When you are writing an essay or a report, the formatting is the last thing on your mind. Formatting is merely an afterthought in more writing related projects. You just need to make sure that your punctuation marks are in the right place, that your font is easily readable, and that you have labeled all the sections correctly. For most of us, formatting just means making the document look more visually pleasing. We all follow the basic rules such as don’t write long paragraphs, use headings wherever possible, and so on.

Sadly, things aren’t so easy when you are writing a dissertation. The problem is that you can't just format a dissertation in a way that you think looks visually pleasing. You cannot just format it to make sure it flows well. What you have to do instead is strictly follow formatting rules which will be provided to you most probably by your institute. You need to make sure that each and every part of your dissertation fully complies with the formatting requirements.

This isn’t easy, which is why students who have done all their own academic writing so far end up using PhD dissertation writing services. Writing a dissertation is already in incredibly stressful ordeal for most students. Adding the stress of formatting is never a good idea, which is why we are here to help. Here are some quick tips that will help you get over your formatting related issues.

Get all the Information About Formatting First

Most students aren’t thinking about formatting when they set out to write their essay. This can create problems down the line. You do not want to find out that you were misinformed about the formatting requirements after you have already written your dissertations. Changing the formatting throughout the dissertation takes a lot of time and patience.

Thus it is always better to get all the information about formatting for your dissertation before you begin working on any part of the dissertation. In most institutes you will be given all the details but if you are not provided the details you should ask for them.

Use Automated Formatting Tools

The best kept secret in dissertation formatting is the fact that many word processing applications will automatically format your document according to popular writing standards. You can find this option in Microsoft Word as well. Go to the references section and there is an option called ‘style’. In this option you will find many different citation formats such as APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, ISO, and many more. This takes care of the citation part. The references will be correctly formatted according to your chosen style. The biggest advantage of adding references through this option is that you can change the formatting style later on with just a single click. If you enter all citations manually, you will have to edit them all manually as well.

Another tool that is very helpful is the formatting style in Microsoft Word. You can change normal text formatting, headline formatting, and numbering to make sure it stays consistent throughout the document. You can simply click on the text and choose a style, and the text will be formatted in the correct style with a single click.

There are a lot of tools available for other types of writing software as well. It is becoming common for universities to ask students to use LaTeX when creating a dissertation. LaTeX makes it easier for students to get the formatting done right. There are built-in citation tools but you can also look for citation tools online that will format your references in the correct format automatically.