OmniDocHow to format graduation thesis title, acknowledgments and appendices
Explains the common formatting requirements and Word operation methods for the title page, acknowledgments and appendices of the graduation thesis, including title styles, page breaks, numbering and checklists, to help you arrange these three parts in a standardized manner before submission.
Key points of this article
- The format of the title, acknowledgments, and appendices should be based on the school template first. If the school does not require it, use common practices.
- The acknowledgments and appendices are treated as independent chapters using a unified style without chapter numbers to avoid serial number confusion after entering the table of contents.
- Each appendix should be on a separate page, numbered as "Appendix A, Appendix B", and the citation location should be written in the text.
- Section breaks control page numbers and headers. Do not use the header page number settings of the main text when changing pages in acknowledgments and appendices.
- Check again with PDF before submission to check whether the title line breaks are reasonable, whether the page numbers are continuous, and whether the appendices correspond to the main text.
Many students have revised the main text of their papers to the point where they can be submitted, but the last few pages are arranged in a mess: the title is wrapped in an odd position on the cover, the title of acknowledgments is numbered with a chapter, the table in the appendix is broken across pages, and the header still carries the chapter name of the main text. These problems are not serious when viewed individually, but if they appear together, the reviewing teacher will feel that the manuscript is not standardized enough.
This article only talks about three things: how to arrange the title page, how to place and format the acknowledgments, and how to number and place the appendices. The overall structure of the paper (abstract, table of contents, text section division) will not be expanded here. The operation steps take Word as an example. You can follow the steps in OmniDoc document editing or any other Word editor.
How to arrange the title, acknowledgments and appendices? One sentence conclusion
For the format of the title page, acknowledgments and appendices, the school template shall take precedence. If there is no template or the template is not clearly written, follow the common practices in the table below, and ask the instructor or academic administrator for the formatting requirements before submitting.
| your situation | Recommended practices | reason |
|---|---|---|
| The school has a unified template | Write directly in the template without formatting | Font size, margins, and header rules have all been set, and it is easy to deviate from the requirements if you change them yourself. |
| The school only gave text requirements without templates. | Set font size as required and use styles to unify titles | It is easy to miss every detail if you manually adjust it. Once the style is changed, it will be synchronized globally. |
| Acknowledgments are placed after the references | Acknowledgments titles are not numbered and appear on separate pages. | These are common positions, but the specific order is subject to school regulations. |
| There are many appendices (more than three) | Each appendix is an independent page, and the numbers of "Appendix A and Appendix B" are unified. | It is convenient for reviewers to locate and cite in the text. |
| Longer questions require branching | Manually wrap lines at appropriate phrases instead of relying on automatic line breaks | Automatic line breaking often breaks the dash in the subtitle at the beginning of the line |
Before you start: Confirm these points first
First look for the school’s format requirement documents. Many schools write the font and location of the cover, title, acknowledgments, and appendices in a separate "Graduation Thesis Writing Specification." The priority of this document is higher than the common practices seen online, and also higher than the experience of other students.
Determine the formal way of writing the question. The title page should be consistent with the title of the proposal report, task book, and cover, including punctuation and capitalization of the English title. If Chinese and English questions require separate rows or pages, first confirm whether the school arranges them in this way.
Determine the location and word count of acknowledgments. Some schools require acknowledgments to be placed after the references, and some after the abstract. There is usually no hard upper limit on word count, but the content should be specific and avoid clichés. When writing, you should clearly state the contribution of each person or organization, such as the instructor's help in topic selection and revision, the equipment provided by the laboratory, the name of the funded project, etc.
Count the number and type of appendices. Appendices may be the original text of the questionnaire, supplementary data tables, program codes, long derivation processes, etc. When the number is large, you should first make a list to confirm where each appendix is cited in the text, so that the numbering sequence can match the citation sequence.
Prepare a Word file that can be opened normally. If your manuscript is .docx, use Word or a compatible editor to format it. If you only have a PDF at hand, you can use OmniDoc's PDF editing function to modify the paragraph text first, and then export it. However, it is recommended that long-form formatting be done in the source file.
Steps to arrange the title page, acknowledgments and appendices in Word
- Open the paper source file and create a title style first. Create a title style for "Acknowledgments" and "Appendix" respectively. The font, font size, and spacing before and after paragraphs are set according to the school's requirements, and set them as independent styles without chapter numbers. In this way, you only need to apply the style to each subsequent title, without having to manually adjust each one.
- Set the text of the title page separately. If the question is divided into two lines, manually break the line at the natural pause between "Research" and "Methods" to avoid dashes at the beginning of the line. Use the values specified by the school for font size and centering. Do not bold or underline arbitrarily.
- Create a separate section for acknowledgments. Place the cursor after the last line of the reference and insert a "next page" type section break. In this way, the acknowledgment page can set the header and page number independently, and will not inherit the chapter name of the main text.
- Write acknowledgments and apply the acknowledgment title style. Write "Acknowledgments" in the title without adding "Chapter" or number. The main text is written in paragraphs, each paragraph talks about a type of gratitude object, and the length of the paragraphs is kept at about a few sentences.
- Start a separate page for each appendix. Insert a "next page" page break at the beginning of each appendix, use the appendix title style for the title style, and write the number as "Appendix A Original Questionnaire" and "Appendix B Supplementary Data". The number letters are arranged in the order of appearance, without skipping numbers.
- Check citations in the text. Write "See Appendix A" where the appendix needs to be cited in the text, and make sure that the letter of the citation is consistent with the title of the appendix. If there are tables or figures in the appendix, the table numbers and figure numbers should be written like "Table A1" or "Figure A1" with appendix letters to avoid conflict with the table and figure numbers in the main text.
- Update table of contents and check page numbers. Acknowledgments and appendices should appear in the table of contents, but should not have section numbers. After inserting or deleting content, update the table of contents and page numbers, and confirm that the page numbers on the acknowledgments page and appendix page are consecutive.
- Export PDF and view page by page. If the school requires submission of PDF, export it in Word. After exporting, open it with a PDF reader or the PDF editing function of the OmniDoc desktop client to check the layout of each page. If you find text errors, you can directly change the paragraph text in the PDF, but after making the changes, you need to check whether the page numbers and table of contents still correspond.
Check each item after completion
| Check items | How to see | What to do if there is a problem |
|---|---|---|
| title page | Compare it word-for-word with the title of the cover and task book, and check the line break position and font size. | If the questions are inconsistent, the final version shall prevail and be revised uniformly; if the line breaks are inappropriate, adjust the position of manual line breaks. |
| Acknowledgments title | Check whether it has a chapter number and whether it is a separate page. | Remove the number; if it is connected to the previous page, check whether the section break is inserted at the correct position |
| Acknowledgments | Check to see if the person you want to thank is missing and if there are any repeated cliches. | Add specific contributions and delete empty polite sentences |
| Appendix number | Check whether it is A, B, C in the order of appearance, and whether there is a skip number in the middle. | Renumber and revise citations in the text simultaneously |
| Appendix layout | Whether the table is broken across pages and whether the picture is cropped | Adjust the table attributes or reduce the font size, split the table if necessary and mark "continue table" |
| Header page number | Whether the header of the acknowledgments and appendix pages is different from the main text, and whether the page numbers are consecutive | Check the header page number link settings on both sides of the section break |
| Machine translation or OCR content | If the appendix contains text transferred from a foreign language or scanned copy, check key figures and terms | Manual correction is done against the original, and the results of machine translation and OCR need to be checked. |
📝 Summary
The core of the layout of the title, acknowledgments and appendices is to first comply with the school template, and then use unified title styles and section breaks to separate the three parts. After setting up according to the above steps, subsequent modifications only need to update the table of contents and references, and there is no need to manually adjust page by page. Export the PDF and check it page by page before submitting to avoid most low-level errors.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. Do acknowledgments have to be placed after the references?
uncertain. Different schools have different practices. Some put it after the references and some after the abstract. Follow the school's writing standards; if the standards are not written, ask your instructor or the thesis director of the department.
2. Do you need to include chapter numbers in the acknowledgments?
Generally not compiled. Acknowledgments are an independent explanatory section and do not belong to the main text section, so the title usually does not have a number. If a specific numbering method is written in the school template, follow the template.
3. The appendix has many pages. Do you want each page to be a separate page?
It is recommended that each appendix be a separate page to make it easier for reviewers to find it and to list it separately in the table of contents. If the appendices are very short, the school allows them to be combined, or they can be separated on the same page with separators, but the numbers must be clear.
4. What should I do if the question is too long and cannot fit in a row?
Line break between the main title and subtitle, or at a semantic pause. The subtitle can use a smaller font size, but it must comply with school regulations. Don't let a dash stand alone at the beginning of a line or break a word apart.
5. What should I do if the table in the appendix is too wide and exceeds the page?
You can reduce the font size appropriately or adjust the table column width. If you still can't fit it in, you can split the table into two parts and write "Continued Table A1" in the title of the second part to ensure that readers can understand it.
