University requirements appear first, followed by the general standards that can guide a thesis or dissertation when your programme has not published its own preset.
Choose the closest match
University presets appear first. If your graduate school is not represented yet, the general starting point can still provide a controlled baseline without pretending to be your university’s official handbook.
6 standards in this section
PhD Dissertation
Harvard Griffin GSAS dissertation formatting guidance — equal 1-inch margins, double-spaced text, and bottom-centered page numbers.
Limit: Add Harvard's required Thesis Acceptance Certificate and finish bibliography-entry spacing manually.
Thesis
MIT thesis preparation baseline — 1-inch margins and consecutive Arabic page numbers beginning on the title page.
Limit: MIT's title and abstract pages remain manual; configure duplex printing and mirrored margins yourself for a bound copy.
Dissertation · PhD
Stanford dissertation and thesis requirements — a 1.5-inch binding margin, 1-inch outer margins, and double-spaced 12-point text.
Limit: Stanford's submission-system signature page and mirrored binding margin for double-sided printing need manual finishing.
Rackham Dissertation · PhD
University of Michigan Rackham dissertation format — 1-inch minimum margins, 12-point Times New Roman, and double-spaced body text.
Limit: Rackham's 2-inch top margin on title and chapter-opening pages, plus its front-matter order, must be set manually.
Dissertation · PhD
UC Berkeley dissertation filing baseline — 1-inch margins, 12-point Times New Roman, and single-spaced manuscript text.
Limit: Create Berkeley's separate abstract page-number sequence and use its required title and abstract templates manually.
Dissertation · PhD
Columbia GSAS dissertation format — equal 1-inch margins, double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman, and bottom-centered page numbers.
Limit: Configure unnumbered cover pages and bibliography-entry spacing manually.
9 standards in this section
Thesis or dissertation
A safe generic default for a US graduate thesis or dissertation — 1-inch margins (1.5" on the binding edge), double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman.
Limit: Typography only — confirm your own program's handbook for front matter, approval-page wording and binding requirements beyond the margin allowance.
Thesis or dissertation
Layout floor for ProQuest/UMI electronic dissertation submission — font embedding and PDF/A conformance happen outside this engine.
Limit: Covers page layout only; font embedding and PDF/A conformance for the submitted file are outside the engine's control — check ProQuest's own submission checklist separately.
Thesis or dissertation
APA 7th edition professional paper — adds a running head (shortened title) beside the page number.
Limit: Heading levels 4 and 5 render as standalone paragraphs rather than APA's run-in style.
Thesis or dissertation
Turabian 9th edition, Notes-Bibliography style — footnote citations plus a hanging-indented Bibliography.
Limit: Block quotations render double-spaced rather than Turabian's single-spaced convention, and level-5 headings sit on their own line instead of leading into their paragraph.
Thesis or dissertation
Turabian 9th edition, Author-Date style — parenthetical citations plus a hanging-indented References list.
Limit: Block quotations render double-spaced rather than single-spaced, and level-5 headings don't run in to their paragraph; in-text citation formatting is the student's own responsibility.
Thesis or dissertation
Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition — for departments naming Chicago directly rather than its Turabian student adaptation.
Limit: Block quotations render double-spaced rather than single-spaced, and level-5 headings don't run in to their paragraph.
Thesis or dissertation
IEEE citation conventions layered onto a US graduate thesis — bracketed references and centered, numbered-style headings. Thesis submissions only, never conference/journal-ready.
Limit: Does not generate heading numerals ('I.', 'II.') or reference numbers ('[1]') — those remain the student's own text — and never produces two-column layout.
Thesis or dissertation
AMA Manual of Style, 11th edition — for medicine and health-sciences theses, with flush-left (non-hanging-indent) reference entries.
Limit: Does not number references or apply superscript to in-text citation markers — the student adds those by hand.
Thesis or dissertation
American Sociological Association Style Guide, 7th edition — for sociology theses, with ASA's wider 1.25in margins.
Limit: Uses Times New Roman rather than ASA's own journal-submission preference of Arial; adjust manually if your department wants Arial.
Thesis or dissertation
CSE Manual, 8th edition — for biology and life-science theses, covering all three CSE citation-reference systems with shared reference-list geometry.
Limit: Does not enforce or generate citation numbering for any of the three CSE systems (citation-sequence, citation-name, name-year) — that stays the student's responsibility.