latex phd thesis document class

because LaTeX matters

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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Preparing Your Ph.D. Dissertation Using LaTeX

Introduction, preparing the latex file, downloading the macros to your computer, steps for final submission.

Last updated 11 February 2012

The PurdueThesis LaTeX document class Mark Senn [email protected] > February 24, 2023 permanent URL for this document: tinyurl.com/PurdueThesis IMPORTANT: Sign up for the PurdueThesis mailing list to learn of updates to PurdueThesis. You must be signed up for this mailing list to get support for this software. This software is not supported by Overleaf—don't contact them about it. IMPORTANT: This software is only supported using TeX Live (it supports Linux, MacOS, Windows, and Unix). Overleaf uses TeX Live. IMPORTANT: If you are a Purdue Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences student send email to [email protected] to get the customized software for your department. Abstract

The Puthesis LaTeX documentclass is obsolete. The Purdue Graduate School no longer accepts theses using it. Use this PurdueThesis LaTeX document class from now on. PurdueThesis is abbreviated “PuTh” and pronounced “pooth” (rhymes with “tooth”). Purdue's puthesis software was renamed to PurdueThesis so it would not be confused with Princeton University's puthesis software.

• master's bypass reports
• master's theses
• PhD dissertations
• PhD preliminary report

Nomenclature

For historical reasons, to use the same nomenclature as other Purdue departments, and be able to lump instructions describing master's bypass reports, master's theses, PhD dissertations, and PhD preliminary reports together the word “thesis” will be used to refer to all of these. The term “bypass report” will be used to refer to things that are master's bypass report specific, “dissertation” to refer to things that are dissertation specific, and “prelim report” to refer to things that are PhD preliminary report specific.

Why use PurdueThesis?

Purdue's Thesis and Dissertation Office recommends it .

Thousands of people have graduated using it. You won't need to “reinvent the wheel.”

All formatting details are done automatically, you can concentrate on the content of your thesis instead of worrying about margins, typefaces, etc.

It is especially convenient for typesetting mathematics.

Many people think it produces more attractive output than other systems.

Some (especially engineering, mathematics, and science) journals use LaTeX. You may be able to cut large chunks out of your thesis, change a few lines at the top of the resulting file, and send that to a journal.

Using LaTeX and BibTeX is very common in the scientific community. Sooner or later you may need to learn it anyway.

Testimonials

The PurdueThesis class file for LaTeX has helped hundreds of ECE graduate students meet the requirements for format approval. Using it allows them to focus on the content of their thesis without concern for the myriad of formatting details that it automatically handles. The Graduate School's Thesis/Dissertation Office also recommends the use of PurdueThesis and LaTeX. —Andy Hughes, former ECE Thesis Format Advisor

Many candidates have made favorable comments about PurdueThesis when depositing their theses. We strongly recommend candidates consider learning PurdueThesis prior to the writing process. Using PurdueThesis cuts formatting discrepancies to almost zero, drastically reduces the possibility of revision requests, and helps ensure stress-free deposits! —Mark D. Jaeger, former Manager, Thesis/Dissertation Office

PurdueThesis has played an instrumental part in decreasing the number of revisions that are asked of depositors. Over 75% of PurdueThesis users pass formatting without any revision requests, which reduces student stress at deposit time. Our staff highly recommends PurdueThesis as a prelim and final thesis tool as it allows students to focus more on the content of their thesis and less on the formatting. —Ashlee Mesersmith, MS, Manager, Thesis/Dissertation Office

Get the software

You'll need access to LaTeX. Purdue's Thesis and Dissertation Office recommends using Overleaf if you use LaTeX. To get started go to the PurdueThesis documentclass template and click “Open as Template”. Please take note that Overleaf SHOULD NOT be used for writing, editing, or publishing documents or research papers that contain data subject to EAR, ITAR, DFARS Clause 252.204-7012, and other controlled data designators due to the increased security required for these types of data.

If you don't want to run LaTeX over the web using Overleaf, LaTeX may already be installed on your computer.

The template-2022-10-05.zip file contain all the files for the PurdueThesis template.

Dissertation advice (both of these are short, please read them)      Dissertation Advice , Olin Shivers      How To Write A Dissertation , Douglas E. Comer

Books      (none listed yet)

Frequently Asked Questions

See thesis.pdf .

To get help

Follow the instructions in How to Get LaTeX Help . Overleaf does not support this software—do not contact them.

Revised: February 24, 2023 Created: February 20, 2020

Template for a Masters or Doctoral Thesis

This LaTeX template is used by many universities as the basis for thesis and dissertation submissions, and is a great way to get started if you haven't been provided with a specific version from your department.

This version of the template is provided by Vel at LaTeXTemplates.com , and is already loaded in Overleaf so you can start writing immediately.

Checkout this short video to see how to easily create and edit new chapters as your thesis develops.

Please read the unofficial quick guide to the template; it contains some tips and suggestions on how to modify certain things.

(Updated 27/08/17)

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LaTeX document class for LSU theses and dissertations

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• LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation

To produce LaTeX documents that are reasonably conformant to LSU Grad School requirements for theses and dissertations, our document class “lsuthesis” may be used in place of the standard “book” document class. The separate “lsutitle” package provides helper macros and produces the title page. That package is kept separate from the document class so that one can easily switch to other document classes.

Note: This is the 2022/03/11 version. This is a work-in-progress provided in this preliminary form to assist graduate students with an immediate need.

Document class

• lsuthesis.cls
• lsutitle.sty

To use the template below, you also need the two files above.

• mythesis.tex
• mythesis.pdf

Getting started

For an example of what can be produced, take a look at “mythesis.pdf”. To produce your own thesis or dissertation, download the other three files and modify “mythesis.tex”. More specifically:

• You need access to a TeX/LaTeX environment ;
• Place “mythesis.tex”, “lsuthesis.cls”, “lsutitle.sty” together in a folder;
• Use a text editor to modify “mythesis.tex”;
• Tell your your LaTeX environment to convert your modified “mythesis.tex” into a new “mythesis.pdf”;
• Repeat the last two steps as often as needed.

Debugging conformance issues

When debugging conformance issues, start by comparing your preamble to that of the original “mythesis.tex” from this page. Many conformance issues are not due to the “lsuthesis” document class but instead due to conflicts arising from unnecessary preamble content (particularly macro definitions and \usepackage{...} lines) that the student has copied from somewhere but doesn't actually need.

If you are a math graduate student using these files and receive reports from LSU Grad School over conformance issues that are specific to the document class (e.g., issues with margin sizes or with font sizes or with spacing), please contact Alexander Perlis. The math department also appreciates feedback from other departments and might be able to provide some assistance but ultimately is not responsible for helping students from other departments with the preparation of conformant documents.

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A LaTeX document class that conforms to the Computer Laboratory's PhD thesis formatting guidelines.

cambridge/thesis

Folders and files, repository files navigation.

a LaTeX thesis template for Cambridge PhD students

Quick start

Clone this repository.

Start adding contents of your thesis into thesis.tex .

Build the PDF by running the following in the command line:

Open thesis.pdf .

Pro tip: you can use one of the samples in the Samples directory.

How will the thesis look like?

Your thesis document will look something like this:

Plain (PDF)

If you use the clean sample, which can be found in ./Samples/clean , it will look like this:

Sample Clean (PDF)

The template also supports DVI and PS formats. All three formats can be generated with the provided Makefile .

Producing PDF , DVI and PS documents

Build your thesis.

To build the PDF version of your thesis, run:

This build procedure uses pdflatex and will produce thesis.pdf .

To produce DVI and PS versions of your document, you should run:

This will use the latex and dvips commands to build the document and will produce thesis.dvi and thesis.ps documents.

Clean unwanted files

To clean unwanted clutter (all LaTeX auto-generated files), run:

Usage details

Class options.

cam-thesis supports all the options of the standard report class (on which it is based).

It also supports some custom options.

techreport : formats the document as a technical report (here's a sample ). Here is a list of formatting points in which the technical report differs from a normal thesis (see guidelines for more information):

• different margins (left and right margins are 25mm, top and bottom margins are 20mm),
• normal line spacing (instead of one-half spacing),
• no custom title page,
• no declaration,
• page count starts with 3,
• if the hyperref package is used, the option pdfpagelabels=false will be passed to it.

firstyr : formats the document as a first-year report (here's a sample ). This option removes some unneeded elements and modifies the submission note. Here is a list of formatting points in which the first year report differs from a normal thesis:

• an appropraite subtitle is added,
• the submission note is changed appropriately,
• no standalone abstract,
• no acknowledgements.

secondyr : formats the document as a second-year report (here's a sample ). Similarly to firstyr , this style modifies the submission note and removes unneeded elements. Specially, an abstract is retained (as for this report, research is often in a more "stable" state). Here is a list of formatting points in which the second year report differs from a normal thesis:

times : tells the class to use the times font.

glossary : puts the glossary after the TOC. The glossary contains a list of abbreviations, their explanations etc. Describe your abbreviations and add them to the glossary immediately after you introduce them in the body of your thesis. You can use the following command for this:

After that, you can reference particular glossary entries like this:

You can also change the glossary style. For example, try putting this on the very top of the preamble (even before you define the document class with \documentclass[glossary]{cam-thesis} ):

Further instructions can be found on LaTeX Wikibooks or the user manual at CTAN .

Note : glossaries is the package used to create the glossary.

withindex : build the index, which you can put at the and of the thesis with the following command (it will create a new unnumbered chapter):

Instructions on how to use the index can be found here .

Note : the package makeidx is used to create the index.

backrefs : Add back references in the References section (here's a sample ). In other words, for each reference, it adds the page(s) where it is cited.

Note : the package backref is used to create the back references.

Troubleshooting

Q1 : i found a bug in the template. where do i report bugs.

You can report issues through our GitHub repository .

You can also mail the maintainers directly.

Q2 : Where can I find the thesis formatting guidelines this class is based on?

The University of Cambridge submission guidelines:

https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/examinations/graduate-exam-information/submitting-and-examination/phd-msc-mlitt/submit

The University of Cambridge final submission guidelines:

https://www.cambridgestudents.cam.ac.uk/your-course/examinations/graduate-exam-information/after-examination/degree-approval-and-1

The Computer Laboratory guidelines:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/local/typography/phd/

The Computer Laboratory guidelines for technical reports:

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/submission.html

Q3 : Can I use my own Makefile?

By all means. Previously we used the horrendously complex Makefile at

http://code.google.com/p/latex-makefile/

Q4 : But what if I don't want the template files in my thesis directory?

Put the files and folders listed below into a directory where LaTeX can find them (for more info see [1] ):

[1] You can put these files either into the standard LaTeX directory for classes [2] , or a directory listed in your TEXINPUTS environment variable. [2] The location of the standard LaTeX class directory depends on which LaTeX installation and operating system you use. For example, for TeX Live on Fedora 14 it is /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/base . In any case, after this, LaTeX will still not be able find your class. You will have to rebuild the package index. This procedure also depends on your installation specifics, but for TeX Live you have to run the texhash command. For more comprehensive information refer to LaTeX Wikibooks .

Q5 : Where can I find newer versions of the University of Cambridge logo?

The university updates its logo every now and then. You can find up-to-date logos on this page (subject to change without notice).

Download and exchange the new logos with CUni.eps and/or CUni.pdf .

Q6 : My college's shield/coat of arms/crest is not a vector-based image. Why u no include it?

If you find a distributable vector-based image of your college's shield you can report it as an issue or mail it to contributors directly (refer to question Q1 above).

Q7 : Where can I find extra fonts (like Adobe Sabon, Adobe Utopia etc.)?

The Computer Laboratory provides some .

After you've installed the fonts, add somewhere in the preamble (before \begin{document} ) the following command:

Q8 : How should I count the number of words in my thesis?

There is a page on the Computer Lab's web site. They recommend using this command:

Q9 : How can I change the College Shield?

In thesis.tex use \collegeshield{CollegeShields/<college>} with <college> as your your desired college name, as found in CollegeShields .

Alternatively, \collegeshield{CollegeShields/CUniNoText} can be used to display the University of Cambridge shield design.

Contributors 14

• Python 4.0%
• Makefile 2.4%