The formatting jobs we handle
Most formatting work falls into a handful of tasks:
- University templates: applying the graduate school’s required margins, line spacing, heading hierarchy and pagination, including roman numerals for front matter.
- Title pages: laying out the title, author, degree, institution and date exactly as your handbook or style requires, whether APA student, APA professional, MLA header, Chicago or a dissertation template.
- Tables of contents: building contents pages from real heading styles so they update automatically, instead of typed lists that drift out of date.
- Tables and figures: consistent numbering, captions in the right position and notes formatted to the style.
- Journal reformatting: moving a manuscript to a new journal’s structure, reference style and word limits.
Graduate schools often run a formal format review before a thesis is accepted, and a document can be returned for something as small as an inconsistent margin on landscape pages or a contents page that does not match the headings. We check against the reviewer’s own checklist where one is published, so the review becomes a formality.
Referencing styles we work in
| Style | Common in | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Psychology, education, nursing, social sciences | Student vs professional title page; DOIs as URLs; “et al.” from the first citation for three or more authors |
| MLA 9 | Literature, languages, humanities | Containers; page numbers without “p.”; header instead of a title page |
| Chicago | History, arts, some social sciences | Notes-bibliography vs author-date; shortened notes |
| Harvard | UK and Australian universities | Many institutional variants, so we follow your university’s own guide |
| Vancouver / IEEE | Medicine, engineering | Numbering in order of first citation; journal abbreviations |
For a worked introduction to the most common style, see our APA 7 formatting guide.
Citing theses, dissertations and other awkward sources
Some of the most frequent questions are about sources that do not fit the journal-article pattern. A master’s thesis, for example, is cited in APA 7 as: Author, A. A. (Year). Title of thesis [Master’s thesis, Name of University]. Database or archive name. URL. MLA and Chicago treat the same source differently, and unpublished theses differ again. We apply the correct pattern for each source type, including datasets, government reports, standards, software, interviews and preprints.
The citation audit is often the most valuable part of the job. In a long thesis it is common to find a dozen references cited in the text but missing from the list, a few listed but never cited, and several with the year differing between text and list. We give you a clear table of every issue so you can confirm the correct details where only you have the source.
Sending your file and turnaround
Send the document in Word or LaTeX, your university template or journal guidelines, and the style required. If you use a reference manager, mention it; fixing the library at the source is often better than editing the list by hand. Formatting a full thesis usually takes three to five working days; a reference list alone is often quicker.
Formatting pairs naturally with language work. If you are also having your thesis edited, our thesis editing service can include formatting in the same job, and a final proofread after formatting catches anything moved in the process.
Why formatting deserves a specialist pass
Formatting is easy to underestimate because each individual rule is simple. The difficulty is applying hundreds of them consistently across a long document, often in software that fights you on section breaks and page numbering. Doing it properly once, with working heading styles and a clean reference library, also saves time on every later draft and on any papers you write from the thesis. We change only presentation and citations, never your argument, so the work sits comfortably within university rules on outside help.
What you get
- A document formatted to your style or template: margins, fonts, spacing, headings and page numbering
- A correctly laid out title page and an automatically generated table of contents, list of tables and list of figures
- In-text citations and reference list corrected to APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver or IEEE
- A citation audit listing references that are missing, uncited or incomplete
- Captions, table formatting and figure numbering made consistent and cross-referenced
- Help tidying your reference manager library (Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote), if you use one
What we don't do
- Finding or adding new sources; we correct citations to sources you already used
- Language editing of the main text, which you can add via proofreading or editing
- Checking that sources say what you cite them for
How it works
Describe your project
Level, deadline and what you need help with.
Agree a written scope
What's included, the price and the timeline.
Work in stages
Check-ins so you can steer the work.
Review and ask
Explanations and follow-up questions included.