A landscape page is a page that is oriented horizontally instead of the traditional portrait (vertical) orientation.
The most common reason a page would be in landscape orientation is to allow for certain elements, such as a table or figure, to be more easily viewable while also meeting the margin and font size requirements. For example, a table in portrait orientation may be more compressed than one in landscape orientation.
Whether you use landscape page orientation in your ETD is at the discretion of you and your committee. However, you should be aware that landscape-oriented pages require more complex formatting to meet the Graduate School’s formatting requirements; therefore, you should only implement it if you are confident that you will be able to format these pages correctly.
How to format landscape pages to meet the formatting requirements:
When you need to turn the orientation of a table or figure from portrait to landscape, the table/figure must be rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise so that the “top” of the table/figure is along the left margin (which has a 1.5" requirement). The page number must remain in the same location as it is on all other pages with a portrait orientation. The margin requirements must be maintained.
Following are links to two examples that show how this should look when formatted correctly. The first page of each example shows a normal portrait-oriented page. The second page of each example shows the landscape orientation with the page number in the correct place.
Landscape Example 1 (table/figure in landscape orientation, page in landscape orientation)
Landscape Example 2 (table/figure in landscape orientation, page in portrait orientation)
Tutorials
The exact steps for creating a landscape-oriented page with the page number in the correct place may vary depending on the type and version of software that you are using. Following are links to tutorials that students have found helpful in setting up landscape-orientation formatting:
Microsoft Word Landscape Page Numbers (video tutorial)
Note that even though the video is referring to the page number needing to be located bottom center and your page number may be in a different location, the concept of how to fix the page numbers is the same.
You may also find these brief written tutorials helpful:
Rotate Landscape Page Numbers to Match Portrait Layout
Inserting a Landscape Page and Adding Page Numbers
What are other options if I’m not confident about using landscape orientation?
Since the main purpose for using landscape orientation is to accommodate viewing and formatting requirements like margins and font sizes, consider other ways to present the material, such as breaking it up into smaller tables and figures, or reducing the size of your tables and figures. As a reminder, you can reduce the font size of tables to 10 pt font, and figures do not have a minimum font size as long as the figure remains legible.