Thesis Template

The five-chapter structure in this template is the conventional format for social science, management and commerce doctoral theses, but your university's regulations override it. Check the prescribed chapter scheme, word limit, margin and font requirements, and preliminary-page order before you start writing into any structure.

Set the document up properly at the outset, because retrofitting formatting to a finished thesis is painful. Use Word's built-in heading styles so the table of contents generates and updates automatically, insert captions through the caption tool so figure and table numbering renumbers itself, and use section breaks to handle the switch from roman to arabic page numbering.

Write the chapters in the order the work happens rather than the order they appear. Methodology and results come first, discussion follows once you know what you found, and the introduction and abstract are written last. Keep a running reference library in Zotero or Mendeley from day one — reconstructing citations at the end costs weeks.