Dissertation requirements and format

You are required to submit two copies of your dissertation by the middle of September of the relevant year. This is the end of the first academic year for full-time students and the end of the second academic year for part-time students.

Your dissertation must be typed or word-processed and bound in suitable (soft) binding. The length limit for the dissertation is 10000 words (excluding appendices). You will be penalised if you exceed this limit by more than 20%. If you consider that you have a special case for needing more words than this, you should write to the convenor (currently Neil Smith) specifying your reasons before the end of the summer term.

The format for the dissertation is as follows. It should be either double spaced or 1.5 spaced in 11 or 12 point type, with wide margins to both left and right. The pages should be numbered throughout, beginning with the title page. It is normal for the title page to be followed by a list of Contents, and then either an Introduction or an Abstract. It is customary, but not obligatory, to have a paragraph of acknowledgements, thanking those who have helped you in your work.

After the main sections of the dissertation, there should be a Conclusion and finally an alphabetic list of References, containing every item referred to in the text.

The title page should include the information given in the mock-up below.

A complete list of previous MA dissertation titles can be found here. Most of them can be borrowed for brief periods from the convenor.


The Acquisition of Martian Morphology:

A study of learnability theory





Bruce Mekon







Department of Phonetics & Linguistics

University College London





A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of

The requirements for the MA in Linguistics







September 2, 1997