DOCUMENT PRODUCTION
Master’s and Ph.D. students are required to submit theses and dissertations electronically. Information about electronic submission is available at www.library.kent.edu/etd.
Approved Paper
A paper Approval page with signatures is no longer required. Approval pages are now done as a DynamicForms document. The forms can be located on the College of the Arts website, Graduate Students, “Thesis and Dissertation Forms”: https://www.kent.edu/artscollege/information-graduate-students
Margins
Allow one inch for the top, bottom, left, and right margins. Double spacing down from the line the page number appears on is preferable; however, flexibility based on specific software parameters is acceptable. Use only a ragged right margin (unjustified). Take special care to ensure that illustrations, graphs, tables and pictorial materials do not extend beyond top, bottom, or side margins. When necessary, reduce image size before importing it to the page.
Spacing
Double-space the text throughout. Hyphenation of words at the end of a line is discouraged. Division is permitted to avoid short lines that end considerably more than one inch from the right margin. To obtain proper spacing for front matter, refer to the appendixes of this manual. Footnotes should be single spaced. References may be single spaced, with a double space between entries.
Quotations
For quotations longer than 40 words, indent five spaces from the left margin with no quotation marks at the beginning or end. Long/block quotes are usually single spaced, but check the style manual accepted by the school in which the thesis or dissertation is being written.
Pagination
Every page in the thesis or dissertation must be assigned a page number, and numbers should appear on all pages except for the title page of the document, the signature page and the title page of the appendices. Use lower case Roman numerals for page numbers on pages containing front matter (e.g., table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, preface, acknowledgments, etc.). Center page numbers on front matter approximately 0.5 inch from the bottom. Use Arabic numerals for the text beginning on page one of chapter one. Place page numbers in the top right-hand corner approximately 0.5 inch from the right and top edges. Numbering must run consecutively throughout the front matter, text, and appendices with no missing numbers. Each number may be used only once; use of numbers such as 9a, 9b, and so forth is not allowed. Please refer to your school’s preferred style manual for more information about pagination.
Font
A single font style must be used throughout the text. Fonts must be easy to read and in a Serif style. Times New Roman is the most popular font used. Standard font sizes are 10 and 12. As necessary, a smaller font may be used in tables and charts. Underlining in the text, unless part of a formula or equation, is discouraged. For adding emphasis, use italics, boldface, or all caps. Use of italics and boldface is permissible. Italics can be used to replace underlining throughout the document, including headings and references. Guidelines for headings are shown in the APA Publication Manual (Seventh Edition), The Chicago Manual of Style (18th Edition) and The MLA Handbook (Ninth Edition).