Late last night, I was thumbing through the stack of thesis and dissertation drafts that had been given to me by students in anticipation of a December graduation. I swore under my breath over the unpleasant task ahead — not the reading per se but rather the gratingly unaesthetic form in which I had to read these tomes. Each one represented approximately two journal papers worth of content inefficiently spread out over 120+ double-spaced, single-sided sheets of text and oversized figures. Some of these were not early drafts requiring extensive copy-editing; they were final drafts requiring only my approval and that of my fellow readers before being deposited with the Graduate School.
I was reminded of something I had recently read in this document (p. 3):
“If you put in too much space, lines lose their connection with each other, and the document becomes unreadable. Double-spacing is an extreme example of this – text should never be double-spaced if you expect anyone to read it.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I found myself orating to an imaginary Faculty Senate meeting, “in no other literary or scholarly context today is a major or minor work published in final form as a double-spaced document! Why in the world do we still require double-spaced theses and dissertations at UW-Madison?”
Of course, UW-Madison is not alone. Virtually every other university in the United States has similar archaic format requirements (this is not true abroad). There are defensible historical reasons why those standards for theses came into being in the first place. But they arguably have their roots in 19th century editing and production issues that no longer apply in 2009, and it is past time to take a fresh look. We can be the leaders of that reassessment.
Over generations, typographers have studied the parameters that make a document reasonably pleasant and effortless to read. Desirable qualities include (but are not limited to)
- a largish chunk of the text visible on a single page for effortless browsing,
- a text column width of somewhere between 50 and 70 characters, and
- line spacing that is optimal for the font and line length.
The first and third criteria partly explain why virtually all professionally published documents are single-spaced. The second explains why many text-heavy documents printed on 8.5″ or wider paper are laid out in two or more columns. Think newspapers, magazines, journal articles, and conference proceedings.
Needless to say, the UW-Madison format requirements for Masters theses and doctoral dissertations violate all of the above criteria. Only a miserly 22 lines of text fit on one double-spaced page. As already noted, double spacing is inherently hard to read fluidly. The 6.5″ lines of text correspond to about 86 characters of 12 point Times New Roman, which is really a bit too much.
So, to make my own small but indelible mark on this campus, it should suffice for me to point out to the right people that, in the era of desktop publishing, laser printers, and electronic document archival, the Graduate School’s format requirements are not only badly outdated but positively burdensome to everyone who has to actually read a thesis or dissertation, not to mention to the forests that have to supply the necessary wood pulp.
As I write this, I am awaiting an answer from the Graduate School as to who has the ultimate authority to review and amend thesis and dissertation format requirements. But it is hard to imagine that it should not be the faculty.
In the meantime, here is my preliminary proposal:
- Allow theses and dissertations to optionally be printed with single spacing. However, instead of using the ambiguous term “single spacing”, specify the required leading in points for a given typeface and size.
- Reduce minimum margin requirements to 1″ on the binding edge (e.g., left edge on odd pages) and 0.5″ on the outer edge, with a total text width not to exceed 6-7/8″.
- Subject to the above relaxed margins, allow the optional use of two-column, 10 point format similar to journal article and conference proceeding layouts. Columns would be 3-1/4″ wide with 3/8″ of space between them.
- If single-column format is used, require the use of a 12 point font, and limit text width to three times that of the lower-case alphabet a-z, or 78 characters. For Times New Roman, this is 5.9 inches. For Palatino or Book Antiqua, one gets to use up to 6.6 inches.
- For table and figure captions, allow a font size that is one point smaller than that of the main text.
- Provide Graduate School-approved document templates that implement all format requirements. Make these available for Word and LaTeX, the two major typesetting systems in wide use for thesis preparation.
There may be reasons I haven’t thought of for why such revisions would be undesirable. I look forward to reader comments.
- GP
[...] A UW-Madison TA tells of the torture of reading term papers. [...]
@Brunch Links: “TA”? “Term papers”??
Changing the requirements seems to make sense. I abhor double-spaced anything myself, so my sympathies really go out to thesis/dissertation readers.
What sorts of historical reasons are there for the current guidelines? Do they have something to do with typewriters – e.g. maybe that putting less text on a page meant that you’d have less to retype if you made a mistake? Or are there other reasons?
It seems like in addition to saving advisors’ time/eyesight and trees, the university would benefit by saving library space in storing the things.
The two situations in which double-spaced makes sense are (1) when the document is being heavily edited by hand (space is needed for the markup), and (2) when someone is hand-keying the text from the paper manuscript into typesetting software (or, in the old days, setting movable lead type). Neither situation applies to a thesis or dissertation in final form, so it’s unclear what the historical basis is for double-spacing in that case. Universities overseas (e.g., Germany, Holland) have much more modern formatting requirements — dissertations often end up looking like polished tech reports or monographs with book-like formatting.
Incidentally, the link in the second paragraph gives a good example of single-column, single-spaced formatting that works well for 8.5 x 11. It helps that he uses a wider font than the default Times Roman that winds up in most documents.
Update:
I contacted ProQuest, which is the outfit that microfilms/archives/distributes doctoral dissertations from UW-Madison. I wanted to know what technical constraints applied to things like margins etc. for documents they accepted. Also, I wanted to know how many universities still submit dissertations in paper form for scanning, as we still do here. Here is the response from one of their representatives:
“Yes, I think it would be safe to say that if your left/right margin requirements were 1″ that would allow binding to be created without cutting out any text.”
[This was in response to my question whether we could reduce margins to 3/4" on the non-binding edge while leaving it at 1" on the binding edge. -GP]
“Currently we have approximately half of our participating Universities submitting dissertations as PDF files. Having students submit PDF files creates a color archive which allows any print copies to be reproduced in color as well. We find that PDF submission is a much more efficient process in addition to the quality being much improved from paper scan.
“We have a wonderful electronic submission program called ETD. Please feel free to visit: http://www.etdadmin.com/cgi-bin/home for more information on this program!”
I have just learned that the Graduate Faculty Executive Committee (GFEC) is responsible for things of this nature. I also learned that procedures for electronic submissions are already being put in place for Fall 2010. It appears that things like format requirements are being treated separately for paper and electronic submissions. With the GFEC being busy with the electronic procedures, paper procedures will apparently have to wait. My opinion is that if the format requirements for electronic submissions are sensible, then the paper requirements will quickly become irrelevant. I look forward to hearing what the electronic format requirement will be.