MMU Thesis Format Requirements 2026 | Margins, Turnitin & Copyright

MMU’s bottom margin is twice its top margin. And the copyright page must vest the work in Universiti Telekom Sdn. Bhd. — not in Multimedia University. Both are easy to get wrong, and both are checked.

This page sets out the MMU thesis format requirements in force at Multimedia University, read from the Institute for Postgraduate Studies (IPS)’s own documents rather than from a template passed between students. The margins below are drawn to scale, and the Word settings are listed so you can set them before you write another paragraph.

Binding margin4 cm

Bottom margin4 cm

Similarity20% / 5% per source

SubmissionFully digital

The MMU thesis page, drawn to scale

Margins are where most format rejections start, because a wrong one is invisible on screen and obvious the moment someone measures it. Here is what a MMU page actually looks like:

Most universities give you a wide binding edge and leave the rest even. MMU does something different: the bottom margin matches the binding edge at 4 cm, while the top is the narrowest on this site at 2 cm. Word’s defaults will be wrong in both directions.

Set this up in Word before you write another page

Changing margins on a finished thesis moves every table, figure and page break you have already positioned. Doing it first costs five minutes; doing it last can cost a weekend.

MMU · Word page setup

Paper size	A4 (21 × 29.7 cm)
Top margin	2 cm — the smallest of the four
Bottom margin	4 cm — double the top
Left margin	4 cm
Right margin	2.5 cm
Font	Times New Roman, 12 pt, justified
Line spacing	1.5, with 24 pt after each paragraph
First-line indent	12.7 mm
References	Times New Roman 10 pt

How long the thesis should be

Master’s20,000 – 60,000 (more for Law, Business and Communication)

PhD40,000 – 100,000 (more for Law, Business and Communication)

These are word counts for the main chapters. References, appendices, tables and figures sit outside the count at every university on this list — which is worth knowing before you start cutting a chapter you did not need to cut.

The similarity limit

Where MMU draws the line on Turnitin similarity.

20%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

The similarity limit changed in November 2025. The current rule is 20% for the whole thesis, with no single source above 5%, set by Senate on 13 November 2025. The older rule — 10% per chapter — is what most secondary guides and older handbooks still quote, and it is a different test entirely. If you have been formatting against a 10% per-chapter target you have been measuring the wrong thing. Going over 20% is still possible with written justification from your supervisor, which is a compulsory field on the form.

Cover and binding

Cover colour: not specified. We checked every current MMU guideline, handbook and template and found no cover colour requirement anywhere. That is a genuine gap rather than something we missed — and since submission is now fully digital it may simply no longer matter. If you want bound copies for yourself, ask IPS before you order.

What catches MMU students out

The copyright page names Universiti Telekom Sdn. Bhd.

Not Multimedia University. That is MMU’s legal owner entity, and the template spells the line out exactly.

Bottom margin 4 cm, top margin 2 cm

Counter-intuitive, and the opposite of what most templates assume.

References are set at 10 pt

So are appendices and the glossary. Only the body runs at 12 pt.

The abstract must be one single paragraph

And at least a full page. Breaking it into paragraphs fails format check.

You need a Letter of Thesis Title Approval

It is a required submission document. Without it you cannot submit, however finished the thesis is.

The AI declaration is explicit about humanisers

You must declare that you have not used any tool designed to disguise AI-generated content as human-written.

Word limits depend on your faculty, and faculties are campus-bound

A Law student in Melaka faces different limits and OSCOLA instead of APA.

Before you submit

Read your own faculty’s supplementary notes as well as the university guideline. Several MMU requirements are set at faculty level rather than centrally, and the faculty version wins. If anything on this page conflicts with what your supervisor or graduate office tells you, follow them — guidelines are revised more often than pages like this one are.

Source documents:

Related guides

Want this done for you? We format postgraduate theses to Multimedia University requirements — margins, headings, captions, table of contents, reference list, the lot — and return a document that passes format check first time. Message us on WhatsApp and tell us your deadline.