Thesis Abstract, Declaration and Front Pages: Getting the Preliminaries Right

13 August 2026 · 6 min read

Every university in Nepal prescribes a set of front pages for a thesis, and every year students reprint bound copies because a signature page was missing or the page numbering was wrong. These pages take an afternoon to get right once you know what each one is for.

The usual order

Title page — in your department's exact wording and layout.
Declaration — your statement that the work is your own.
Recommendation and approval or certificate pages — signed by supervisor, department head and examiners.
Acknowledgements.
Abstract.
Table of contents, list of tables, list of figures, list of abbreviations.

Front pages are numbered in lowercase roman numerals; the main text restarts at Arabic 1 from Chapter 1. Getting this wrong is the single most common formatting correction.

The abstract is a miniature thesis

In 150–300 words, an abstract covers five things: the problem and purpose, the method, the main findings with actual numbers where possible, the conclusion, and the implication. Write it last, when you know what you found. Avoid citations, avoid "this study will attempt to", and avoid vague findings — "a significant positive relationship was found (r = 0.62, p < 0.01)" is worth more than "the relationship was found to be significant".

Keywords

Most formats ask for four to six keywords below the abstract. Choose terms someone would actually search for: your main variables, your population and your context. These are also what make your thesis findable in a repository later.

Declaration and acknowledgement

The declaration follows your university's fixed wording — do not paraphrase it. The acknowledgement is the one personal page in the document; keep it brief and professional, thanking your supervisor, department, any organisation that gave you data access, and your family. One page is plenty.

Before you bind

Regenerate the table of contents so page numbers match the final text.
Check every table and figure appears in its list with the correct number and page.
Confirm margins, font, line spacing and binding offset against the department guide.
Make sure all signature pages are actually signed in every copy you bind.
Read the abstract aloud — it is the part most likely to be quoted back at you in the viva.

Finishing a thesis and want the abstract and front pages checked against your university's format before binding? Assignment Nepal can review them — message us on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340.

Not sure if your work has plagiarism? Don't worry. Send it to us.

Tell us what you need checked and when it is due. Your document is checked without being stored in any student-paper repository, so the check never counts against your real submission. The reports come back with what each match means, not just a percentage.

Plagiarism report — The full similarity report on your assignment, proposal or chapter: every matched source listed, every flagged passage marked, and a plain read of which matches matter and which are your reference list doing its job.
AI report — The AI writing indicator read separately from similarity, because the two scores behave differently. If the flag looks like a detector artefact on work you wrote yourself, we tell you so, and what evidence answers it.
Thesis report — Similarity and AI reports for a full thesis or dissertation, run chapter by chapter so a problem in the literature review is found while you can still fix it, with each flagged passage explained for your supervisor.