Formatting your research paper

1. Writing &
Presenting
Your Research
Paper

2. How to Format Your Research Paper
 Successful research is that which proves something
new, original, innovative and at the cutting edge of
ideas; our most generally acceptable forms of research
writing and presentation usually shun all of these;
“Good organization is the key to good writing” (Day, 5)
 Formatting:
To use a pattern, plan or arrangement;
 To organize or arrange text, especially on a computer,
according to a chosen pattern;

3.  When deciding how to report your research, principally in
social sciences, arts and humanities, natural and applied
sciences and law, choices are to be made;
 All of these forms of reporting research have well
established conventions for their formats;
 Differences: Conventional vs. Alternative;
 Conventional: Your research paper should conform to
‘Accepted academic conventions, as summed up by an
academic journal editor, make … easier for … writing a
clear, concise paper; that is, structured in a traditional
manner’ (Murray, 2004: 1);
 Natural and social scientists therefore report their research
in strictly uniform scientific experiment format;
 Humanities’ authors follow chronological, or logical
formats;

4. Conventional format:
 The conventional format begins with a statement of the problem
to be solved and the setting of this in its context of previous
research on the same topic;
 This is part of the rationale for the problem which stresses the
importance of studying it;
 Next, the research methodology is recounted;
 From this the findings emerge, ending with the conclusions
drawn from the material presented;
 The order will sometimes vary but the elements remain
unchanged, whether the research reported is from the natural
sciences, the applied sciences of engineering and medicine, or
the social sciences;
 In the humanities and law, the traditional conventions would be
either the production of a chronological account in numbered
order, or an argument presenting first one and then the other
side of the account;

5.  These major formats all have codified conventions for
style and language:
 The American Psychological Association (A. P. A., 2001;
2005);
 The Chicago Manuel of Style (C. M. S., 2006);
 The Modern Languages Association (M. L. A., 2003);
 The Modern Humanities Research Association
(M. H. R. A. , 2002);
 These styles work best where:
 significant amounts of quantitative and factual data have
to be transformed into easily understandable text;
 there is a logical chronological or debate sequence;
 the research subjects are inanimate or dead;

6. Advantages
 A training ground:
 Mastery of conventional formats has become almost an admission
ticket to academia with ‘tremendous material and symbolic power
… [which will] increase the probability of one’s work being
accepted into “core” … journals’ (Richardson, 1998: 353);
 For new researchers, success with conventional formats is a
compulsory rite of passage;
 It helps students to learn to write and to think like everyone else, in
the accepted forms of their disciplines (Zeller and Farmer, 1999:
5);
 It can be seen as marking the end of an apprenticeship;
 The thesis, or articles, in conventional formats show that the writer
knows the ground rules for the making of the test piece;
 Once that is perfectly completed, the apprentice can then proceed
as a master of the craft and is entitled and enabled to embellish,
with the skills of literary and artistic formats, any type of data,
quantitative, qualitative or narrative;

7.  Academic acceptance:
 Conventional formats proclaim the
respectability that policy makers need;
 In academia, where careers depend on
research recognition, writing theses and
articles, and preparing presentations, are much
quicker if the most generally accepted format is
adopted;
 Work in conventional formats is more likely to
be accepted than alternatives since examiners,
editors and research assessors work to the
standards of conventional formats;

8.  Globalization:
 The ‘market’ for research findings is now global; a
standardized format helps international acceptance
since conventions create meanings readily understood
across cultures;
 Conventions for research writing and presentation are
the equivalent of the McDonald’s logo, Marriott Hotel
bedrooms, shopping malls or aircraft emergency
instructions;
 With all of these, as with the conventional,
scientifically oriented format of research reporting,
consumers know that they will get the same
everywhere; they get what they see and they know the
format has been honed to international standards of
efficiency and effectiveness;

9. The format of an MSc dissertation
 The dissertation should be no longer than 60 pages, but this
limit does not include any appendices, references, or the title
and contents pages;
 Left margin of 37mm; right margin of 25mm;
 Double spacing;
 Font size not greater than 12pt;
 Times New Roman or Computer Modern font families;
 All pages should be numbered, including the appendix,
references, and glossary;
 Each page should have a relevant header, centered at the top
of the page ("Chapter 3. Requirements and Analysis").
 All tables, figures and equations should be numbered with
regard to chapter number and ordering within the chapter, 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;

10. Margins
 Use a minimum of 1" margin on all four sides.
To set margins:
 Click on File;
 Click on Page Setup;
 Click on the Margins tab, and edit the settings
for the left, right, top and bottom margins;

11. Page Numbers
 Page numbers are required and must be placed in the
upper right-hand corner one inch from both the top
and the side of the paper;
 The title page, dedications, and the
acknowledgements are not counted in the numbering
of pages;
 All other pages are numbered;
 Number the preliminary pages that precede the main
text with lower case Roman numerals beginning with I;
 Number the main text consecutively beginning with
Arabic numeral 1 in the upper right-hand corner one
inch from both top and side of the paper;
 Number appendices consecutively with the text,
continuing the Arabic numeral sequence;

12. To insert page numbers:
Click Insert, Page Numbers;
In the Position box, specify whether to print
page numbers in the header at the top of the
page or in the footer at the bottom of the
page;
In the Alignment box, specify whether to
align page numbers left, center, or right
relative to the left and right margins, or inside
or outside relative to the inside and outside
edges of pages that will be bound;

13. Title Page
Do not number the title page;
The title page must be double-
spaced;
It is not a bigger font, bold, italicized,
or underlined;

14. Page Headers
A page header is an abbreviated title of
the paper, located on the upper right
corner of each page of the paper;
The page numbers are to the right of
the running head after five spaces;
 The purpose of a page header is to
make sure each page has a page
number and an abbreviated title of the
paper;

15.  Open up your paper in Word,
 Go to the top toolbar and click on insert,
 Select “Page Numbers” ,
 Alignment should be right,
 A number will appear in your document,
 Type in your page header,
 If your paper title is “How Play is Important for
Children and Adult Relationships,” your page
header might be a shortened version, such as
“Importance of Play”,
 The header should be no more than 50
characters—that includes spaces and punctuation,

16.  You do not include your name or course
number in the running head.
 The first letter of each major word in the page
header should be capitalized.
 Double click the header so it is all highlighted.
 Then make it flush right by clicking on the icon
for right alignment on the toolbar;
 To get out of the header, click the “Close” box;
 The page header will appear on each page of
your paper and the page numbers will
automatically show up in chronological order;

17. Useful Tips
 Make each chapter a separate Word document; This will
make it quicker to open and save, easier to work with,
and minimize the impact of mistakes;
 Use section breaks to separate different parts of your
dissertation, to change orientation of pages, or to insert
endnotes in a particular place;
 Use the Microsoft Office Help to learn how to handle
tasks in Word; Help is very good and detailed, and can
answer most questions;
 When one part of the document is doing exactly what
you want, and another part isn't, sometimes the easiest
way is to cut the text from the "bad" part and paste it into
the "good" part;
 Stick with one word-processing program for the entire
document, and the entire writing process;