Writing Two-Column Pages in Masters Theses:
How to Compress a Thesis to Three Times Less Pages

Sometimes your master's theses becomes too long, and you are told that you are not allowed to present such a long thesis. One way of reducing the number of pages is to use two-column page layout.

The advantages with two-column page layout are that:

1. You can use a smaller font, so that more text will fit into a page.
2. You can use a smaller line spacing, since with shorter lines, you need not use a longer line spacing to have readable text.

The disadvantages with two-column format is that the editing is more difficult.

1. You may prefer to have major chapter headings in one column format, and switch between formats in the text before and after major chapter headings.
2. Some tables and pictures may need more than the width of one column, so again you may have to switch to one-column mode when presenting such pictures and tables.

First one-column layout:

Second one-column layout:

Second two-column layout:

Properties of first one-column layout:

12 pt font size
1.5 lines line spacing
98 average no. of characters/full line
17 cm column width
1749 characters (excluding picture and footer) in shown page
249 words (excluding picture) in shown page

Note: With this high no. of characters/line, 1.5 lines line spacing is necessary to make the text readable.

Properties of second one-column layout:

11 pt font size
Singe line spacing
87 average no. of characters/full line
16 cm column width
2744 characters (excluding picture and footer) in shown page
454 words (excluding picture) in shown page

Note: With this high no. of characters/line, readability is poor with single line line spacing.

Properties of second two-column layout:

10 pt font size
Single line spacing
51 average no. of characters/full line
7.8 cm column width
5137 characters (excluding picture and footer) in shown page
830 words (excluding picture) in shown page

Note: With 51 characters/line, text is well readable with single line spacing.

Properties of first two-column layout (no picture shown):

9 pt font size
Single line spacing
64 average no. of characters/full line
7.8 cm column width
6426 characters (excluding picture and footer) in shown page
1044 words (excluding picture) in shown page

Note: With 64 characters/line, text is reasonably readable with single line spacing, even if 40-50 characters/line would give best readability with single line line spacing.

Comments:

Note: Column spacing in the two-column layouts was 0.6 cm.

The second two-column layout could fit more than three times as much information in a page as the first one-column example and almost twice as much information as the second one-column example, and still with reasonable readability.

The first two-column layout (not shown with picture) got an even stronger compression of text, it could fit almost four times as much information into a page as the first one-column layout, but not with as good readability (65 characters/full line).

How to do it in Microsoft Word:

Use the Format->Columns command of Word to specify two equal-wide columns width, for example, 0.6 cm column spacing. The 1.27 cm column spacing defaulted by Word is unnecessarily large.

Section Break (Continous) is usually the best kind of section break to use.

In tables which need one-column spacing, you can still save space with a smaller font, since the number of characters per line is smaller in narrow table cells.

More to read: Instructions for Writing Master's Theses, by Jacob Palme, http://people.dsv.su.se/jpalme/Instructions-thesis.html

Links to Microsoft Word file for two-column layout example 2: http://people.dsv.su.se/jpalme/two-column/two-column-example-2.doc