Cover and binding
The project shall be spiral-bound with a protective plastic front cover and a stiff card back-cover.
Paper and typographical detail
The project must be typed, justified and printed on one side of the paper only using:
- 1½ line spacing, and
- Characters not less than 12pt, font type ‘Times New Roman and 14 pt for main titles.
Good quality A4 white paper should be used for the printing and for xerographic copies.
The left margin used for binding shall not be less than 40 mm while all other margins shall not be less than 20 mm.
Pagination
Pages shall be numbered consecutively throughout the project, starting with the title page, including appendices. Roman numerals (i, ii, iii..) shall be used for the front pages (Preliminaries) and Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, …) as from the ‘Introduction’ section onwards. Page numbers shall be located centrally at the bottom of the page, approximately 10 mm above the edge. If there is more than one volume, each volume shall have its own pagination.
Length, Spacing and Font Size
The length of the research project report should be approximately 10,000 words or minimum 30 pages excluding references and appendices. One and a half (1 ½) line spacing and a standard font size of 12 should be used for the text and front matter materials except for the title page and tables where different line spacing and fonts may be used. The final document should be of laser print quality. The print quality should be dark and clean.
Margins
The margins throughout the report or manuscript should be at least 25mm or 1 inch on the right, top and bottom. The left hand margin must be set to 30mm or 1¼ inches to allow for binding. Larger tables may be typed in smaller fonts in order to maintain standard margins.
Numbers and Percentages
Numbers in text should be typed in “Arabic numbers”. For example chapter 1, table 2 or figure 3. A sentence cannot begin with a number. A number beginning a sentence must be spelt out in words. For example: “Twenty-five of the union representatives rejected the employer’s offer”.
Similarly, percentages should be written in words when they begin a sentence. For example,
“Sixty-five percent of the senior managers in the company were local citizens while 35 percent were foreigners”.
Research project reports should consist of preliminaries, main text and references/appendices.
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