best latex class for thesis

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Writing a thesis in latex.

Writing a thesis is a time-intensive endeavor. Fortunately, using LaTeX, you can focus on the content rather than the formatting of your thesis. The following article summarizes the most important aspects of writing a thesis in LaTeX, providing you with a document skeleton (at the end) and lots of additional tips and tricks.

Document class

The first choice in most cases will be the report document class:

See here for a complete list of options. Personally, I use draft a lot. It replaces figures with a box of the size of the figure. It saves you time generating the document. Furthermore, it will highlight justification and hyphenation errors ( Overfull \hbox ).

Check with your college or university. They may have an official or unofficial template/class-file to be used for writing a thesis.

Again, follow the instructions of your institution if there are any. Otherwise, LaTeX provides a few basic command for the creation of a title page.

Use \today as \date argument to automatically generate the current date. Leave it empty in case you don’t want the date to be printed. As shown in the example, the author command can be extended to print several lines.

For a more sophisticated title page, the titlespages package has a nice collection of pre-formatted front pages. For different affiliations use the authblk package, see here for some examples.

Contents (toc/lof/lot)

Nothing special here.

The tocloft package offers great flexibility in formatting contents. See here for a selection of possibilities.

Often, the page numbers are changed to roman for this introductory part of the document and only later, for the actual content, arabic page numbering is used. This can be done by placing the following commands before and after the contents commands respectively.

LaTeX provides the abstract environment which will print “Abstract” centered as a title.

The actual content

The most important and extensive part is the content. I strongly suggest to split up every chapter into an individual file and load them in the main tex-file.

In thesis.tex:

In chapter1.tex:

This way, you can typeset single chapters or parts of the whole thesis only, by commenting out what you want to exclude. Remember, the document can only be generated from the main file (thesis.tex), since the individual chapters are missing a proper LaTeX document structure.

See here for a discussion on whether to use \input or \include .

Bibliography

The most convenient way is to use a bib-tex file that contains all your references. You can download bibtex items for articles, books, etc. from Google scholar or often directly from the journal websites.

Two packages are commonly used to personalize bibliographies, the newer biblatex and the natbib package, which has been around for many years. These packages offer great flexibility in customizing the look of a bibliography, depending on the preference in the field or the author.

Other commonly used packages

• graphicx : Indispensable when working with figures/graphs.
• subfig : Controlling arrangement of several figures (e.g. 2×2 matrix)
• minitoc : Adds mini table of contents to every chapter
• nomencl : Generate and format a nomenclature
• listings : Source code printer for LaTeX
• babel : Multilingual package for standard document classes
• fancyhdr : Controlling header and footer
• hyperref : Hypertext links for LaTeX
• And many more

Minimal example code

I’m aware that this short post on writing a thesis only covers the very basics of a vast topic. However, it will help you getting started and focussing on the content of your thesis rather than the formatting of the document.

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16 comments.

8. June 2012 at 7:09

I would rather recommend a documentclass like memoir or scrreprt (from KOMA-Script), since they are much more flexible than report.

8. June 2012 at 8:12

I agree, my experience with them is limited though. Thanks for the addendum. Here is the documentation: memoir , scrreprt (KOMA script)

8. June 2012 at 8:02

Nice post Tom. I’m actually writing a two-part (or three) on Writing the PhD thesis: the tools . Feel free to comment, I hope to update it as I write my thesis, so any suggestions are welcome.

8. June 2012 at 8:05

Thanks for the link. I just saw your post and thought I should really check out git sometimes :-). Best, Tom.

8. June 2012 at 8:10

Yes, git is awesome. It can be a bit overwhelming with all the options and commands, but if you’re just working alone, and probably on several machines, then you can do everything effortlessly with few commands.

11. June 2012 at 2:15

That’s what has kept me so far. But I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks!

8. June 2012 at 8:08

What a great overview. Thank you, this will come handy… when I finally get myself to start writing that thesis 🙂

8. June 2012 at 14:12

Thanks and good luck with your thesis! Tom.

9. June 2012 at 4:08

Hi, I can recommend two important packages: lineno.sty to insert linenumbers (really helpful in the debugging phase) and todonotes (allows you to insert todo-notes for things you still have to do.)

11. June 2012 at 0:48

Thanks Uwe! I wrote an article on both, lineno and todonotes . Here is the documentation: lineno and todonotes for more details.

12. June 2012 at 15:51

Thanks for the post, i’m currently writing my master thesis 🙂

A small note: it seems that subfig is deprecated for the subcaption package: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Floats,_Figures_and_Captions#Subfloats

12. June 2012 at 16:05

Hey, thanks for the tip. Too bad they don’t say anything in the documentation apart from the fact that the packages are not compatible.

1. August 2012 at 21:11

good thesis template can be also found here (free): http://enjobs.org/index.php/downloads2

including living headers, empty pages, two-sided with front and main matter as well as a complete structure

2. August 2012 at 11:03

Thanks for the link to the thesis template!

15. November 2012 at 22:21

Hi Tom, I’m writing a report on spanish in LaTex, using emacs, auctex, aspell (~170pags. ~70 files included by now) and this blog is my savior every time because I’m quite new with all these.

The question: Is there anyway (other than \- in every occurrence) to define the correct hyphenation for accented words (non english characters like é)? I have three o four accented words, about the subject of my report, that occur near 100 times each, across several files, and the \hyphenation{} command can’t handle these.

20. November 2012 at 3:47

I was wondering what packages you load in your preamble. For a better hyphenation (and easier typing), you should use these packages:

See here for more details.

If this doesn’t help, please provide a minimal working example to illustrate the problem.

Thanks, Tom.

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Thesis Template

A latex thesis class template.

A LaTeX thesis template that was tweaked over a few years and condensed to a class file. A BibTeX bibliography class file is also provided.

Table of Contents

Instructions, font support, nomenclature support, acronym form, expanded form, expanded and acronym form, using tex-based glossary construction, multi-page floats, sub-captions, tables spanning multiple pages, landscape tables, table row colours, bibliography.

On creating a new LaTeX document, start the document with \documentclass { thesis } . Options for the document are specified below. You should also define the macros \title{} , \author{} , \department{} and \university{} in the header of your document. The thesis class also provides an optional \dedication{} macro.

When writing the main body of your document, the macro \startpreamble can be called to generate the title page and switch page numbering to Roman numerals. You can then create sections with \section*{} for preamble content such as acknowledgements, abstracts and table of contents.

When declaring an end to the preamble, call the macro \stoppreamble to change page numbering back to Arabic numerals.

The thesis class imports the natbib package thus giving the option of paragraph citations ( \citep{} ) and text citations ( \citet{} ).

The class also provides shortcuts for declaring real numbers with \R{exponent_here} , expected values with \E{value} , Normal distributions with \N{mean}{variance} and probabilities with \p{value} or \p[value]{posterior} .

Optional document parameters

The \documentclass [options] { thesis } supports a number of options including the following:

• 11pt for 11pt size text.
• a4paper for A4 paper mode.
• authoryear to use author-year citations rather than the numbering standard.
• draftfigs to use placeholders for figures for faster compilation (with the draft argument for graphicx ).
• lineno to print line numbers throughout the document.
• smallcaptions to use \small font size for captions declared with \caption{} .
• twoside for double sided printing (this will adjust the margins accordingly).
• texglossaries for using TeX-based construction of glossaries instead of makeindex .
• unsrt to order bibliography by appearance in text.

The following fonts are supported and can be enabled using the corresponding documentclass option:

• didot to use the GFS Didot serif font.
• garamond to use the URW Garamond serif font (note that this is not installed by default and is now considered a non-free font).
• helvetica to use the Helvetica sans serif font.
• latinmodern to use the Latin Modern Sans sans serif font.
• libertine to use the Linux Libertine serif font.
• palatino to use the Palatino serif font.
• sourcesanspro to use the Source Sans Pro sans serif font.
• times to use the Times serif font.

Nomenclature is supported with the nomencl package ( see CTAN ). New nomenclature can be defined as follows:

To compile the list of nomenclature, open up a terminal/command prompt session and run:

If the thesis file is something other than MyThesis , then MyThesis should be replaced in the above with the name of the master thesis file.

Nomenclature will be displayed wherever the macro \printnomenclature is called. The width of the first column can be defined by including an optional width (e.g. \printnomenclature[2cm] ). The nomenclature section contains the following preamble:

A list of the variables and notation used in this thesis is defined below. The definitions and conventions set here will be observed throughout unless otherwise stated.

Should acronyms be detected (by detecting the presence of filename.acr ), then the preamble will be appended with:

For a list of acronyms, please consult page~\pageref{gl:acronym}

Acronym support

Acronyms are supported with the glossaries package ( see CTAN ). New acronyms can be defined as follows:

Within the document, the commands \gls{label} , \Gls{label} , \glspl{label} and \Glspl{label} can be used in place of abbreviated forms. These commands correspond with the lowercase singular, sentence case singular, lowercase plural and sentence case plural forms, respectively. LaTeX will automatically expand the acronym on the first instance and use the abbreviated form thereafter.

Using the macro \printgloss will create a new chapter and write appendix items after they have been compiled. This macro will call either the \printglossaries or \printnoidxglossaries macro, depending on whether the texglossaries document option has been declared ( see Using TeX-based glossary construction ).

To compile the list of acronyms, open up a terminal/command prompt session and run:

It may be desirable to override the default behaviour in which case, the following commands can be used.

• \acrshort{label} : lowercase, singular acronym form.
• \Acrshort{label} : sentence case, singular acronym form.
• \acrshortpl{label} : lowercase, plural acronym form.
• \Acrshortpl{label} : sentence case, plural acronym form.
• \acrlong{label} : lowercase, singular expanded form.
• \Acrlong{label} : sentence case, singular expanded form.
• \acrlongpl{label} : lowercase, plural expanded form.
• \Acrlongpl{label} : sentence case, plural expanded form.
• \acrfull{label} : lowercase, singular expanded form proceeded by acronym in parentheses.
• \Acrfull{label} : sentence case, singular expanded form proceeded by acronym in parentheses.
• \acrfullpl{label} : lowercase, plural expanded form proceeded by acronym in parentheses.
• \Acrfullpl{label} : sentence case, plural expanded form proceeded by acronym in parentheses.

Words are made plural by simply appending “s” to the end of an acronym or its expanded form. Some words do not conform to this generalisation and may require the long plural form to be redefined using:

Note: \newacronym definitions need to be defined prior to usage. I recommend placing such definitions within a separate file (e.g. Acronyms.tex ) and using \input { Acronyms } just before opening the document environment.

The above acronym compilation instructions required the use of terminal/command prompt and calling the makeglossaries command. On some systems, this requirement is undesirable or impossible to execute. By declaring texglossaries within the document declaration options, the template will switch to using the TeX-based glossary compiler.

To create a new chapter and write appendix items after they have been compiled, simply call \printgloss as before.

Note: Calling makeglossaries is generally more efficient to use and provides options for languages other than English. I recommend that you use makeglossaries wherever possible.

Floats such as figures and algorithms can span multiple pages with the included caption package (for tables, I recommend using the longtable environment described below). When wanting to declare the continuation of an algorithm, simply call \ContinuedFloat after opening the environment. This should then be followed by the caption macro (which should automatically use the same counter as the previous float).

Sub-captions are supported via the subcaption package ( see CTAN ). To use sub-captions in a figure, declare a figure environment as normal and then use the subfigure environment to create subb figures:

The thesis class creates a new float for algorithms that can be called with:

A list of algorithms can generated using the \listofalgorithms macro. This can be used in the same way as \listoffigures and \listoftables .

The thesis class also uses the listings package which provides support for writing source code in any of the supported programming languages or a user-defined language ( see CTAN ).

Several packages have been added improving or enhancing the formatting of tables. These are described in the following subsections.

Tables spanning multiple pages are supported with the longtable package ( see CTAN ). Simply declare the environment and add any necessary table headers and footers:

Landscape-oriented tables are supported using the rotating package ( see CTAN ). To rotate a table, encapsulate your caption, label and tabular environment within a sidewaystable environment:

Rows of a table can be given a background colour using the \rowcolour[color]{intensity} command, provided by the color and colortbl packages (see CTAN for color and colortbl packages). Simply append the command at the end of a table row for the row’s background to change. In the following example, the background of the row will be grey at 90% intensity:

The thesis class provides support for multiple appendix items. Appendices will create new chapters that are labelled alphabetically and each appendix item will appear in the table of contents. To declare the start of the appendix section, use the macro \appendix . New chapters from this point will form different appendix items.

This class uses the natbib bibliography package and, specifically, the plainnaturl.bst bibliography stylesheet. The custom stylesheet displays initials and surname for all authors and removes URL and DOI information from bibliography entries. URL fields are preserved for miscellaneous/Internet bibliographic entries.

Note that the package prefers bibliographic information to be added as a separate bib file rather than appended to the bottom of a document.

The class file also has support for creating index items via the makeidx package ( see CTAN ). To create append the index to the end of the document and include it within the Table of Contents, use:

Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

• Reference Managers and Overleaf
• Adding Graphs, Tables, and Images
• Using Templates on Overleaf
• LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

LaTeX Theses and Dissertatons

Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in  Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX  is a file format used for lists of references for  LaTeX  documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate  BibTeX  files of your library or folders for use in your  LaTeX  documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks   has a  Bibliography Management  page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf   here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

Collaborate with Overleaf

Collaboration tools

Every project you create has a secret link. Just send it to your co-authors, and they can review, comment and edit. Overleaf synchronizes changes from all authors, so everyone always has the latest version. More advanced tools include protected projects and integration with Git.

Collaborate online and offline with Overleaf and Git

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Getting Started with Your Thesis or Dissertation

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the  Overleaf Gallery .

You can  upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery   if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other  tutorial videos   if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

How to Write your Thesis/Dissertation in LaTeX: A Five-Part Guide

Five-Part LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation  Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure   corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout   corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding  video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex  corresponding  video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract   corresponding  video

Link Your ORCID

Link yo ur  ORCiD  account  to your  Overleaf account  via the  ORCID @ CMU Portal

Open Knowledge Librarian

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Overleaf for LaTeX Theses & Dissertations: Home

• Using Templates on Overleaf
• Reference Managers and Overleaf
• Adding Tables, Images, and Graphs

Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX is a file format used for lists of references for LaTeX documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate BibTeX files of your library or folders for use in your LaTeX documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks has a Bibliography Management page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

Collaborate with Overleaf

Collaboration tools

• One version of your project accessible to collaborators via a shared link or email invitation
• Easily select the level of access for collaborators (view, edit, or owner access)
• Real-time commenting speeds up the review process
• Tracked changes and full history view help to see contributions from collaborators
• Labels help to organize and compare different versions
• Chat in real time with collaborators right within the project

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the Overleaf Gallery .

You can upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other tutorial videos  if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

Add Institutional Library contact info here.

Contact Overleaf   or email [email protected]

5-part Guide on How to Write a Thesis in LaTeX

5-part LaTeX Thesis Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex corresponding video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract corresponding video

ShareLaTeX Joins Overleaf!

Read more about Overleaf and ShareLaTeX joining forces here

Link your ORCiD ID

Link your ORCiD account to your Overleaf account.

See Overleaf news   on  our blog.

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• Last Updated: May 18, 2021 1:57 PM
• URL: https://overleaf.libguides.com/Thesis

LaTeX Resources for Graduate Students: Formatting of theses and dissertations

• BibTeX reference format
• BibTeX command
• LaTeX bibliography file
• LaTeX editors and compilers
• Sample LaTeX file with bibliography
• Sample LaTeX file without bibliography
• Formatting of theses and dissertations

Formatting and structure

The Cornell Graduate School has become increasingly flexible about the formatting of theses and dissertations.  There now are only seven core requirements . For the structure of theses and dissertations here is a list of required and recommended sections .

Latex template

Among the available thesis and dissertation templates provided by the Graduate School is also a LaTeX template (ZIP archive). This template has been uploaded to Overleaf and placed in the Cornell template directory . This template contains a small fix to avoid an error message about \ifpdf .

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• Last Updated: Oct 25, 2022 5:12 PM
• URL: https://guides.library.cornell.edu/latex

Research Guides

Submit and publish your thesis.

• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
• Thesis Defences
• Deadlines and Fees
• Formatting in MS Word

Formatting in LaTeX

• Making Thesis Accessible
• Thesis Embargo
• Review and Release
• Your Rights as an Author
• Re-using Third Party Materials
• Creative Commons Licenses for Theses
• Turning Thesis into an Article
• Turning Thesis into a Book
• Other Venues of Publication

For formatting instructions and requirements see the Formatting section of the School of Graduate Studies website. The thesis style template for LaTeX ( ut-thesis ) implements these requirements. You are not required to use the template, but using it will make most of the formatting requirements easier to meet.

►► Thesis template for LaTeX .

Below are some general formatting tips for drafting your thesis in LaTeX.  In addition, there are other supports available:

• Regular LaTeX workshops are offered via the library, watch the library workshop calendar at https://libcal.library.utoronto.ca/
• With questions about LaTeX formatting, contact Map and Data Library (MDL) using this form
• There are also great resources for learning LaTeX available via Overleaf

Many common problems have been solved on the TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange Q & A Forum

LaTeX Template

To use the LaTeX and ut-thesis , you need two things: a LaTeX distribution (compiles your code), and an editor (where you write your code). Two main approaches are:

• Overleaf : is a web-based platform that combines a distribution (TeX Live) and an editor. It is beginner-friendly (minimal set-up) and some people prefer a cloud-based platform. However, manually uploading graphics and managing a bibliographic database can be tedious, especially for large projects like a thesis.
• A LaTeX distribution can be installed as described here . ut-thesis can then be installed either: a) initially, with the distribution; b) automatically when you try to compile a document using \usepackage{ut-thesis} ; or manually via graphical or terminal-based package manager for the distribution.
• The LaTeX distribution allows you to compile code, but provides no tools for writing (e.g. syntax highlighting, hotkeys, command completion, etc.). There are many editor options that provide these features. TeXstudio is one popular option.

Occasionally, the version of ut-thesis on GitHub  may be more up-to-date than the popular distributions (especially yearly TeX Live), including small bug fixes. To use the GitHub version, you can download the file ut-thesis.cls (and maybe the documentation ut-thesis .pdf ) and place it in your working directory. This will take priority over any other versions of ut-thesis on your system while in this directory.

LaTeX Formatting Tips

Here are a few tips & tricks for formatting your thesis in LateX.

Document Structure

Using the ut-thesis document class, a minimal example thesis might look like:

\documentclass{ut-thesis} \author {Your Name} \title {Thesis Title} \degree {Doctor of Philosophy} \department {LaTeX} \gradyear {2020} \begin {document}   \frontmatter   \maketitle   \begin {abstract}     % abstract goes here   \end {abstract}   \tableofcontents   \mainmatter   % main chapters go here   % references go here   \appendix   % appendices go here \end {document}

►►  A larger example is available on GitHub here .

You may want to consider splitting your code into multiple files. The contents of each file can then be added using \input{filename} .

The usual commands for document hierarchy are available like \chapter , \section , \subsection , \subsubsection , and \paragraph . To control which appear in the \tableofcontents , you can use \setcounter{tocdepth}{i} , where i = 2 includes up to \subsection , etc. For unnumbered sections, use \section* , etc. No component should be empty, such as \section{...} immediately followed by \subsection{...} .

Note: In the examples below, we denote the preamble vs body like:

preamble code --- body code

Tables & Figures

In LaTeX, tables and figures are environments called “floats”, and they usually don’t appear exactly where you have them in the code. This is to avoid awkward whitespace. Float environments are used like \begin{env} ... \end{env} , where the entire content ... will move with the float. If you really need a float to appear exactly “here”, you can use:

\usepackage{float} --- \begin{ figure}[H] ... \end {figure}

Most other environments (like equation) do not float.

A LaTeX table as a numbered float is distinct from tabular data. So, a typical table might look like:

\usepackage{booktabs} --- \begin {table}   \centering   \caption {The table caption}   \begin {tabular}{crll}     i &   Name & A &  B \\     1 &  First & 1 &  2 \\     2 & Second & 3 &  5 \\     3 &  Third & 8 & 13   \end {tabular} \end {table}

The & separates cells and \\ makes a new row. The {crll} specifies four columns: 1 centred, 1 right-aligned, and 2 left-aligned.

Fancy Tables

Some helpful packages for creating more advanced tabular data:

• booktabs : provides the commands \toprule , \midrile , and \bottomrule , which add horizontal lines of slightly different weights.
• multicol : provides the command \multicolumn{2}{r}{...} to “merge” 2 cells horizontally with the content ... , centred.
• multirow : provides the command \multirow{2}{*}{...} , to “merge” 2 cells vertically with the content ... , having width computed automatically (*).

A LaTeX figure is similarly distinct from graphical content. To include graphics, it’s best to use the command \includegraphics from the graphicx package. Then, a typical figure might look like:

\usepackage{graphicx} --- \begin {figure}   \centering   \includegraphics[width=.6 \textwidth ]{figurename} \end {figure}

Here we use .6\textwidth to make the graphic 60% the width of the main text.

By default, graphicx will look for figurename in the same folder as main.tex ; if you need to add other folders, you can use \graphicspath{{folder1/}{folder2/}...} .

The preferred package for subfigures is subcaption ; you can use it like:

\usepackage{subcaption} --- \begin {figure} % or table, then subtable below   \begin {subfigure}{0.5 \textwidth }     \includegraphics[width= \textwidth ]{figureA}     \caption {First subcaption}   \end {subfigure}   \begin {subfigure}{0.5 \textwidth }     \includegraphics[width= \textwidth ]{figureB}     \caption {Second subcaption}   \end {subfigure}   \caption {Overall figure caption} \end {figure}

This makes two subfigures each 50% of the text width, with respective subcaptions, plus an overall figure caption.

Math can be added inline with body text like $E = m c^2$ , or as a standalone equation like:

\begin {equation}   E = m c^2 \end {equation}

A complete guide to math is beyond our scope here; again, Overleaf provides a great set of resources to get started.

Cross References

We recommend using the hyperref package to make clickable links within your thesis, such as the table of contents, and references to equations, tables, figures, and other sections.

A cross-reference label can be added to a section or float environment using \label{key} , and referenced elsewhere using \ref{key} . The key will not appear in the final document (unless there is an error), so we recommend a naming convention like fig:diagram , tab:summary , or intro:back for \section{Background} within \chapter{Intro} , for example. We also recommend using a non-breaking space ~ like Figure~\ref{fig:diagram} , so that a linebreak will not separate “Figure” and the number.

You may need to compile multiple times to resolve cross-references (and citations). However, this occurs by default as needed in most editors.

The LaTeX package tikz provides excellent tools for drawing diagrams and even plotting basic math functions. Here is one small example:

\usepackage{tikz} --- \begin {tikzpicture}   \node [red,circle]  (a) at (0,0) {A};   \node [blue,square] (b) at (1,0) {B};   \draw [dotted,->]   (a) -- node[above]{ $ \alpha $ } (b); \end {tikzpicture}

Don’t forget semicolons after every command, or else you will get stuck while compiling.

There are several options for managing references in LaTeX. We recommend the most modern package: biblatex , with the biber backend.  A helpful overview is given here .

Assuming you have a file called references.bib that looks like:

@article{Lastname2020,   title = {The article title},   author = {Lastname, First and Last2, First2 and Last3 and First3},   journal = {Journal Name},   year = {2020},   vol = {99},   no = {1} } ...

then you can cite the reference Lastname2020 using biblatex like:

\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} \addbibresource {references.bib} --- \cite {Lastname2020} ... \printbibliography

Depending on what editor you’re using to compile, this may work straight away. If not, you may need to update your compiling command to:

pdflatex main && biber main && pdflatex main && pdflatex main

Assuming your document is called main.tex . This is because biber is a separate tool from pdflatex . So in the command above, we first identify the cited sources using pdflatex , then collect the reference information using biber , then finish compiling the document using pdflatex , and then we compile once more in case anything got missed.

There are many options when loading biblatex to configure the reference formatting; it’s best to search the CTAN documentation for what you want to do.

Windows users may find that biber.exe or bibtex.exe get silently blocked by some antivirus software. Usually, an exception can be added within the antivirus software to allow these programs to run.

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Frequently Asked Question List for TeX

Formatting a thesis in LaTeX

Thesis styles are usually very specific to your university, so it’s usually not profitable to ask around for a package outside your own university. Since many universities (in their eccentric way) still require double-spaced thesis text, you may also need separately to set up double spacing .

If you want to write a new thesis class of your own, a good place to start is the University of California style, but remember that it’s often difficult to produce a thesis that both looks good and conforms with the style that your univeristy demands.

FAQ ID: Q-thesis Tags:  classes

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Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

Step 1: install latex and a latex aware editor.

LaTeX is not a word processor, it is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. It is most often used for medium-to-large technical or scientific documents, but it can be used for almost any form of publishing. LaTeX encourages authors not to worry too much about the appearance of their documents but to concentrate on getting the content right.

Because LaTeX source files are just ordinary text files, any text editor can be used to edit them, but it is important to have a LaTeX aware editor. A LaTeX aware editor can do things like syntax highlighting, spell checking, and automatic formatting. It can also run LaTeX on the source files, update the bibliography, then update the document in a viewer all at the click of a button.

Below are links to what you need to get started on various operating systems. Check out the LaTeX Project website for more information.

Your system distribution or vendor has probably provided a LaTeX system. If not, check your usual software source for the texlive package, or otherwise install texlive directly. All of the Linux systems in the ELE Department already have a complete LaTeX system installed.

Two good editors for Linux are Texmaker and TeXstudio .

MacTeX is a full LaTeX system for MacOS which includes an editor.

The editors Texmaker and TeXstudio can also be used.

Microsoft Windows

proTeXt is a full LaTeX system for Windows, which includes MikTeX and an editor. You can also install MikTeX directly with the editor of your choice.

There are numerous good editors for Windows, some of which are TeXnicCenter , Texmaker and TeXstudio .

2021 Math Thesis Template

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