How should you design your paper? Let us recall the introduction to the writing workshop mentioned there. If you ask, you shall receive answers. On the right, you will find several files available for download. Work through them. In doing so, one may learn independence.

One may also ask AIs. You will presumably already suspect that success is guaranteed. My challenging answer to the question of what the layout of a term paper should look like is pedagogically motivated. If you are able to technically realise the following requirements, then you have mastered your craft of word processing. Here is a prompt for the AI. Below you will find the answer in tabular form.

Please provide a simple yet elegant system of style templates for academic term papers. In doing so, please note that, typographically, the best line height is approximately 120% of the font size. Also note that headers and footers are best set flush left on even pages and flush right on odd pages. Please specify the headings only down to the third level. The tab stops in the document should be set at 1cm intervals. The first paragraph after a heading or special elements (such as figures, tables, indented quotations) should be flush left. All other paragraphs should receive a first-line indent of 1cm (= 1 tab stop). The numerals of headings and the heading text should have a spacing of 1cm between them. Headings should be kept together with the following paragraph. Lists should likewise be set with a hanging indent using 1cm tab stops and 1cm indented level differences. Paragraphs, but not headings, should be set with automatic hyphenation. The entries in the bibliography should also be set with a 1cm hanging indent. There must be no separator line between the text column and the footnote area. Footnotes should be set with a hanging indent (1cm) and a tab stop (1cm) between the footnote marker and the footnote text. The footnote marker in the footnote area should not be superscript. Please spell out these requirements in full and compile them into a table.

Consider the table a challenge and spend two days working on its technical realisation. In doing so, you should regard this as a work project whose product is a document template for your word processing program. You can then use and further develop it throughout your entire course of study. The advantage is, on the one hand, that you master word processing. On the other hand, you can then confidently write your texts in future. The layout will then always be correct of its own accord.

The downloads on this page are technically outdated. Your document template project should proceed fairly quickly with the AI's assistance. AIs always know how the current versions of the software can help you achieve a perfect and stable layout. One extra tip: you can only feel at ease once you have largely disabled the automatic functions in your word processor (no more automatic formatting, no automatic replacement, no adoption of formatting when pasting into your text). This will save you a great deal of work. Here, too, the AI will reliably assist you. Here is the prompt:

Please create a list of working steps by which one can generate a document template in accordance with these specifications. In doing so, ensure that automatic formatting functions are disabled (no more automatic formatting, no automatic replacement, no adoption of formatting when pasting into your text). This list should present the working steps in [insert: "Microsoft 365", "TeX", "LaTeX", "MikTeX", "Libre Office", …]. Here are the format specifications: [paste the table from below here].

Since you are taking care over the layout, you should submit your term papers only as PDF documents. This is also for security reasons. The mail scanners of the University of Münster are regularly alarmed by dangerous file formats.

The declaration of authorship is formally mandatory. However, it is not part of the term paper. It must therefore not be included in the table of contents. Have the AI explain to you how to prevent headings from being included in the (automatically generated, of course!) table of contents. In general, the table of contents should be formatted like ordinary text (the headings should indeed be links, but they should not be coloured and underlined). How might one go about finding out how to achieve this?