First Impressions are Half the Battle. Make your Contents Page Impress Everyone
Contents page is the obligatory element of any academic paper. It precedes the main text of the paper and introduces the sequential listing of its components with page numbers. Contents layout organises the work logically, adds orderliness and scientific rigour to its composition.
Though found at the beginning, contents page may be created at the final stage of the research, when every point is investigated and settled down. But when a research is still under way its plan can be dynamic and flexible, open to possible amendments.
Never Judge a Book by its Cover. Judge a Dissertation by its Contents Page Instead
The dissertation contents page succinctly represents the overall structure of your work. In general, your dissertation structure will encompass the following sections in the approximate sequence with their corresponding page numbers:
- Introduction,
- Acknowledgements,
- Abstract/Thesis,
- Hypothesis validation,
- Statistical data analysis,
- Literature review (bibliography), together with the researcher’s published articles,
- List of references and List of abbreviations,
- Conclusions,
- Appendixes (tables, diagrammes, schemes, illustrations, graphics, charts, photographs, instructions etc.),
- Indexes (of subjects, languages, formulae etc.).
A research paper starts with a title page, which comprises some obligatory elements. It is followed by the dissertation contents page.
At the top of the dissertation contents page per se you must write your dissertation title and subtitle. Then, list every chapter, section and sub-section, one under another, showing their hierarchical order with different fonts and indentation (3-5 indents to the right with regard to the previous level of subordination). Headings are capitalised. It is recommended to dot the path from headings to page numbers vertically aligned in the right column. This outlay gives you an orderly visual scheme of your ideas, with supporting points subordinated to controlling ones. As you set down these ideas, use:
- roman numerals for the most important points;
- capital letters for the next most important points;
- Arabic numbers for supporting points under lettered points;
- lowercase letters for the smallest items.
Points titles must be identical to those in the very text of the paper. They cannot be shortened, reshaped or rearranged as compared with the paper body.
The body of a paper may comprise 4-6 chapters, but do not claim to cover too many problems in order to be able to cope with all of them extensively and comprehensively within the time margins alloted for the research.
It can be presumed a next-to-impossible task to gather all those dissertation parts together, to juggle them freely and not to omit any of them. If it’s exactly your point of view, you are welcome to resort to FastEssays.co.uk services. It provides high-end tailor-made dissertations as well as dissertation contents pages that include all the necessary sections.
