latex thesis structure

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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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Writing a thesis in latex.

This article is a guide to constructing a decent parent file for a thesis or dissertation compiled in Latex. The specific details implemented here, and included in the example files, are those set out by the guidelines for submission to the University of Nottingham, but can be easily amended to suit any sensible requirements.

Considerable attention has been paid to presenting the final document as a PDF file, which keeps the file size manageable (compared to postscript) and allows groovy add-ons such as hyperlinks and back-referencing. However, several hacks are required to attain good functionality from your PDF file and these can give the latex code a mysterious (and messy) appearance in places. While I highly recommend the inclusion of the PDF-related commands, they are not strictly necessary and can be ignored especially if you are new to Latex.

Note for Windows users

The code outlined below was designed and implemented on the unix system at Nottingham. For those of you unfortunate enough to be running a Windows box, a number of problems may arise when using the below code:

First off, not all the packages used will be present and will need to be installed. Probably the easiest way to do this is to google the package name with the extension .sty and save this file in the C:\VTEX\l2e\\ directory of your machine. Note that for the natbib package, you will also need to download the relevant .bst file, which in this case is unsrtnat.bst .

Also, many of the packages that are installed locally may need updating. For instance, the computers I have tested on both have old versions of the geometry and caption packages, which cause Latex to return errors. To resolve these problems, either download the latest versions, or remove the includefoot option from the geometry package and set the bottom margin to 1.4in.

Also, the code for compiling to PDF does not work so well in Windows, and so it is recommended that Windows users use the template without PDF code.

Requirements

The guidelines for theses to be submitted to the University of Nottingham specify that:

• the document should be presented on single-sided a4 paper and typeset in a double-spaced size 10-12 font;
• the left-hand margin should be at least 1.5 inches (4cm) to allow for binding;
• the other three margins should be at least 1 inch (2.5cm).

Other settings such as the way chapter headings are formatted, and whether headers are included, are not specified and are up to the user. In this case, we’ll install headers and tinker with the chapter formatting.

Template files

Here are the template files which this page explains:

• thesis_without_pdfcode.tex
• thesis_with_pdfcode.tex

The appearance of both these files on the printed page will be identical; however after compilation into PDF (see the section below) and opening in Adobe Acrobat (or a similar PDF reader), the advantages that come with the PDF format will be apparent.

• thesis_without_pdfcode.pdf
• thesis_with_pdfcode.pdf

The rest of this page is devoted to explaining the code in these files.

Document structure

The document begins in a standard and entirely self-explanatory manner.

Preamble: essential packages

Next, the essential packages are loaded:

where the geometry package has been loaded to allow the margins to be set in a neat and consistent way. The non-obvious option includefoot ensures that the footer (which only contains the pagenumber) is included in the page and is thus 1 inch above the bottom of the page. Note that this option is only available in recent versions of the package: if you’re using an old version and can’t/won’t upgrade, then remove the offending option and extend the bottom margin to 1.4in. headheight=13.6pt is included due to to ensure compatibility with the fancyhdr package (and is not required if you don’t use the fancyhdr package). Also quite essential is the natbib package:

where the various options ensure that references appear in the document as:

…boiled dog can do maths claims experimenter [10,12,15-18].

Alternative referencing styles are easily implemented, see the natbib help file for more details. In fact, to use the natbib package, you’ll have to read at least a few lines of the help file so you understand the difference between \citet and \citep , and I insist you do that now.

Preamble: custom captions (optional)

We now set the figure captions to be elegant and dignified:

Note that early versions of this package don’t support the margin= and tableposition= options; in this case, these trimmings will have to be ignored.

Preamble: custom fonts (optional)

You can also choose an alternative font for both the text and the mathematical characters. This can be achieved by:

Aside from mathpazo , there are several other fonts available, such as chancery , palatino and times (all loaded in the same way).

Preamble: fancy headers (optional)

Feeling a little devil-may-care? If so, you’ll probably want to install some elegant headers along each page. This is easily achieved through the fancyhdr package:

The final complicated-looking three lines simply ensure that the headings for appendices are formatted correctly. (Without these lines, what should read “Appendix A” is set as “Chapter A”.)

Preamble: customised chapter/section headings (optional)

We now make use of several customisation options that are bundled with the sectsty package.

These alter the appearance of the first page of each chapter to have a centred title, with the word “chapter” set in small capitals immediately above. Feel free to employ your own individual and highly refined tastes here in choosing your own chapter/section settings.

Preamble: pdf options (optional)

If you want to publish your thesis on the internet, or even just to email it to someone, then you’ll want to store it in the ubiquitous PDF format. Doing so offers some neat facilities, such as hyperlinking, which are implemented by the hyperref package:

There are various other options you can pass to your favourite PDF reader via the \hypersetup command, such as pdftitle , pdfauthor and pdfsubject ; however, they’re not really essential. Note that the hyperlink colours have all been set to black for consistent printing. Should you want to distribute your thesis over the web, then it would be advisable to set these colours to red or something similarly vibrant and exciting.

Things get a little messy now as a hack is required to ensure the hyperlinks actually jump to the right place.

No need to worry about this code, let’s just move straight on.

Preamble: page layout

We now set various parameters to alter the general page layout:

The first two of these commands alter the paragraph formatting so that new paragraphs are not indented but separated from the previous one by a small amount of whitespace; the third sets the line spacing. The sharp-eyed among you will notice the discrepancy between our chosen line-spacing and that dictated by the university guidelines. However, no matter how poor your eyesight is, you’ll quickly appreciate that true double line-spacing (set with \renewcommand(\baselinestretch}{2} ) looks rubbish. In addition, Nottingham University are perfectly happy to accept theses set with the above line-spacing, which is more pleasing to the eye.

Some final settings:

Set which chapters to include when Latex is next run. The advantage of this method is that all your cross-references are remembered and Latex does not spit out loads of warnings.

Main matter

We now begin the document in earnest and define a suitable title:

followed by a dedication:

We now construct an abstract:

some acknowledgements:

and a contents page:

Now, we alter the pagenumbering to arabic and point to the relevant chapter files:

All your chapter files should be included here; to save time when editing, use the \includeonly command to specify which chapters to compile.

Finally, we make sure there is a link to the references section in the table of contents and reference the correct bibiography file (which in this case is called bibliography.bib ).

And there we have it: a complete thesis parent file that not only looks good on the printed page, but is fully functional and hyperlinked in PDF format.

Compiling to PDF

Whether you’ve included all the red PDF commands or not, you can convert your TEX file to PDF by running (in unix):

The additional argument to ps2pdf is required as the default paper size is US Letter. Note that you will probably need to bibtex your thesis file before running latex for the final time.

For Windows, first open a command window by going Start->Run and entering cmd . Provided MiKTeX and GhostScript are correctly installed then the necessary commands are:

The syntax for ps2pdf is slightly different in Windows compared to Unix - and note that the output pdf filename MUST be specified, else the ps file is overwritten and corrupted.

Something wrong? Suggest an improvement or add a comment (see article history ) Tagged with: latex Filed in: guides

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Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

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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.

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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

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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

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• 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)
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• 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

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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!

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Getting started with your thesis or dissertation

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

 Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX.

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.

Write your thesis using the official MBZUAI thesis template

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

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

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If you already have an account you can link this with the subscription or you can create a new account.

Overleaf is a collaborative, online LaTeX editor and scientific writing and publishing tool. It's features include real-time track changes, unlimited collaborators, and full document history. It is designed to make the process of writing, editing and producing your research papers and project reports much quicker. Overleaf can also be linked to other services to best fit into your workflow.

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

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.

Contact Library and Cultural Services [email protected]

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

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Link your ORCiD account to your Overleaf account.

See Overleaf news   on  our blog.

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• Last Updated: Feb 16, 2022 2:41 PM
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Writing a thesis in LaTeX - part 1

October 30, 2022

2022   ·   LaTeX     ·   research  

In this article I will share my lessons learned about writing a thesis in LaTeX. During my PhD, I have been collecting a lot of information about how to write a thesis from the internet and from my colleagues at the TUM. Probably everyone, who decides to write a thesis in LaTeX, has to go through this tedious process but maybe I can spare you some effort by sharing my favorite LaTeX features in a series of shorter blog posts.

First of all, I have to state that I am not a LaTeX expert, at all, and a very exhaustive guide for writing a thesis in LaTeX can be found here . Nevertheless, I can imagine that some of the routines and packages I ended up using are useful for others, too. In a series of shorter blog posts I will share them. This first part we will establish a minimal working example (i.e., a very basic LaTeX thesis document) that the following blog posts will be based upon. Hence, the content will be

• An exemplary LaTeX project and folder structure
• The main.tex file
• Integrating references with bibtex and Zotero
• Some useful, additional packages and the title page of a thesis

But before we start, why should you chose LaTeX in the first place?

According to this answer on stackexchange using LaTeX is recommended if you want your documents to be of high typographical quality (i.e., beautiful), have a lot of mathematical expressions in your document or just want to separate the content from the format of your document (i.e. if you do not want to waste time thinking about how the document looks but rather what its content is).

Personally, I found that writing large documents in LaTeX is more stable than writing it with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) text editor such as Word or LibreOffice . For me large texts are more difficult to control in WYSIWYG editors (e.g., I change something on page 4 and that change has negative impacts on the format of the following pages) and I also prefer the typographical quality of LaTeX.

However, since LaTeX is not a proprietary software, there are different distributions and ways to install and use it. Below, an exemplary way of working with LaTeX on a Windows computer is explained.

LaTeX installation and text editor

I wrote my thesis using a MikTeX distribution together with the TeXstudio text editor. The following examples are based on this setup. In case you have not installed the software, yet, install MikTeX first and install TeXstudio afterwards.

There are other LaTeX distributions for other operation systems, such as TeX Live and MacTeX . Alternatively, you can write LaTeX documents online using overleaf , for example. You can find further information about the different possibilities to use LaTeX on the website of the LaTeX project

Project Structure

The structure of the project folder thesis looks like this and can be downloaded as a zipped version here :

The folder has two files (the main LaTeX file main.tex and refs.bib , which holds the references) and two folders ( source and figures ) which contain four LaTeX files and one picture, respectively. The content of the main LaTeX file files and the bib file will be discussed below.

Document Structure

In the main.tex file, the preamble of the thesis is defined and the single chapters, that are stored in the source folder, are integrated. The code looks like this:

The main.tex file integrates the single chapters with the \include{<path/to/file.tex>} command (e.g., \include{source/introduction} ). It is best practice to split the document into several smaller LaTeX files and combine them in a main file. This avoids a single large and diffcult to handle document and can save you precious time when you want to compile only smaller parts of the thesis. Compiling the entire project results in the following document:

Document Class

Let’s walk through the document step by step. First, the doument uses the scrbook documentclass provided by the Koma-script project. This is a pretty powerful template that has many of the handy things recommended for a thesis already implemented and is flexibly adjustable. In fact, the number of options the documentclass has can be overwhelming and this blog post will only focus on the very basic ones.

In the options many different aspects of the document can be defined, for example the paper size ( paper=a4 ), the font size ( fontsize=11pt ) and whether period should follow after a chapter or section name ( numbers=noendperiod disables this option). See the scrbook documentation for details.

Bibtex and Zotero

The bibtex is a way to integrate references into the thesis document and automatically build a sorted bibliography at the end of the document. In order to use bibtex we integrate the package with:

This is also a powerful tool with many available options but we will only set a few: the style is set to autoryear , the backend, that actually generates the bibliography, is set to be biber (make sure to set biber as your backend in TeXstudio) and the et al. cut-off is set to three (i.e., a maximum of two names will be displayed for refereces in text). The content of refs.bib contains only two references and looks as follows:

This file can be created manually or automatically. Personally, I recommend using the free reference management software Zotero for storing and organizing references. It strongly supports managing, reading and annotating references. When it comes to writing a thesis, the references can then automatically be exported to a bib file with the Better BibTeX plugin for Zotero. It is even possible to automatically keep the bib file in sync with your Zotero collection, which even further simplifies writing a thesis.

In the document, we can cite the references from the bib file by their keys and the commands \parencite{key} and \textcite{key} commands. This is exemplarily shown in the introduction chapter with the \parencite{bishopPatternRecognitionMachine2006} and \textcite{rumelhartLearningRepresentationsBackpropagating1986} commands:

Additional packages

Some additional packages are already integrated in the minimal working example:

is used for quickly adding blindtext, which can be deleted for a thesis, of course. In order to make links in the pdf work,

is used. The hidelinks option makes the links only invisible, they are still there, however (feel free to compile with \usepackage{hyperref} to see the difference). For the integration of pictures in the document

is used. By setting the path of the figures, LaTeX knows where to search for them. Finally,

is used for nicer tables in our document.

The last building block of the minimal working example is the titlepage. The scrbook already provides functionality that can be used. By setting the different variables below and adding the command \maketitle , the titlepage is generated automatically:

This is only basic functionalyity and you might want to design your own title page with a logo of your university. In that case you can use

At this point the first part of my lessons learned about writing a thesis in LaTeX comes to an end. To wrap up, the main takeways are

• LaTeX is a great alternative to a WYSIWYG editor for writing a thesis.
• By using a pre-defined document class such as scrbook one can quickly start writing a thesis in LaTeX.
• LaTeX integrates nicely with the free referece management software Zotero and enables a smooth and easy worklfow for adding references.

In the next part we will look at further LaTeX packages that make writing a thesis in LaTeX even more convenient.

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

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LaTeX templates for writing a thesis

Aside from CTAN, what are good resources/repositories for Latex templates? In particular, I'm looking for some pretty Thesis templates (I'm familiar with classicthesis)

• repositories
• Should this be for thesis templates, or for templates in general? So far, your answers have all been thesis templates. I'm looking for other templates. Please either edit the question to read "Resources/Sites for thesis templates", or clarify that you want general templates. (Or, simply delete your parenthetical note.) –  Kevin Vermeer Commented Jul 29, 2010 at 19:51
• I think 'templates in general' might be too broad. As it is, 'thesis templates' is quite a wide topic. –  Joseph Wright ♦ Commented Jul 30, 2010 at 5:43

17 Answers 17

In my case, I actually found it easiest to roll my own using the memoir package as a base. It's very well documented, and setting the appropriate margins, double/one-half line spacing, etc. was very easy. And it makes it easy to play around a bit within the thesis guidelines, for instance making fancy chapter headings.

• 1 Although it uses the book class, Siarhei Khirevich's tips might be inspiring to customize headers, chose a font, parametrize microtype, hacking bibtex, etc. –  Clément Commented Jun 12, 2014 at 16:33

Robert Poser has created a site dedicated to thesis templates:

http://www.thesis-template.com/

The link is currently dead, but that web site can still be read using archive.org (the Internet wayback machine) choosing a snapshot date such as February 8, 2014 . The thesis template site mostly just links to available external sites with templates.

It provides links to ready-to-go thesis templates of various universities worldwide. There's even a google map for viewing the templates origins on the world map.

Besides LaTeX templates there are also LyX thesis templates.

UK-TUG have a list of thesis templates from various UK institutions at http://uk.tug.org/training/thesis/ . There is also a good generic template at http://www.sunilpatel.co.uk/thesistemplate.php , but I'm note sure any of these are 'pretty'. At least in the UK the requirements tend to be vary much geared around a traditional manuscript style (double spaced and so on).

• Note (Jan 2014): many of the links from the above age are dead now. –  Chris H Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 11:44
• @ChrisH I will see what I can do about that: we don't unfortunately get much direct information on this so have to rely on what we find! –  Joseph Wright ♦ Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 12:08
• The link to "Using LaTeX to Write a PhD Thesis" is now dickimaw-books.com/latex/thesis (sys.uea.ac.uk was changed to cmp.uea.ac.uk many years ago, if anyone finds any old links to it, although I've moved most of my LaTeX resources from cmp.uea.ac.uk to dickimaw-books.com.) –  Nicola Talbot Commented Jun 12, 2014 at 16:31

I'm currently writing a (bachelor) thesis myself and just using the LaTeX's own "report" class, I find it meets all of my universities requirements when I only use a custom title page.

• 3 I used scrreprt and I didn't even have to modify the title page. –  marczellm Commented Jan 6, 2015 at 15:28

For the spanish speaking community, I maintain a thesis format which can be easily adapted to the requirements of different universities. The format itself can be used to write thesis documents in any language, but it has a spanish option which takes care of loading a suitable set of packages and options to get the entire format consistently translated into spanish.

There is an unofficial class sapthesis for the Laurea, Laurea Specialistica and Dottorato degrees at the La Sapienza university of Rome.

Chances are, your institution will have pretty strict specifications for your thesis format. If you're lucky your institution may have a class file or some grad students may maintain a unofficial template.

Purdue University (a state school in Indiana, USA) has a document class that may be a good starting point.

https://engineering.purdue.edu/~mark/puthesis/

An additional complication at Purdue is that each department has additional constraints on the formatting so the document class takes an option to specify the department.

• 5 “ Chances are, your institution will have pretty strict specifications” – is this actually common? My University has absolutely zero specs. I’m the author, I decide the format. –  Konrad Rudolph Commented Aug 5, 2010 at 9:34
• 8 In U.S. institutions it's the absolute norm, not the exception. And the formatting guidelines are usually awful as well. –  Alan Munn Commented Jan 10, 2011 at 1:09
• 6 @Konrad: When Alan says "awful," he really means awful . They're atrocious. –  TH. Commented Jan 10, 2011 at 1:57
• 1 In German institutions it's the absolute exception, not the norm. Only things like the exact words to be used for the declaration about having written the thesis oneself, marked quotations, named all sources and so on as well as some rules about the title page, inclusion of CV and such things are regulated. –  Stephen Commented Sep 26, 2011 at 7:11

There seems to be a nice compilation of thesis templates on this site:

https://www.sharelatex.com/templates/thesis/

These templates include many already mentioned here.

A really great place for LaTeX templates is:

http://www.latextemplates.com

This website is beautifully laid out and the templates are sorted into categories that make it easy to find the template that is best suited to your purposes. All of the templates have PDF examples and full template code.

I am not affiliated with this website in any way but have used it many times.

I use tex live utility on the mac to maintain my tex distribution. Specifically I use the ctan repository. On searching for thesis templates, I got style (cls) files for the following thesis formats. More information can be found on their respective ctan pages.

afthesis, classicthesis, ebsthesis, gatech-thesis, hepthesis, muthesis, psu-thesis, ryethesis, seuthesis, thuthesis, ucdavisthesis, ucthesis, uiucthesis, umich-thesis, umthesis, ut-thesis, uwthesis, york-thesis

My suggestion would be to see which one of these is closest to your university's requirements and then build on that. To search for each of the above theses files, use the following link format: http://www.ctan.org/cgi-bin/filenameSearch.py?filename=afthesis&Search=Search and replace the name appropriately and on the page visit the readme page for more details.

Unofficial (but linked from the Graduate School webpages) thesis template for Tennessee Tech University .

At the moment, the development snapshot is more advanced (automatic generation of front matter pages, ToC and related list page headers), and is nearly ready to be merged back to the stable version. Only 13 commands required for generating a basic thesis (plus any \include commands for your chapters and appendices).

Based off memoir, with hyperref, hypcap, ifthen, indentfirst, listings, memhfixc, nomencl, refcount, rotating, and ted packages required.

I just redid the uclathesis class, and in the process collected (iirc without checking) about a dozen thesis classes from various schools in the US and Europe to look at how others did this or that. In the end I used memoir, and it was pretty simple and straightforward, all in all. The part that took the longest (a day?) was the construction of the frontmatter pages (titlepage, signature page, copyright, vita, dedication, acknowledgements, abstract) which all had to have a special format.

I could email you any or all of these, and, even tho I'm probably not in the same class as many of the latex coders here, I'd be happy to advise you if you need it, since this is an exercise that I just finished.

Illinois Institute of Technology has their thesis class at available from the Graduate College website . A lot of the commands are somewhat nonstandard (for example capitalized \Section commands), so I've been redoing the class file as I work on my thesis. I'll post the result somewhere when the thesis examiner likes it.

The Université de Lorraine (in France), and more specifically the LORIA lab, developped a template that can be easily adapted.

You may find it at http://www.loria.fr/~roegel/TeX/TUL.html , but this page as well as the documentation is in French.

8< = = = = = = = = = = =

Another template was developped by the "association des doctorants de l'IRISA et de l'École doctorale Matisse en informatique, traitement du signal et électronique", a french team.

You may find it at http://www.irisa.fr/adoc/WikiWeb/pmwiki.php?n=Main.ModeleLatex

http://github.com/AndreyAkinshin/Russian-Phd-LaTeX-Dissertation-Template

Russian PhD thesis (Candidate of Sciences dissertation) template compatible with national standard (GOST).

NOVAthesis is an active and full featured LaTeX thesis template, designed to be easily accessible to LaTeX beginners. It will do all you need except writing the thesis for you!

The template is multilingual and easily costumizable. It has considerable large user communities at Facebook (use PT or EN) and GitHub (use EN only). There is also a new blog (in PT) about LaTeX and with tips on how to use and configure the novathesis template.

Give it a try… you won't regret! :)

• The NOVAthesis template is now an official template at Overleaf , making it trivial to experiment with it. –  João Lourenço Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 3:01

I really like and highly recommend the LaTeX Thesis Template from Matthias Pospiech. It's so huge, it's actually more like a framework, comes with it's own 272 page documentation and is constantly being revised with it's current version from 2018-09-20, compilable with the current TeXlive 2018.

target users This template was developed with all sorts of structured documents in mind that require a good citation and reference framework with a customizable layout. It has so far been used for bachelor, master and phd-thesis as well as the thesis of teachers in their practical year. These theses had all a natural science background, which means that also this template is optimized for the needs of people in natural sciences. Nevertheless it should be easily adaptable to topics in humanities, linguistics or even arts. This template has been used under the supervision of the maintainer by very early beginners and also advanced LaTeX users. The experience was that beginners as well as advanced users are more productive with it because ‘it just works’, while the more advanced users additionally know that they can find all options for later modifications because of the documentation in the code.

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• LaTeX Thesis
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An academic thesis, also known as a dissertation, is a substantial work produced by a graduate student to communicate their research and earn a degree. A thesis will typically include a review of the current state of research in the field of study followed by a central hypothesis to be investigated. The bulk of the thesis will then focus on the methods and results of the research performed, followed by a discussion on how the results add to the field in general. Theses are long, highly structured and include a lot of advanced document elements.

This template is designed for writing books and graduate-level theses and provides numerous examples and documentation to enable complex requirements. The design features a relatively narrow main text column with an adjacent wide margin to house notes, figures, tables, citations and captions.

• View Template Information

Masters/Doctoral Thesis

This template provides a full framework for writing a graduate level thesis. It is carefully structured and separated into multiple parts for easy editing. Included are the following pages/sections: a cover page, declaration of authorship, quotation, abstract, acknowledgements, contents page(s), list of figures, list of tables, abbreviations, physical constants, symbols, dedication, example chapter, example appendix and bibliography.

Classicthesis Typographic Thesis

This template has been designed as a homage to the Elements of Typographic Style. As such, it has an air of efficiency and optimal design. It is suitable for any high-level degree thesis such as for a PhD, Masters or Honors. Sections within the thesis are clearly separated in a consistent way, as are sections within each chapter. The default structure of the thesis proceeds in the following order: title page, dedication, abstract, publications, acknowledgements, contents, list of tables/figures/listings, acronyms, content chapters, appendices, bibliography, colophon and declaration.

Maggi Memoir Thesis

This template uses the memoir document class to beautifully typeset a thesis. It is suitable for any high-level degree thesis such as for a PhD, Masters or Honors. The layout of the content is in a thin format to promote easy reading and the template features advanced specification of margins and trimming. The thesis boasts a professional look which is immediately obvious from the title page itself and carries through the design of the rest of the document. Three custom fonts are used in the template to match the design and beautifully display your content.

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Your thesis or dissertation is often the most important single piece of work you’ll produce as a student (whether it be your final year undergraduate research project or your complete Masters / PhD thesis). These templates, many provided by the university themselves as official layout guidelines, include sections for you to add all the relevant author information (your university, department, supervisor, year, etc) along with placeholder chapters for your introduction, background, method, results, conclusion / discussion, references and appendices.

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