The MBC information booklet - RMIT University

11.3.11 What Should My
Minor Thesis/
Project Look
Like?
Chapter 11: Minor Thesis/Project
3. Your supervisor will then usually give you a list of papers to read. You may also be
asked to undertake a literature search via the library. Skills to handle this task are
studied in COSC2149 - Research Methods (see page 45).
4. You should seek to discuss each paper in detail with your supervisor after you have
read them.
5. Start working on the main task of the thesis. When the work has been completed,
you should fill in the “gaps” (with reference to the headings in your table of
contents) and present drafts of chapters to your supervisor. If English is not your
primary language then your drafts should be shown to the Teaching and Learning
Advisors (see page 5) before presenting them to your supervisor.
Style
Most of the information you require to answer this question will be covered in COSC2149
Research Methods. There are some excellent books which you can use to assist you.
These include:
• “The Elements Of Style”, by Strunk and White, Macmillan.
• “Writing Successfully In Science”, by M. O’Connor, Chapman and Hall.
• “Manual on Scientific Writing”, RMIT Faculty of Applied Science, available from the
RMIT Bookshop.
• “Writing for Computer Science”, by Justin Zobel, Springer
In today’s world of desktop publishing it is fashionable to use multiple fonts and fancy
designs to an extreme. Avoid the temptation. You might excel in Computer Science;
leave the layout design to the experts. As an indication, look at an issue of the Journal of
the ACM. Notice the simplicity and consistency.
It is strongly recommended that you use LaTeX 1 for your word processing. If you use it
as a novice your documents will look professional. In addition, public-domain
implementations of LaTeX exist for PCs and Macintoshes, as well as Unix and VMS. Be
warned though - for most software, you need plenty of memory (at least 128Mb) and disc
space (at least 2 Gigabytes).
Layout and Presentation
The following are the requirements to be followed for the layout and presentation of your
minor thesis:
• Theses should be typed on metric A4 size paper, using a font no larger than 12
points and no smaller than 10 points. There should be between 35 and 45 lines of
text per page.
• Do not use the RMIT logo.
• The length of the thesis should be approximately 20,000 words. Typically, this is 35
pages.
• Your thesis should eventually be printed on a laser printer (you can use the
School’s laser printers) and so you should use a word processor that supports
proportional spacing and pair kerning.
• There should be a margin of 3cm on the left-hand side of all pages, and
approximately 2cm on all other edges. Alternatively, if you use LaTeX then simply
include the standard A4 style file.
• The text should be typed on one side only. Diagrams, tables, graphs etc. must be
placed so that they can be seen at (approximately) the same time as the text to
which they refer. They should not be grouped together at the end of each chapter.
• Every diagram, table, etc. must carry both a number and caption.
• References must all be listed at the end of the thesis and conform to a recognized
international standard. Lane and Martin (1978a) is highly recommended.
• A sample LaTeX style can be downloaded from https://inside.cs.rmit.edu.au/
research/students/Procedures/Thesis/.
1. A simplified introduction to using LaTeX is available on the world wide web,
accessible using Google Search whereas a more detailed manual can be found
at any technical bookstore or library.
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