If you’re a Word user, you’ll have built-in styles for normal text, plus several levels of headings. Most writing software allows to you preset standard styles so that your fonts, headings, and sizes will be consistent. If the university’s rules aren’t appropriate to your particular work, it’s important to raise this with your supervisors early.
You can find AUT’s rules on p.111-119 of the Postgraduate Handbook. Some universities set very stringent rules for formatting a thesis others leave many formatting choices up to you. Even if you’re just beginning to write, it pays to do a little homework on the format in which you need to present your thesis, so that you can save yourself weeks of retrospective formatting before submission. But it has to be done, and like any inevitable chore, formatting a thesis is easier if you set up good habits early on.
Unless you’re a font nerd, it probably seems kind of dull. Margins, fonts, pagination, spacing, headings… OK, so formatting isn’t the most glamorous aspect of any writing project. The most recent edition can be downloaded here (student login required). Editor’s note: this article, published in 2016, makes reference to a previous edition of the AUT Postgraduate Handbook that is now out of date.
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