You’ve used Word before. You’ve written reports and essays. And they look good. So why should you read this?
A dissertation is big, typically 10–15 thousand words. A good dissertation is a carefully structured document that maintains a consistent presentation across many pages. It will include a table of contents, references, chapters, sections and subsections that should be formatted in consistent styles. The style of the text should look the same from page to page. And chapters are not usually written in the order they appear. If you try to think about the structure and presentation at the same time as you’re writing the dissertation, something will suffer, usually the content.
So, if you want a high-quality structured dissertation, it helps to separate form (the structure and what the dissertation looks like) and content. Used properly, Microsoft Word can help you achieve this. Used carelessly, it will probably contribute to your problems.
The remaining sections of this document will look first at what form a dissertation should have. Then they will look at how to select a uniform style for the elements. Finally they will show how Word can be set up and used so that you can build up the dissertation in the structure and style you have designed.
What the document does not cover is what the dissertation should contain. That, after all, is up to you and will vary from student to student. But the ideas here should leave you free to think about the content as you write the dissertation. If you get that right, actually writing the dissertation can be the easiest and most satisfying part of your project.
One final word of warning. The writing style of this document is not appropriate for most dissertations: its purpose is to explain something practical in simple language, not to describe a piece of research.