Adjust Margins in PhD Dissertation

[parkernathan]

I need to adjust the margins in my PhD Dissertation. Here's what my PhD Office said:

Look at your margins that you use on the Preface. Those look like what you should have on all pages.The margins are too small on the left side for most of the document and some of the words will be cut off due to the binding.....

Here's my Mellel Document:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wk91wafh ... mnea9&dl=0

Here's a PDF of what it currently looks like:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lrf77s5m ... wuiu9&dl=0

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[Amontillado]

On a quick glance, it looks like the page margins in your preface were adjusted by ad-hoc change. Your preface is in Default+ page style. The following pages are in the Numbered Footers+ style.

The plus indicates there have been changes have been made to the style.

One way to fix this is to open the palettes window. Click the Page tab to show page styles. Click the Default+ style. Note that clicking on styles doesn't apply them, and that's a good thing. You can edit or review any style without having to put your cursor into an example of the style.

Next, click the Attributes tab at the top of the Page styles panel. Finally, click the Margins and Orientation button at the bottom of the Attributes panel.

Note that the left margin is set to 1.5.

My guess, that's where the margin got nudged.

You can fix it there, but a better idea would probably be to click the cursor into the first page of your preface. In the Page styles panel (with the Styles tab displayed), choose Default+ in the list of styles, and then click the little hand icon to apply the style. That will reapply the Default+ style.

That will also cause the apparent top margin to change. This is because the page break between your Contents page and the Preface is done with paragraph breaks (enter keys) instead of an actual page break. You might want to delete the empty paragraphs (empty lines) and put either a page break or a page style break in their place. That's done with Insert->Break.

If it makes no difference in appearance, it will make a difference in consistency, should the length of your Contents page change.

Hope that helps - good luck with your PhD!

[parkernathan]

Thanks! I think I've got it and re-submitted now.

Thanks a ton for your assistance on this!

[Icelander]

Hello Nathan,
Since Amontillado has already answered your question regarding margins, I would like to draw your attention to some other oddities I noticed in your dissertation.

Your document has no Auto-titles, and that makes it very difficult for the reader (including yourself!) to navigate the document. Instead, you have a huge number of bookmarks, all with arcane names which nobody can understand. I suppose you started the dissertation in MS Word and then imported the Word document into Mellel. That could explain why all Word headings were converted to bookmarks in Mellel with the name OLE_Link. Is that correct?

Anyway, making changes now is too late, of course, since you have already submitted the dissertation.

There are a few other things that I also find rather problematic in your dissertation. If you are interested, I'll be glad to share my critique with you.

[Amontillado]

Hey, Icelander - I'd like to see any tips you have time to post. Good catch on the auto-titles. I didn't even look.

My preference is to use any abstraction a tool has to offer over ad-hoc options. Lately, I've started using F2 (character style variant B) for bold, F3 for italic, and F4 should I ever want bold and italic. F1, of course, for back to normal. I renamed the B, C, and D variants to Bold, Italic, and Bold italic.

I dimly remember a situation with a font that didn't have italics. By using style variants I vaguely remember fixing the problem by adding an underline for the italic style variant.

My use of styles is probably naive, although they are critically important to my sense of well being while writing and I'm fussy about them. I'm very happy with Mellel's implementation.

[Icelander]

I'd like to see any tips you have time to post. Good catch on the auto-titles.

My reflections on how not to write a dissertation in Mellel were originally meant for the OP only, but he is not showing any signs of interest in the matter. And since you asked, then here we go …

The first part (1-8) is Mellel related and mainly of formal nature. The second part (9-15) deals with the content and the rule that anyone engaged in an academic pursuit must be prepared to give up old beliefs if they turn out to come into conflict or opposition with reality. Any other behavior is intellectually dishonest.

(1) The document has multiple identical empty bookmarks which are placed on top of each other. One can select the same text in Mellel multiple times to create multiple bookmarks for the same text. On the screen these multiple bookmarks then look like a single bookmark. This feature might perhaps be useful if each bookmark had a different name, but not if they have no meaningful names at all. One could, for example, select some text and assign it a bookmark with the name "Donald", then select the same text again and assign it another bookmark with the name "Trump", and finally select the same text once again and assign it a bookmark with the name "criminal." All three bookmarks will look like one single bookmark on the screen. Using this technique in the dissertation remains a method that baffles me. If the candidate used it as a kind of reminder, then 'Add Comment' would have been more effective and more straight forward in my opinion.

(2) The candidate uses Track Changes. They carry his name, so it seems they are not from a collaborator, but were written by himself. They usually only contain a suggestion regarding punctuation (add "," here/ add ":" there/ etc.) Although the changes have usually already been made in the document, the tracked changes are still displayed as bubbles in the Annotations Pane. Surprisingly, there are cases where the suggestions are definitely an improvement, but those improvements have not been made. The reason for this is unclear to me. As an example, see note 131.

(3) At the end of chapter 2 there is a section break which causes the following chapter to behave slightly different from the previous one: The header is Aligned Justified instead of Aligned Right. This has obviously prompted the candidate to insert 134 empty spaces before the page number in order to make the page number appear optically as if it were aligned right. This can be easily fixed, of course, but I wonder why the candidate entered a section break in the first place. I can't see any apparent reason for doing so because both chapters are formally identical.

(4) Some author names are spelled incorrectly (Roswenweig instead of Rosenzweig, for example, and edwin Judge instead of Edwin Judge)

(5) Some book titles are spelled incorrectly (for example Der Judenstaadt instead of Der Judenstaat.) "Der Judenstaat" is labeled as Herzl's "work." In a sense, that's correct, but I would rather call it a pamphlet to indicate the true nature of the booklet.

(6) Sometimes two spaces can be found between words where there should be only one space.

(7) Some bibliographic entries are not always up-to-date. Example: Rowdon, H. H. “Dispensational Theology.” Ddited by Martin Davie et al. New Dictionary of Theology: Historical and Systematic. Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2016, 200–201. 



There is already a 2nd edition of this book available, and in the 2nd edition the page numbers are different (258-259). Incorrect spelling by "Ddited". Should be "Edited"…

(8) In the bibliography, titles are separated by two returns. I would remove the second return and assign the titles a paragraph style instead with an appropriate space size below, for example 0,323 cm. This allows maximum control of how the bibliography will look like.


(9) Regarding Zionism. I got the impression that the candidate may not be aware that around 1900 Israel didn't exist; at that time the territory in question was exclusively referred to as Palestine. Theodor Herzl, in his pamphlet "Der Judenstaat," which the candidate mentions, talks about "Palästina" (= Palestine), he never mentions "Israel", not even once. Similarly, the Balfour Declaration from 1917, talks about Palestine, not Israel. Yet the candidate calls the declaration "Britain’s support [for] the restoration of a Jewish nation in the land of Israel". In the same manner, the candidate keeps on talking about the "land of Israel" throughout the whole dissertation. — Maybe the candidate uses the term "land of Israel" metaphorically, though I didn't find passages in the dissertation that would support such an interpretation.

(10) Phrases like: "Jews returning to their land" are problematic. As I see it, it was certainly not "their land" anymore. When the Jewish immigration set in, Palestine had already been part of the Ottoman Empire for four centuries. Muslims were the largest group, followed by Christians. During the period of the Ottoman Empire Jews in Palestine were just a small minority, never more than ca. 3% of the total population.

(11) If I'm not mistaken, the candidate fails to explain the significance of the research subject for us today. Whether Donald Robinson was an advocate of supersessionism or Covenant Theology, … who cares? I fail to see the importance of the topic. Instead, for me, this often reads like an erudite discussion about the length of Santa Claus' beard. Is it 20 cm long? Or 30 cm? Does Santa Claus ever shave? And how old is Santa Claus exactly? These are all questions that I find just as important as theological mumbo jumbo and speculations about whether Christians have or have not succeeded the ancient Israelites as the people of Yahweh (supersessionism vs Covenant theology). This is obfuscation at its best.

(12) A key expectation of academic work is that the candidate will demonstrate independent critical thinking, based on reason, not on faith. Faith commitments in an academic piece of work are inappropriate because faith is believing something without sufficient evidence, it's the reason many people give when they don't have good evidence. It's not a reliable path to truth. Ergo a genuine scholar must be willing to change his convictions and his attitude towards treasured beliefs if he finds evidence that contradicts his belief. 


Our candidate is an evangelical hardliner. In the acknowledgements section he declares that he wrote the dissertation "all for His glory", and by that he is referring to an imaginary celestial deity who apparently gave him everlasting life. The code of conduct here is not critical analysis, evaluation and judgements of old doctrines or the attempt to put forward new ideas, but rather—contrary to genuine scholarship—to stand firm and unwavering in his old belief, so that, when all is said and done, he can stand up and proudly declare: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith." (2 Timothy 4:7; English Standard Version). In my opinion, this stance amounts to intellectual castration. 



And by the way, the candidate attributes 2 Timothy to Paul the Apostle, although most New Testament scholars today believe the letter is falsely attributed to him. It is, in other words, pseudepigrapha.

(13) Acknowledgements are not considered part of the academic work itself, I know, but the thank-you-list is long and kind of bizarre: he thanks people who performed a certain ritual for him during the PhD program (prayers of intercession), including professors who prayed for him "every step of my PhD program". I don't find this suitable or proper in an academic context. I know that some people thank their cat or their dog in the acknowledgements section, but there is one big difference here. Cats and dogs are real. They exist.

(14) The candidate states he would not have been able to finish the dissertation if he had not regularly received a daily portion of favor (grace) from an imaginary friend in the sky.

(15) The candidate claims to be in the possession of everlasting life!

[Amontillado]

You read carefully. Critique is always helpful, but I was thinking tips regarding how to use Mellel in general would be nice to see.

For full disclosure, both my maternal grandfather and his father were ministers. I don't think I carry that part of family tradition with the fidelity and honor I should, but it is there. It's also not all there is to my family. There's a NASA engineer, an educator who achieved national renown in the 60's and 70's, two Nobel Prize laureates, and a Confederate general. My Mom was a third generation student of Franz Listz.

Me, I'm not quite so significant.

I didn't see the statements of faith in that paper. It's likely I would reacted differently, but it's moot. I respect your views.

To my thinking, the key to getting best effect out of Mellel or any word processor is to let the software do the work where it can. The enter key is a paragraph break, not a way to adjust page breaks, and we shouldn't create first line indent with the tab key. Obvious, but if writers still do such things there should be some evangelism for a little more formality.

Appearances should be abstracted. It's the easy way.