Preparing hardcopy versions of a thesis

You may also want to print hardcopies for sharing with your school, department or centre, friends and family, and for your own reference. If you are printing a hardcopy you should follow the guidance below in addition to the more general guidance on thesis presentation.  

Quality

Hardcopy theses for funders and other required purposes must be of good quality in terms of paper, print quality and binding. 

Paper size

The text and, wherever possible, all the material of the thesis, including illustrations, should normally be produced on A4 size paper (297mm x 210mm).  

Production of text

Text may be produced:

• single-sided, on the front of pages
• mostly single-sided, but occasionally printed on the back (eg to allow a diagram to face related text)
• or on both sides of the paper, providing the paper is opaque enough to avoid show-through. 

Margins

It is recommended that, in order to allow for binding, reading, and reproduction, the margin on the binding edge of the page is no less than 40mm, and that other margins are not less than 15mm. (The binding edge of the page refers to the left-hand edge of the front and the right-hand edge of the back of a page).

The character size and line length should also be taken into account when deciding margin width. Any running heads and page numbers should be within the recommended margins at the top and bottom of the page, and preferably no nearer the edge of the paper than half the margin width. It is recommended that margins around all illustrations and off-prints are no smaller than those of the text, if they are bound into the thesis.

Photographic prints

It is recommended that photographic prints, if bound with the text, are printed on medium-weight photographic paper (eg paper of a thickness equivalent to that of uncoated paper of substance within the range 70 g/m2 to 100 g/m2) or permanently mounted on A4-size card or substantial paper.

Large illustrations

If it is necessary to bind in an illustration on a paper size larger than A4, it should be produced on paper that can be folded to fit within the thesis; illustrations should not be pasted across both pages of an open volume.

Components that cannot be bound

Material that cannot be bound (for example an extra-large illustration, or an electronic storage device containing data) should be clearly labelled with an appropriate identifier (eg CD A, CD B) and referenced with the thesis (in the ‘list of accompanying material’ section). Illustrations that cannot be bound should also be included in the list of illustrations with their identifier.