Writing your PhD Thesis in Microsoft Word

Alex Ridge

Department of Engineering

University of Cambridge

This dissertation is submitted for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

King’s College	2014

I would like to dedicate this thesis to my loving parents …

Declaration

I hereby declare that except where specific reference is made to the work of others, the contents of this dissertation are original and have not been submitted in whole or in part for consideration for any other degree or qualification in this, or any other University. This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration, except where specifically indicated in the text. This dissertation contains less than 65,000 words including appendices, bibliography, footnotes, tables and equations and has less than 150 figures.

Alex Ridge

2014

[p.s. the author and date above have been added using document properties (insert, quick parts, document property) so will stay in sync with the front page. The “publish date” document property would revert to dd/mm/yyyy format, so the “status” property was used instead to allow full control – it’s perhaps not the neatest way to do it, but it works]. When you have read this text, remove it from your thesis before you forget!

Acknowledgements

And I would like to acknowledge ...

Abstract

This is where you write your abstract …

Contents

Contents	xi

List of Figures	xiii

List of Tables	xv

Nomenclature	xvii

Chapter 1	Getting Started	1

1.1	Some content	1

1.1.1	Some more content	1

Chapter 2	Let’s start a new chapter	5

2.1	Headers	5

References	9

Appendix A	My Extra Stuff	A-1

A.1	Subtitle	A-1

A.1.1	Subsubtitle	A-2

Appendix B	My Second Appendix	B-1

B.1	With an appendix subheading	B-1

List of Figures

Figure 1.1– Hello, I’m a G-clamp	2

List of Tables

Table 1.1 – Some random maths	2

Table 1.2 – Some random maths	3

Nomenclature

[add some nomenclature here]

Getting Started

To start a new chapter: Step 1: insert a section break starting on an odd page. This ensures that the section will start on an odd page when you print the document. Word will insert a blank page if required to do this. This blank page however may not be visible in the normal document editing view, however it will be visible in print preview. In the normal view, you can keep an eye on page number to detect the missing inserted page. Step 2: add a title and style it with Heading 1.

To control page numbering style for a section (useful for the table of contents even if you do not explicitly display page numbers in a section), click in the section, go to Insert > Header & Footer > Page Number > Format Page Number … and select it there. Repeat this for all sections you wish to change.

Some content

Some more content

I’m going to include some suitably random picture, Figure 1.1 below. It can be found below this paragraph. It is included in a single-cell table for which the “Allow row to break across pages” option has been unchecked in the row properties, thereby avoiding the caption ending up a different page to the figure.

Figure 1.1– Hello, I’m a G-clamp

More content

I can even cross-reference section 1.1.1 and Chapter 1 etc.

Even more content

(1.1)

Did you know that Einstein’s famous equation (1.1) has a little more to it than is usually mentioned? For explanation, ask a friendly physicist.

Here’s a table, Table 1.1in fact. I am using the ‘Caption - Top’ style for this caption, in which I have checked the “keep with next” box for the paragraph properties. This means it will keep with what’s immediately after it (i.e. the table) even around page breaks.

Table 1.1 – Some random maths

x	2x	3x
2	4	6
3	6	9

If we want to go further and not allow the table itself to break / split over pages, we can use the same trick as for the figure captioning and enclose the entire table in a single-cell table of its own with the allow row to break across pages option unchecked. For an example, see Table 1.2. In this example, the caption is outside the cheeky single-cell table, including it inside the table was causing issues with the spacing after the text.

Table 1.2 – Some random maths

x 2x 3x 2 4 6 3 6 9

One final tip – when inserting tables, keep yourself a spare line of blank text after where you’re inserting it. You can then easily move to that line and carry on writing without word thinking you’re trying to extend / add more rows to your table.

And perhaps one even more final tip, if you ever want to delete a table, click in the table and go to Layout > Delete > Table. Word (2007 at least) is very good at hiding that option!

Let’s start a new chapter

Headers

Hopefully the headers will carry across … let’s see

Yes they do, brilliant

Even over here … yay.

Note: we have defined the header to reference the last “Heading 2” style text to put the section name in the headers. If we manage to get to the end of this page without having yet created a “Heading 2” styled bit of text (i.e. a x.x section) then this would pick up the last “Heading 2” from the previous chapter. This should hopefully be sufficiently rare to not be a problem, but perhaps one to watch out for.

References

Add your references here.

My Extra Stuff

So word is a bit odd / picky over exactly how you define a second multilevel list to use for appendix styling. The order in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ohONwESuLo seemed to work here.

To get fancy page numbering of A-1 etc for appendices, I’ve repurposed the heading 6 style for “Appendix A”

Subtitle

The title for this section is heading 7.

We can also include figures in the appendix and reference them nicely if we define another reference for appendix figures, in this case we’re using Fig. because “Figure” is already taken. Fig. A.1 is an example of this. This will also not include it in our main document’s list of figures. If you really wanted to stick with Figure, you might be able to get by with using the “Exclude label from caption” option and adding the word Figure manually when it is needed, or by making your appendix in a different word document.

Fig. A.1 A Monkey .. it’s amazing what’s in Clip Art nowadays

Subsubtitle

The title for this section is heading 8

SubSubSubtitle

The title for this section is heading 9

Some more appendix

And even more

My Second Appendix

With an appendix subheading

And some text

And some more text on a new page

And even more text