Page Numbers

Page numbers should appear 0.75" from the bottom of each page of your disquisition, except for the Title page and the Disquisition Approval page. These two pages should not contain page numbers.

Guidelines: Page Numbers

  • Appearance – prefatory material (such as the Abstract, Table of Contents, List of Tables, etc.)
    • In the prefatory material, page numbers should use lower-case Roman numerals (such as iii, iv, v, etc.).
    • In the prefatory material, the page numbering should begin at iii on the page containing the Abstract, as the Title page and Approval page are still counted even though they do not contain page numbers.
  • Appearance – disquisition body (such as the Chapters, References, Appendices, etc.)
    • In the body of the disquisition, page numbers should use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
    • In the body of the disquisition, the first page of the first chapter should be identified as page 1.
  • Font – Page numbers should use the same type and size of font as the text in the body paragraphs.
  • Location – Page numbers should be center-aligned in the bottom margin of the page, a.k.a. the footer, at three-quarter inches (0.75”) from the bottom edge of the page. Page numbers should not intrude into the text of the body of the disquisition, and the content of your disquisition (such as images) should not obscure the page numbers.

Tables and figures are often wider than they are tall, and we recommend placing these types of items onto landscape pages to maintain font size and improve the readability of the item.

Page numbers on landscape pages should be placed in the left page margin, rotated 90°, as if it were portrait orientation. In other words, the page number should appear in the same location as other portrait-aligned page numbers when the page is printed.

For more information, see the entry in our knowledge base about formatting landscape pages.

General Requirements for Formatting and Construction

Quick Answers

Page numbers on landscaped pages must appear in the same position as the portrait pages, which means the page numbers on landscape pages should be on the relative left-hand and rotated 90°. For instructions on formatting page numbers on landscape pages, see the entry in our knowledge base

Issue: Page Numbers Are Too Far from Bottom of Page

Requirements:

  • Page numbers should be centered in the footer 0.75" from the bottom of the page.

There are several common causes for this issue.

  1. The "footer from bottom" is not set to 0.75". To change this setting, open the header or footer by double-clicking in the top or bottom margins of the page; the setting can be found in the Header & Footer tab that appears. Alternatively, you can change the setting from the Insert tab -> Header or Footer in the Header & Footer group -> Edit Header or Footer. If your document contains section breaks, this setting will need to be applied to all sections individually.
  2. Page margins are not set to 1" on all sides. To change page margins, go to the Layout tab -> Page Setup group -> Margins and set all margins to 1".
  3. Page numbers are double-spaced. To change line spacing, right-click the page number and open its paragraph settings. Page numbers should be single-spaced with no additional spacing before or after.
  4. There are line breaks or carriage returns above or below page numbers. You can view formatting marks by clicking the pilcrow icon (¶) in the Paragraph group on the Home tab, or using the hotkey CTRL+SHIFT+8. Remove any line breaks or carriage returns in the footer of all sections of the document--all sections means the pages between section breaks, as footer settings are not carried over between sections.

On landscaped pages, you will need to manually adjust the position of the page number. Page numbers can be snapped into their correct position by enabling alignment guides from the Shape Format -> Align menu. With this setting enabled, simply drag the page number until both the vertical and horizontal snap lines appear. For more information, see the entry in our knowledge base about formatting on landscape pages.

Center for Writers

Email: ndsu.cfw@ndsu.edu Phone: (701) 231-7927 Campus location: Library 16 Contact Page Manager