Formatting and Referencing

At StatConsul, we give utmost importance to formatting and referencing, two crucial aspects of dissertation-writing that are too often overlooked by students. Besides compliance with the prescribed requirements of your university, formatting is a sign of respect and professionalism. As for referencing, it lends credibility and authority to your work. Please bear in mind that improper formatting and referencing may incur heavy penalties that may lead to failure.

Formatting

The formatting of a document is the way that it is laid out on the page, i.e., its visual organisation. There are several basic criteria to consider when formatting, in line with what most universities prescribe before submitting your dissertation, namely font selection, font sizes for headings, sub-headings, sub-sub-headings and body text, presentation (bold and/or italics), line-spacing, alignment, margins and indentation. Besides, there is a specific order in which the sections should appear in the dissertation, most of which adhere to the following format:

• Research Title
• Dedication
• Abstract
• Declaration of Originality
• Copyright Statement
• Acknowledgements
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• List of Figures
• List of Acronyms
• Chapters
• Bibliography/References
• Appendices

In addition, most universities would require that the page numbers from Dedication to List of Acronyms be in Roman numerals (i, ii, ...). Despite detailed tutorials on YouTube, a lot of students struggle to insert section breaks in a Word document. At StatConsul, we do the formatting for our clients - they are only left with submitting the document.

Referencing

Referencing is one of the benchmarks of academic research. Not only does it put your work in context, but it also depicts the depth and breadth of your research. You must always reference somebody's else idea, regardless of whether you have rephrased, paraphrased, summarised or directly quoted their work.

There are several reasons for referencing as good practice in academic writing:

• To distinguish your own ideas from someone else's
• To validate your work with reference to documented evidence (books, journal articles, etc.)
• To add credibility to your writing
• To acknowledge your sources of information and avoid plagiarism
• To inform your readers about the scope and depth of your reading of literature on your topic
• To assess, compare, contrast and evaluate information, with a view to showing your understanding
• To allow readers to consult original sources independently

Though referencing is a tedious and time-consuming exercise, bear in mind that wrongly-placed commas, full stops, parentheses or inverted commas can lead to heavy and unnecessary penalities. You also need to check the reliability of your sources - blogs, web articles and Wikipedia may not be accepted by your university.

Lastly, with the advent of technology, the Turnitin software, for example, may easily detect plagiarised work, if not properly referenced.

Tip
Unless it is researchers' seminal work (e.g., Maslow or Parasuraman et al.), you are recommended to cite articles that are outdated, based on more recent research articles (e.g., Parasuraman et al., as cited in Smith (2017)).