This page describes the writing style used in formal English and how to lay out your dissertation.  

Writing the Dissertation.

• The reader is the most important person. Reading a well-written and well-presented report is a pleasure.
• Reading papers in the area of your project is a good way to develop a good writing style.
• Writing a dissertation is a fairly time-consuming process. It is in your interests to make an early start on it - do not wait until you have finished all the practical work before starting writing.
• Produce a plan showing the division into chapters and sections, with possibly a sentence or two indicating how you intend to cover the material in each chapter or section, and discuss this with your supervisor.
• Produce a draft for each chapter in turn and follow each up with a discussion with your supervisor
• Plan your project time so that the supervisor has time to read drafts and make comments, and you have time to act on your supervisor's comments.
• Your supervisor is not a copy editor. They will comment on structure and content, but will not correct a multitude of grammar and spelling mistakes. That is up to you.  The English Language Teaching Centre can offer assistance to overseas students on dissertation writing.
  
• Proof read your dissertation, then proof read it again. A spell checker alone is not adequate.
• Every chapter but the introduction and conclusions should have an introductory section that sets the scene for the chapter, i.e. explains the reasoning behind the chapter's structure.
• Think carefully before you use the first person singular. Thus you should not write "I wrote a program...", but rather "A program was written...".
• You are writing a scientific document: do not write "chattily" in the first person. For example, do not write narrative such as "After obtaining visual C++ from the CICS, I was unable to install, so I tried...".
• Write in clear, readable English, avoiding the two extremes of either writing notes, or long winded sentences with lots of subordinate clauses.
• The reader is probably a busy person. "Padding" irritates busy readers, so be concise.
• It is important to make clear which points are original and which parts are taken from the literature.
• Do not even think of passing off other people's writing as your own. This type of cut-and-paste plagiarism "is as easy to detect as a Xeroxed banknote" (Watt, 1998). For instance, if you have any doubts about the dividing line between a thorough literature review and plagiarism, then discuss it with your supervisor. This holds for illustrations also - other people's illustrations that you have scanned in or obtained from the web can only be used both with their permission and with an appropriate reference.
• Where possible, all figures should be created using appropriate software tools.
• If you use abbreviations or acronyms they should be defined where they are first used. For example: A common type of abbreviation is the Three Letter Abbreviation (TLA). Using too many TLAs can make your work hard to understand. If they are used throughout the dissertation, a glossary should be provided as an appendix.
• It is sometimes useful to refer readers to additional material in an appendix (for example, the full text of a questionnaire you may have issued for user-testing purposes). While examiners usually read the appendices, they are not formally required to do so, so make sure your dissertation makes sense even if the appendices are not read.
  
• Repeat: The reader is the most important person. Reading a well-written and well-presented report is a pleasure.

Document style and formats

• Use single line spacing (or alternatively line spacing of 1.1 or 1.2);
• Font size should be 11pt or 12pt (chapter and section headings may be larger);
• Use Times Roman or Computer Modern font families  for standard text, and a distinctive font for code and code samples. For example: "Output was handled using the applyUserTemplate function".
• If you intend binding or stapling your work along the left-hand edge, remember to allow adequate space: left margin of 37mm, right margin of 25mm.
  
• All pages should be numbered including the appendices;
• Each page should have a relevant header, centred at the top of the page (for example, "Chapter 3. Requirements and Analysis").
• All tables, figures and equations should be numbered with regard to chapter number and ordering within the chapter (section numbers within the chapter do not influence the figure or table numbering), e.g. Figure 1.1, Figure 1.2, Figure 1.3, ... Table 1.1, Table 1.2, ... for chapter 1, then Figure 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, ..., Table 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, ... for chapter 2, and so on. Equations can be numbered in a similar way.
• Within the text, tables and figures should be referred to by their number, e.g. "Figure 3.4 shows...", not using "The figure below...".
• It is seldom necessary to have more than three levels of heading, e.g.

  Chapter 3: Requirements and Analysis ... 3.1 Introduction ... 3.1.1 Assumptions ... 3.2 Functional Requirements ...

  If further subdivision is needed then do not number the subdivision heading, just highlight it in bold or italics.
  

LaTeX