbering as follows:

To create level three numbering is similar to creating level two numbering. Just make sure you select 3 and heading 3. Number style for level three should be of the format level1.level2.leve3. This should be entered as explained in steps 5 and 6 above.

After following the above steps, it is time to test to see the results. Now type the following list of short sentences:

Level One

Level two

Level three

Level three

Level two

Level One

Level One

After that, highlight “Level One” sentence and then click heading one style. Do the same for all level one statements in your document.

Then highlight “Level two” and click heading 2. Do that for all level 2 statements. And finally highlight “level three” statements and make them heading 3 one at a time. If your settings were correct, you should get the following result:

Remember, in a typical thesis, you are going to have headings like introduction, literature review, methodology, analysis and discussion and finally recommendations, to mention the most important ones.

You can now break section after every level one heading to make things neat.

Still there are some few things to do. Let’s have a look at the follow:

For each level, you can 1. Align number, 2. Set alignment inches, 3. Indent and finally 4. Apply font type. 

The type of font, spacing indent and other stuffs you apply will depend on the requirement of your degree program. 

You need also to format the normal text which is default. Right click in the Normal style menu and apply settings such as font, spacing, paragraph etc according to your thesis degree requirements.

I hope this tutorial will helpful to you not only in preparing thesis template, but template for any kind of reports.