I've just had the final draft of my PhD thesis back from my supervisors and it should be ready to submit next week.

On a couple of trivial matters, though, I could do with a bit of guidance.

Is there any convention as to the best place to stick acknowledgements? After the abstract before the contents? At the end, after the appendices? Does it appear on the table of contents?

Also, is there a general consensus on having a quote page, for want of a better moniker? I would like to put a verse before the thesis which reflects my feelings toward it (nothing gushy just some Television lyrics). Is this acceptable or a bit sixth form? If it is okay, the same question as above, where would it go?

I'd be grateful if anyone had any advice on these, cheers.

Don't know about quotes but for acknowledgements it's worth checking your uni regs to see if they have specific requirements. Where I am the format regs say that acknowledgements come at the start immediately after the statement that the thesis is your own work and before abstract and contents.

First of all congratulations for submitting your thesis. I have: 1) first page with title, name etc. 2) thesis declaration, 3) acknowledgements, 4) abstract, 5) table of content, 6) list of abbreviations/ Notes of guidance, 7) chapters, 8) Appendices. I am not sure yet if I am going to insert a quote page, but I did so in my Masters thesis, and I put it just before the introduction. I hope it helps!

Definitely check the regulations at your uni. Mine specified exactly where the acknowledgements should go: near the front, after the table of contents/figures, before the official uni declaration/statement which had to be signed by me and supervisor.

Thank you all. And ta for the well wishes - I am mightily chuffed. I expected this last draft to give me weeks of stuff to improve, turns out it was just a couple of days. Phew!

At your prompting, A bit of Googling has found some university regulations. Handily, my department doesn't have any listed but another in the same school does so I'm basing it on that - and, indeed, they do say exactly where to put them. They also have the declaration too which had totally passed me by.

And cheers for the advice on the quote page, they don't mention that. I'll need to have a bit of a think about whether to do it or not.

What is a quote page? Never heard of it and am just curious what quotes you would include.