Guide to Writing a Thesis in LATEX

Ki-Joo Kim
Dec. 11, 2002



Introduction

In this document, I intend to collect useful information for writing a thesis or final project report using LATEX.
 

Basic Structure

The first slide containes only the following codes. All configurations are in Preamble.tex. In addition, three forepart files, Titlepage, Abstract, and Acknowledge, are used. You may combine these three files into a single file..

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Ki-Joo's Dissertation
%   o Civil and Environmental Engineering
%   o Carnegie Mellon University
%   o Last Modified: June 6, 2001
%   o Most of the formats are created by Ki-Joo Kim
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\input{Preamble}
\begin{document}
\include{Titlepage}
\include{Abstract}
\include{Acknowledge}
\include{Chap1}
......
\include{Chap8}
\end{document}
Preamble

Birefly, I'm using a two-sided book style with fancyhdr and natbib packages.

%%%% Basic Packages %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\documentclass[11pt]{book}               % I'm using a double-sided book style
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[body={6.0in, 8.2in},left=1.25in,right=1.25in]{geometry}
                                         % Geometry package for easy page margin
                                         % setup
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb}             % AMS Math
\usepackage{rotating}                    % Sideways of figures & tables
\usepackage[sectionbib]{natbib}          % Cross-reference package (Natural BiB)
\usepackage{chapterbib}                  % Put References at the end of each chapter
                                         % Do not put 'sectionbib' option here.
                                         % Sectionbib option in 'natbib' will do.
\usepackage{fancyhdr}                    % Fancy Header and Footer
\usepackage{setspace}                    % Line spacing
\doublespacing
\usepackage{txfonts}                     % Public Times New Roman text & math font
%%% Fancy Header %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Fancy Header Style Options
\pagestyle{fancy}                       % Sets fancy header and footer
\fancyfoot{}                            % Delete current footer settings
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{         % Lower Case Chapter marker style
  \markboth{\chaptername\ \thechapter.\ #1}{}} %
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{        % Lower case Section marker style
  \markright{\thesection.\ #1}}         %
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{\bfseries\thepage}    % Page number (boldface) in left on even
                                        % pages and right on odd pages
\fancyhead[RE]{\bfseries\leftmark}      % Chapter in the right on even pages
\fancyhead[LO]{\bfseries\rightmark}     % Section in the left on odd pages
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.3pt}    % Width of head rule
%%% Clear Header %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% Clear Header Style on the Last Empty Odd pages
\makeatletter
\def\cleardoublepage{\clearpage\if@twoside \ifodd\c@page\else%
    \hbox{}%
    \thispagestyle{empty}%              % Empty header styles
    \newpage%
    \if@twocolumn\hbox{}\newpage\fi\fi\fi}
\makeatother
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%  Prints your review date and 'Draft Version' (From Josullvn, CS, CMU)
\newcommand{\reviewtimetoday}[2]{\special{!userdict begin
/bop-hook{gsave 20 710 translate 45 rotate 0.8 setgray
/Times-Roman findfont 12 scalefont setfont 0 0   moveto (#1) show
0 -12 moveto (#2) show grestore}def end}}
% You can turn on or off this option.
\reviewtimetoday{\today}{Draft Version}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}
Custom Title Page
 
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Title Page                                                                %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{titlepage}
\begin{center}
No specific format in the CEE department. Make your own title page.
\end{center}
\end{titlepage}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Dedication Page                                                           %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\thispagestyle{empty}
\newenvironment{dedication}
  {\cleardoublepage \thispagestyle{empty} \vspace*{\stretch{1}} \begin{center} \em}
  {\end{center} \vspace*{\stretch{3}} \clearpage}
\begin{dedication}
Your dedication goes here ...
\end{dedication}
% \cleardoublepage generates one blank page for the next 'Abstract'
% to be on an odd page.
\thispagestyle{empty} \cleardoublepage

 

 

Custom Abstract and Acknowledgement Pates

Tow separate files, Abstract.tex and Acknowledge.tex are:

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Abstracts                                                                 %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\pagenumbering{roman} \setcounter{page}{1}
\chapter*{Abstract\markboth{Abstract}{Abstract}}
% Mark 'Abstract' both even and odd markers
Your abstract goes here.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Acknowledgements                                                          %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\chapter*{Acknowledgements\markboth{Acknowledgements}{Acknowledgements}}
Your acknowledgement goes here...
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Contents and Lists                                                        %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\newpage
\renewcommand{\contentsname}{Table of Contents}  % Original name = Contents
\begin{spacing}{1.2}  % Environment for 1.2 line spacing for contents and lists
\tableofcontents%
\listoffigures%
\listoftables%
\cleardoublepage
\end{spacing}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%   Arabic numbering after this                                               %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\pagenumbering{arabic} \setcounter{page}{1}
Main Chapters

If the chapter title is too long, you can use short title for the entry to the Table of Contents and Chapter hearder marker. See the following example. The title in [ ...] is a short title. You can also put footnote at the chpater and section titles using
\protect\footnote{   }.

\chapter[New Era in Batch Distillation]{New Era in Batch Distillation:
Computer Aided Analysis, Optimal Design and
Control\protect\footnote[2]{Kim, K.-J. and U.M. Diwekar (2001),
\emph{Reviews in Batch Distillation}, Vol. :111-111}}
Bibliography

The bibliography can be added at the end of each chapter as follows:

\newpage
\begin{spacing}{1.0}
  \bibliographystyle{apalike}                  % *.bst files
  \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Bibliography}
  \bibliography{KJBiB,BatchReview}             % *.bib Files
\end{spacing}
The package setspace changes a single-space mode, and apalike.bst file is used here. To add the name 'Bibliography' in the Table of Contents, you need \addcontensline{where}{type}{entry name}. Citation information is extracted from two *.bib files as shown here. If you want to make your own bst file, please read Ki-Joo's bibtex_guide.pdf.

Appendices
 

Misc.
 

How to Compile

Because the preamble file shown above uses the chapterbib package, a special compilation procedure is needed. In other words, each chapter now has to produce a bib-information file (*.bbl) which is imported to the final one big PS file.

latex dissertation
bibtex chap1
bibtex chap2
....
bibtex chap99
latex dissertation (and more)

Last updated on 12/11/2002

 
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