For the form and style (F&S) review, the submitted document must be a clean and complete draft of the capstone study with all revisions from the committee and URR incorporated. The document must be free of track changes, comment balloons, and other feedback from previous readers. You should have incorporated all revision suggestions from earlier approval stages, including comments from the committee chair, URR, and IRB. Finally, the document should include all components of the study including the abstract, other preliminary material, all chapters/sections, reference list, and appendices (as needed).
The submitted capstone study must follow Walden and APA specifications for formatting and style. Useful resources include the Walden DBA, DHA, DIT, DNP, DPA, DrPH, DSW, EdD, PhD, and PsyD templates; F&S checklists; and the Dissertation Guidebook or Doctoral Study Guidebook. You should refer to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th Edition for formatting and style, keeping in mind that a few Walden capstone specifications supersede APA guidelines, such as Level 0 headings and different margin widths.
Walden F&S editors review capstone studies for logic, flow, precision, clarity, and compliance with APA style. We conduct a line-by-line edit of Chapter 1 (dissertation) or Section 1 (doctoral or project study) of a capstone draft and several pages of the remaining chapters or sections as well as the reference list and appendices, then noting any errors or patterns of error. Our comments address areas such as
We use a writing assessment rubric to guide our feedback for (a) cohesion and flow, (b) APA, and (c) voice and grammar.
All manuscripts will require some revision after the F&S review, and you can expect us to use both track changes and comment balloons to model and explain revisions. Our advice will
Our feedback falls into three categories: required changes, highly recommended revisions, and suggested revisions.
The Top 10 Problems page lists the common F&S issues that delay students at the F&S review along with tips for fixing the problems. For questions, contact editor@waldenu.edu.
The “front matter” of the document has different pagination and margin formatting. The front matter consists of the title pages, dedication, acknowledgements, Table of Contents (TOC), List of Tables, and List of Figures. There should be no page numbers on the first few pages. Roman numeral pagination of the remaining pages of the front matter begin at the TOC. The pagination is different in the TOC, using roman numerals, to ensure that the first page of Chapter/Section 1 begins at page 1. In addition, the top and bottom margins are different to accommodate the different locations of the page numbers (at the bottom, center of the page for front matter; top right corner for the body of the document).
The order and pagination of the preliminary pages are as follows:
Starting with the first page of the TOC, set the page numbers in lowercase roman numerals, centered in the footer, 1 in. from bottom of the page.
Page 1 is the first page of Chapter/Section 1 (not the first page of the TOC). Page numbers appear in the upper right on all pages of the chapters, references, and appendices.
Title pages, abstract, dedication, acknowledgements, and TOC, including lists of tables and figures
Make sure the page number is 1 in. from the bottom of the page: Set the footer at 1 in.
Page 1 to end of references and appendices
Make sure the page number is 1 in. from the top of the page: Set the header at 1 in.
APA 7 requires one space between sentences. This is a change from APA 6, where either one or two spaces was allowed between sentences as long as there was consistency throughout the document.
A few spacing reminders:
