wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu (07/20/88)
Is anyone aware of any universities which accept single-spaced master's theses and/or doctoral dissertations? The archivist's "norm" appears to be to demand double spacing throughout a thesis, except for occasional passages such as extended quotations. UCLA, for instance, requires this. Since I wholeheartedly feel that double-spaced documents are ugly, and would love to be able to submit a dissertation formatted with single spacing in standard LaTeX fashion, I am thinking of starting a grass- roots effort here at UCLA to get the university archivist to change the current format standards. If I start doing this right now, just maybe the change might come through by the time I've finished my dissertation (I'm just about ready to start it now!). If any other universities accept single spacing for theses and disserta- tions, this fact could be very helpful to me in convincing the local people that single spacing is not flatly unreasonable. Alternatively, I would be interested in hearing any "war stories" about anyone else who has tried unsuccessfully to get their university to change a double-spacing requirement. -- Rich Wales // UCLA Computer Science Department // +1 (213) 825-5683 3531 Boelter Hall // Los Angeles, California 90024-1596 // USA wales@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!(uunet,ucbvax,rutgers)!cs.ucla.edu!wales "Spiff's hyper-freem drive malfunctions! The aliens close in!"
pwp@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (07/20/88)
One of my students did a 1.3 line speced thesis at Indiana University. I don't know what regulations he was operating under.
shorne@citron (Scott Horne) (07/20/88)
From article <14562@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, by wales@valeria.cs.ucla.edu: > Since I wholeheartedly feel that double-spaced documents are ugly, and > would love to be able to submit a dissertation formatted with single > spacing in standard LaTeX fashion,.... Double spacing looked better in the days of typing (I'm giving typewriters an early burial! :-) ); but in the days of phototypesetting, single spacing looks much better. When was the last time you saw a book double-spaced?! Good luck with your single-spacing campaign. Best wishes.
cje@elbereth.rutgers.edu (Cthulhu's Jersey Epopt) (07/21/88)
I believe the double-spaced requirement is for readability after theses are
put on microfilm (that is, it's probably required by UMI, and the universities
just pass it on).
--
Yog-Sothoth Neblod Zin,
Chris Jarocha-Ernst
UUCP: {ames, cbosgd, harvard, moss, seismo}!rutgers!elbereth.rutgers.edu!cje
ARPA: JAROCHAERNST@ZODIAC.RUTGERS.EDUpwp@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (07/22/88)
The microfilmed copy would be more readable if the type was made a little bigger and the spacing between lines reduced. I would think that 12 point type with normal spacing would do fine. I don't believe that University Microfilms has been refusing to duplicate such theses, but I don't believe that they have updated their regulations either. Does anyone know about this?
hildum@bnrmtv.UUCP (Douglass Hildum) (07/22/88)
The Davis campus of the University of California accepts single spaced theses done with LaTeX. That may be helpful to persuading UCLA to be reasonable. Eric Hildum
jcb@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) (07/25/88)
Last year I did a dissertation for which I used 12-on-17pt text (i.e. Plain TeX, \baselineskip=14pt, \magstep1). I found this to be about the right spacing for readability (there were quite a lot of formulae), and had I been working under double-spacing regulations (which I wasn't), I might have been able to get away with it.