INSERT TITLE HERE

A Thesis Submitted to the
College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Science
In the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon

By

YOUR NAME

© Copyright Your Name, Month, Year. All rights reserved.

Permission to use

In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Postgraduate degree from the University of Saskatchewan, I agree that the Libraries of this University may make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for copying of this thesis in any manner, in whole or in part, for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor or professors who supervised my thesis work or, in their absence, by the Head of the Department or the Dean of the College in which my thesis work was done. It is understood that any copying or publication or use of this thesis or parts thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of Saskatchewan in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my thesis.

Disclaimer

Requests for permission to copy or to make other uses of materials in this thesis in whole or part should be addressed to:

Head of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics
51 Campus Drive
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A8
Canada

OR

Dean
College of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
University of Saskatchewan
116 Thorvaldson Building, 110 Science Place
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5C9
Canada

Abstract

Provide the text of the abstract here. The abstract should identify clearly and succinctly the purpose of the research, the methods used, the results obtained and the significance of the results or findings. A maximum of 350 words is suggested for the Abstract. A figure or figures may be included in the abstract.

Acknowledgements

The content of this single page is left to the discretion of the author. The acknowledgements should not exceed 250 words. It is customary to fill this section in only after the oral defence.

Dedication

The dedication is optional. It is customary to fill this section in only after the oral defence.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Introduction	1

1.1	Section Heading	1

1.1.1	Subsection Heading	1

1.1.2	Pasting Existing Text	2

1.2	Use “Styles” Frequently	2

Chapter 2 – Equations	3

2.1	Numbering and Cross-Referencing Equations	3

Chapter 3 – Figures and Tables	5

3.1	Considerations for Figures	5

3.2	Considerations for Tables	7

3.3	Using Line and Page Breaks to Control Table Pagination	8

Chapter 4 – Literature Review	10

4.1	Reference Managers	10

References	11

Appendix	12

Computer Code in an Appendix	12

List of Tables

Table 3.1. Sample Data	8

List of Figures

Figure 3.1. One Hundred Draws from a Random Normal Distribution	6

Figure 3.2. The Relationship Between the Optimal Capital Choice and Output Price	7

List of Abbreviations

GDP	Gross Domestic Product

CO2	Carbon dioxide

–
Introduction

Start the body of your thesis here. When creating new chapters, be sure to use the “Heading 1” style to make sure that (a) the heading is formatted correctly and (b) the heading appears as it should in the auto-generated Table of Contents. After “Chapter ”, you’ll need to use a soft-return (i.e. press shift-enter) to add a name for your chapter. This ensures that the chapter name is formatted correctly and that it also appears in the Table of Contents next to the chapter number. Note that there is an en-dash after the chapter number typeset in white—this is just to ensure that an en-dash is included between the chapter number and the chapter title in the Table of Contents.

Use the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style to write your thesis, except in the case of a conflict with the university template, in which case defer to the university.

Section Heading

Use the “Heading 2” style for section headings, and set each section heading using title case. Each section heading will automatically inherit its chapter number.

Subsection Heading

If needed, use “Heading 3” for subsection headings. Do not go beyond “Heading 3” as too many levels will start to distort and complicate the writing. Do not use a hard return (i.e. do not press the enter key) to create space before or after a section heading; the formatting will take care of this for you.

The paragraph immediately following a section title requires no indent, but each subsequent paragraph should be indented. There should be no extra space between paragraphs.

Pasting Existing Text

If you intend to paste existing text into this template, I would suggest using the “Keep Text Only” option when pasting to avoid bringing in conflicting style definitions into this template. This is more difficult if you need to paste figures, equations, and/or tables, but can still work as intended. Another option is to attach this template to an existing document, which will redefine all existing document styles to be consistent with this template. This method is a little less reliable, so proceed with caution.

Use “Styles” Frequently

With few exceptions, every paragraph should be assigned a “Style”—e.g. Heading 1, Heading 2, Normal, Normal-indent, etc. I don’t advise the use of “direct” formatting, where text is formatted outside of a defined style, as it leads to inconsistencies and makes it much harder to change formatting later on. When assigning a style, you can control formatting, font, paragraph behaviour, numbering, and pagination, among many other things. Taking the time to define these characteristics once, and then simply applying them to paragraphs as needed will save a ton of time when compiling large documents.

Let’s consider an example. In this document, the style used by default is the Normal style, which is mostly used for non-indented body paragraphs. For a paragraph following Normal, the Normal-indent style is used, which is formatted just as you may have guessed: Normal with the addition of a first line indent. Why would I do this instead of just pressing the tab key when I need an indented paragraph? Let’s say that the thesis guidelines change and you have to use a 0.25” first-line indent for all body paragraphs. Instead of manually going through the document and adjusting the indent length for each body paragraph, if you’re using styles, all you have to do is modify the style definition and all paragraphs using that style will be automatically updated.

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Equations

Use MS Word’s built-in equation editor for typesetting equations. Third-party tools like MathType cause too many compatibility issues. Display equations must be typeset in “Display” form, which means that no other non-equation text can appear on the same line (this includes spaces!). To facilitate the use of equation numbers, typeset your equation in a borderless table. For example, consider an equation for the sample mean, denoted by :

(2.1)

where is the number of observations, indexes the observations, and is the th value of the variable. When referring to a variable in-text, always use the equation editor to maintain formatting consistency between in text variable descriptions and display equations (i.e. don’t write xi to refer to ). All equations must be adequately explained—do not end a paragraph with an equation.

Numbering and Cross-Referencing Equations

Display equations must be numbered at the right-hand margin, and the number must include the chapter number. Equation numbers restart at every chapter. To add an equation number, select References Captions Insert Caption. In the Label drop-down box, select Equation. Click Numbering, and ensure that Include Chapter Number is checked and that ‘Heading 1’ is chosen from the Chapter starts with style drop-down box. For caption placement, you can only choose above or below, so you’ll have to cut and paste the inserted caption to the right-most column of your equation-table. Note that you should only have to do this exercise once; you can either create a Building Block for the entire table or just simply copy and paste the equation-table when needed, replacing the equation and updating the equation number field (right click on the equation number and select Update Field).

To reference your equation in the text, select References Captions Cross reference. Select Equation from the Reference type drop-down box and the select the equation you wish to reference. Here’s an example: “Consider the estimator for the sample mean, shown in equation (2.1).”

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Figures and Tables

Considerations for Figures

Here are the guidelines for figures from the university website on formatting theses:

Each figure must have a figure number and a title.

Each figure has a number and a title. The first number refers to the chapter number and the second refers to the figure number in that chapter.

The number and title of the figure appear at the bottom of the figure in the figure legend.

Both axes of the figure must be properly labelled. If a figure shows more than one relationship, each relationship should be properly labelled with the appropriate axis.

Figures must conform to the margin requirements of the thesis format. They should be centered between the left- and right-hand margins and, as appropriate, between top and bottom.

I’ve also found it helpful to place figures inside a 11 borderless table—this eases some of the issues with text wrapping and figures splitting from their captions across pages. To insert a caption for a figure, follow the same instructions listed for equation captions in Section 2.1, with the obvious exception of choosing Figure instead of Table where appropriate. To make sure that spacing is adequate before and after the figure or table, use the GraphicBefore and/or GraphicAfter styles (or the indented versions) as appropriate—do not just press enter several times before and after graphics—that’s usually the culprit behind Word moving graphics around unpredictably. Use the “Caption” style for figure captions, and use the “Figure caption note” style for notes supplementing figures.

If you use EXCEL to generate figures, copy the figure in EXCEL and paste into Word using the “Use Destination Theme & Link Data” option to maintain image quality and to connect the figure to the source data in EXCEL. Do not use a screenshot, and do not paste as a picture.

Figure 3.1. One Hundred Draws from a Random Normal Distribution

When using non-Microsoft programs to generate graphics, it’s best to export as *.EMF or *.WMF files to maintain an adequate level of resolution. *.JPG and *.PNG formats often look distorted and can dramatically increase the size of the document. If you need to translate an existing figure into a *.EMF or *.WMF file, consider the open-source software Inkscape available on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Try to avoid using multiple programs to create graphics if at all possible. If you must, try to maintain common formatting across graphics. Figure 3.2 was created in R—the axis labels should be enlarged to match the EXCEL graphic in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.2. The Relationship Between the Optimal Capital Choice and Output Price Note: Not all figures will require notes, but if they do, place them below the caption. Include information about the source of the data here. Use the “Figure caption note” style for consistency.

Another advantage of inserting figures inside of a table is the ease with which you can create subplots. Instead of using a 11 table as a placeholder, just create an table to match the desired number of subplots.

Considerations for Tables

Here are the guidelines for figures from the university website on formatting theses:

Each table has a number and a title. The first number refers to the chapter number and the second refers to the table number in that chapter.

The number and title of the table should appear at the top of the table.

Tables must conform to the margin requirements of the thesis format. They should be centered between the left- and right-hand margins and, as appropriate, between top and bottom.

It is strongly recommended that oversized tables be reduced by photocopying in such a way that they remain clearly legible. Tables should not be folded.

The title of the table should be as short as possible but should indicate the major focus of the table.

Ordinary rules of referencing and footnoting apply. The numbering of footnotes in the table is independent of that followed in the text.

Just as with figures and equations, be sure to use Word’s Insert Caption function and include the chapter number in the caption. Do not use vertical lines in tables. Left justify columns with words and right justify columns with numbers (including the column heading). Set left and right cell margins to 0.00 so that the variables are flush with the page margins. Use single spacing in the body of the table and add 0.02 to the top and bottom cell margins (can be done easily in the Table Properties dialog after right-clicking on the table).

Table 3.1. Sample Data

Dependent variable
Corn	Soy	Wheat	Hogs	Cattle
Variable 1	0.57	0.98	0.33	0.14	0.8
Variable 2	0.68	0.41	0.4	0.44	0.28
Variable 3	0.34	0.06	0.44	0.5	0.55

Note: Data from this table is from source X.

To add a note to a table, use the “Table caption note” style. For tables with columns of data that vary by orders of magnitude, it can sometimes be more appropriate to use a decimal tab instead of aligning the data to the right.

Using Line and Page Breaks to Control Table Pagination

A common problem with longer tables occurs when Word attempts to force the table across two pages. To ensure that your table does not break across pages, adhere to the following steps:

Select all rows in the table.

Choose Format Paragraph Line and Page Breaks.

Make sure the ‘Keep Lines Together’ check box is selected.

Now select all of the rows except the last row.

Choose Format Paragraph Line and Page Breaks.

Select the ‘Keep with Next’ check box.

–
Literature Review

Reference Managers

Use Mendeley, Zotero, JabRef, or another supervisor-approved reference management system to handle your references. This ensures that the references in the References section exactly correspond to those in the text. Use the author-date in-text citation style. For example: “Efficient greenhouse gas mitigation in agriculture requires a correctly set baseline emissions level (Horowitz and Just 2013).”

References

Horowitz, John K., and Richard E. Just. 2013. “Economics of Additionality for Environmental Services from Agriculture.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 66 (1): 105–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2013.04.002.

Appendix

An appendix is not required, but if necessary, be sure that it appears after the references. If you need more than one appendix, delineate them by capital letters (e.g. Appendix A, Appendix B, etc.). If you need to include a section or subsection heading in your appendix, be sure to turn off multilevel list numbering so that the sections do not inherit chapter numbers from the final chapter of the body of the thesis. See section ‘Computer Code in an Appendix’ for an example.

The letter of the appendix takes the place of the chapter number in any display equations, tables, and/or figures, i.e.

(A.1)

Equation numbers can be inserted just as before, but in the Insert Caption dialog box, be sure to add a new label: “A.” to precede the numbering of appendix equations. I’ve done this for you in the preceding equation, equation (A.1).

Computer Code in an Appendix

If you would like to add computer code to an appendix, be sure to typeset the code in a monospaced font like Courier or Consolas. It can also be helpful to add a light gray background to set the code apart, like this:

clear all

clc

x = randn(100,1);

y = randn(100,1);

plot(x);

Note that in the ‘Computer code’ style, I’ve turned off spell check so that Word does not flag code as misspelled. In the first line of code, set Paragraph before spacing to 12 pt., and in the last line of code, set Paragraph after spacing to 12 pt.

This template was created by Tristan Skolrud in April 2020 using information from https://students.usask.ca/graduate/thesis-preparation.php Check this website frequently for changes in formatting updates and requirements. Defer to your supervisor on all formatting related manners.

Note that there’s a next page section break after the last sample abbreviation to control the change in page numbers required of the switch to the main body of the thesis on the next page. To see the location of the break, turn on paragraph marks.

Check with your advisor.

In a well-formatted document, you should not use a “hard” return—pressing enter to create vertical space—anywhere in the document. When figures, tables, and/or text seem to move from page to page on their own, it’s almost always because a hard return was used to create vertical space.

Another time that you’ll have to do this is when formatting your thesis for submission to a journal.

Note the use of cross-references to refer to figures—an absolute must to maintain consistency and ordering in a long document.

Source: https://word.tips.net/T000864_Keeping_Tables_on_One_Page.html

Note that I’ve included the section title as a cross-reference; this allows the reader to access the subsection with a clickable link. This is especially helpful if you want to refer to ‘Section 4.2’ without having to hard-code the ‘4.2’.