latex thesis cheat sheet

LaTeX cheatsheet

This cheat sheet summarizes a reference list of LaTeX commonly used display math notation and some application examples of KaTeX .

# Getting Started

# introduction.

LaTeX A TEX-based typesetting system suitable for producing scientific, mathematical, and physical documents of high print quality.

• LaTeX official website (latex-project.org)
• KaTeX official website (katex.org)

And KaTeX handles only a smaller subset of LaTeX's mathematical notation for display on the web

Example based on KaTeX showing on one line: KaTeX:\int_0^\infty x^2 dx

# Supported Functions

# emphasis in \text, # delimiter sizing, # greek and hebrew letters, # other letters, # alphabets and unicode, # annotation.

\tag{hi} x+y^{2x}

\tag*{hi} x+y^{2x}

# Vertical layout

# overlap and spacing.

\sum_{\mathclap{1\le i\le j\le n}} x_{ij}

# KaTeX:\LaTeX math constructs

# delimiters.

The pair of expressions \left KaTeX:s_1 and \right KaTeX:s_2 can be used to match the height of the separators KaTeX:s_1 and KaTeX:s_2 to the height of their content, e.g. :

# Variable Size Symbols

# standard function name, # function names should be in roman font, not italics, for example:, # logic and set theory, # special symbols, # mathematical operator, # big operator, # fractions and binomials, # binary operator, # negative relationship, # symbols and punctuation, # environments, # environments 1, # environments 2, # environments 3, # environments 4, # environments 5, # environments 6, # environments 7, # environments 8, # environments 9, # environments 10, # environments 11, # environments 12, # environments 13, # environments 14, # environments 15, # environments 16, # environments 17, # style, color, size and font.

• symbols.pdf (cmor-faculty.rice.edu)

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Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

Step 4: configure the options specific to your thesis.

At this point, it is assumed that you have a working LaTeX distribution, an editor, have downloaded and installed the necessary template files, and confirmed that you can build this sample thesis . If not, do that first. Now we will explain how to set things like the title, the author name, and whether it is a masters thesis or a doctoral dissertation.

Start by opening the file thesis.tex in your editor.

Setting the Class Options

The first line of the file will be:

This tells LaTeX to use the urithesis document class with all default options. There are many options that that can be given, but for now we will only concern ourselves with one.

If this is a Ph.D. dissertation, change the first line to be:

Setting the Title and Author

To set the title, you use the command:

Make sure to use proper capitalization.

Since you will be the author, set your name using the command:

The tilde between the middle initial and the last name tells LaTeX that the period does not indicate the end of a sentence, and to use a normal interword space.

The Bibliography Source File

The references will come from one or more .bib files that you create. This is the only type of file without a .tex extension that you will need to edit. The line:

tells BibTeX to look in the file references.bib for references cited in the thesis. The argument to the \reffile command can be a comma separated list of files (without the .bib extension), and it will look in all of those files.

The Preliminary Material

The pages that come before the first chapter are called the preliminary material. See the page Guidelines for the Format of Theses and Dissertations , on the Graduate School’s web site, for more information about the preliminary material. The preliminary material includes, in this order:

The automatic sections will be generated automatically, and you need not worry about them. The List of Tables and List of Figures sections will only be generated if the thesis contains any tables or figures, respectively. The argument to the command to include the four manual sections, is the name of the .tex file that contains the content for that section, without the .tex extension. For example the abstract is included with the command:

which means it will us the contents of the file abstract.tex as the abstract. The file abstract.tex should contain only the text of the abstract, as the title will be generated automatically.

The Chapters

Chapters are included with the command:

which will include the file chapterN.tex in the thesis. There should be one \newchapter{} command for each chapter of the thesis.

The chapter source files should each begin with the command

followed by the contents of the chapter.

The Appendices

Appendices are optional, but if present, they are included with the command:

which will include the file appendixN.tex in the thesis. There should be a \newappendix{} command for each appendix of the thesis.

The main difference between appendices and chapters, are that chapters are numbered starting with 1, while appendices start with the letter A. The contents of an appendix is identical to that of a chapter. Each appendix source file should begin with the command:

command, just like with chapters.

Additional Considerations

By default, the department named on the title page is Electrical Engineering, but that can be changed by using the command:

before any of the chapters are included.

The year that the thesis is generated is displayed on the title page and approval page, but the Graduate School requires that year must be the year of your official graduation. To set that date to a specific year, other than the current year, use the command:

before the \begin{document} command.

Basic thesis template

This Thesis LaTeX template is an ideal starting point for writing your PhD thesis, masters dissertation or final year project. The style is appropriate for most universities, and can be easily customised. This LaTeX template includes a title page, a declaration, an abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents, list of figures/tables, a dedication, and example chapters and sections.

This template was originally published on ShareLaTeX and subsequently moved to Overleaf in November 2019.

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Information Technology

LaTeX Your Thesis

General thesis tips, about the thesis template, changing headers, using and modifying sections, handling images and tables, landscape orientation, managing paragraph spacing, uploading the thesis template to overleaf, add a collaborator, managing your bibliography, choosing a bibliography style, how to cite a reed thesis, changing the title of your bibliography, fragment your thesis with \include, using labels and references, adding appendices, including full page pdfs.

• Additional Resources - LaTeX Cheat Sheet
• BACK UP YOUR THESIS. Often you will not realize for days or weeks that important paragraph or page is missing. Make recovery as easy as possible by keeping a dated backup of each writing session. Then copy those backups to at least two locations other than your hard drive: your home server, Gmail account, thumb drive, the options are wide and numerous. There is no excuse for not backing up the most important document of your Reed career.
• Start your bibliographic database the day you start reading. Keep it up to date and annotate it, so you know where it came from (library, Summit, ILL, public library, professor), whether you've read it, and where you want to cite it. This will make the writing process less frustrating and creating the bibliography seamless.
• Think of thesis formatting as a form of productive procrastination. Please don't put it off until the last week.
• BACK UP. No, seriously. It's not "if" your hard drive fails, it's "when." Not to scare you or anything, but it's a good habit, like buckling your seat belt or not leaving your laptop unattended. You really don't want to wish you had taken that small precaution.
• Keep the editable original of each graphic you want to include in your thesis in one folder. Later you may need to change a graphic quickly and having the editable original makes it easy. For graphs, keep the original Excel/JMP/Stata document, not a PDF. For photographs, keep a high resolution copy (such as a tiff). For drawings and illustrations, keep the original Illustrator document.
• Use the timesaving benefits of LaTeX from the first day. Cross references can refer to tables, graphics, and chapters so you do not have to update references as your thesis changes. Use comments to make notes about what needs to added or changed.
• Enjoy the experience! And get some sleep, food and relaxation on occasion. Hundreds of people did this before you; you can do this too.

The thesis template, available for download here , contains two main files of importance: Reedthesis.cls and Thesis.tex . (As you noticed, there are many other files in the folder. For more information about all the files LaTeX creates, see our article on the subject. ) Reedthesis.cls is a document class like article or book, and so must be defined in the preamble (see the section about document classes for more info ). Additionally, since the average installation (even Reed's) does not include Reedthesis.cls, you will have to bring the file wherever you want to work on your thesis.

The thesis template folder also contains bonus materials you may find helpful, such as an array of bibliography style files (.bst) that can support an undergraduate thesis citation and files already modified to work with a psychology major's specific needs. So make sure that you have the latest version of the thesis template and read through the thesis.tex file for more complete overview of the template's contents.

Common Queries

While the content of your thesis is certainly much more important than the appearance, a nicely typeset thesis will be more pleasant to look upon ten years from now. We have collected nearly every query for the last few years so you can make the changes you want and get back to revising your latest chapter. That typo on the first page will bug you even more than the headers once the thesis is bound and in the library. Most of these answers are links that lead to other pages in our LaTeX documentation because they fit well elsewhere and this page would be much too long if we decided to be redundant.

If you don't like how your headers appear, you can change them. That is, they are modifiable in LaTeX, but your adviser or the library might not like the change. But people change how they look all the time (usually to have the name of the chapter in small caps and without the title of the current \section), so the advanced LaTeX page has a few ways to go about tweaking the headers .

When using Reedthesis.cls, you will use \chapter{ optional title here } to denote the beginning of a new chapter (obviously) while \section{ title } and \subsection{ title } will subdivide those chapters. You do not need to use \subsection if you don't wish to, but \section will probably prove very useful to break up your chapters.

If you don't like the automatic numbering of \chapter, \section and \subsection, you can easily eliminate the numbering by adding an asterix to the command ( \chapter*{ title }, \section*{ title } , etc.), but then the section won't show up in the Table of Contents. To learn how to make sure these show up in the ToC, and to learn more about sectioning commands in general, check out the advanced LaTeX page .

In order to add an image in LaTeX, you must use the package graphicx and place the image ( \includegraphics{ imagename } ) inside the figure environment. Be sure to give a caption if necessary, but remember that LaTeX will add the "Figure x.x" to your caption on the typeset document. For more information on handling images, including the answers to our most common questions, see our graphics documentation . To make your life easier, I highly suggest that you read the section on using references and labels .

Like figures, tables also need to be in a float environment such as tabular or longtable . For an introduction to tables or to learn how to do more complex table formatting, see our documentation on tables . To learn how to change their position, numbering or presentation, the graphics documentation covers the same material. You may have to replace figure with table wherever appropriate, but the commands are basically the same. Feel free to stop by the CUS desk or try Google if you get lost!

When you have a table or figure that is too wide for your page, you will need to rotate your page to be in landscape rather than portrait orientation. To avoid rotating your headers and footers as well, use the package lscape (for more information on packages, see the advanced LaTeX section ) and enclose whatever needs to be rotated in the landscape environment:

\begin{landscape} \begin{figure}[htbp] \caption{A Really Wide Figure} \includegraphics{panoramicimage} \label{pan} \end{figure} \end{landscape}

This will keep the headers and page numbers in the portrait orientation, but rotate your figure or table as well as the appropriate caption. You do not want to use the package Portland ; this rotates the headers and footers as well, and the registrar will probably not accept such a setup.

The line breaking and spacing algorithms of LaTeX are not always successful. Sometimes the space between paragraphs is inconsistent from page to page, or even within the same page. If this happens to you, try ignoring it for a bit and continue to write your paper. Often the addition of a new subsection or just more words will be reorganized into a more pleasing arrangement.

But don't add unnecessary bulk to your thesis just to make it look good. Try putting this in the preamble: \setlength{\parskip}{0pt} . This sets the inter-paragraph spacing to 0 pts. You could also tell LaTeX that it can be more permissive when placing page breaks by putting \allowdisplaybreaks or \raggedbottom in the preamble. If none of these solutions work and you don't want to add more content to your finished chapter, bring your .tex file to the CUS desk and we shall see what we can do.

Using Overleaf

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor that allows one to use LaTeX software without downloading or configuring. It has a variety of templates, but can also be used to make changes on our thesis template. 

• Download the LaTeX template .zip file from the Thesis Templates section at downloads.reed.edu
• Go to overleaf.com and create an account. We recommend using personal credentials so you don’t lose any data after graduation. Note: If you have a subscription through Reed you’ll have to use your Reed credentials instead

• Select template .zip file from your computer and click Upload  if prompted.
• Using the template is the same as with any LaTeX compiler  
• Thesis edits should be made to thesis.tex, and a live version can be viewed by clicking Recompile . You can also upload your own .bib file to your project instead of using the example prelim.bib .

You can add your adviser as a collaborator so they may leave comments on your work as you go. Without a subscription you can have a single collaborator, with a student subscription you can have up to 6. If you are interested in joining our pilot subscription program, inquire by emailing [email protected] .

• Open your project.

Bibliographies

Unless you are doing a creative writing thesis, you will read way too much for your thesis. As a result, your bibliography will be ridiculously long. Thankfully, there is this great program called BibTeX that will typeset your bibliography for you. For more general information on using BibTeX to create your bibliography, as well as choosing a bibliography format and using a bibliography manager, see our BibTeX documentation .

While it is possible to create a bibliography manually , and there are reasons to do so, your senior year will be made a bit easier if you take advantage of BibTeX's automation . We strongly suggest that you use an application such as JabRef or BibDesk , both of which have documentation on the BibTex page. 

The BibTeX page has the following advice for creating your bibliography in BibTeX, but I thought it was worth repeating here:

• Like with thesis formatting, the sooner you start compiling your bibliography for something as large as thesis, the better. Typing in source after source is mind-numbing enough; do you really want to do it for hours on end in late April? Think of it as procrastination.
• When you have more than one author or editor, you need to separate each author's name by the word and .
• The cite key (a citation's label) needs to be unique from the other entries.
• Bibliographies made using BibTeX (whether manually or using a manager) accept LaTeX markup, so you can italicize and add symbols as necessary.
• To force capitalization in an article title or where all lowercase is generally used, bracket the capital letter in curly braces.
• You can add a Reed Thesis citation option. In fact, your bibliography style (.bst) may already have the option. See the thesis template for more details.

If you know what bibliography style you need to be using (Chicago or MLA, for example), then you should check out the available bibliography styles on the page about BibTeX styles . If your discipline varies with regard to preferred bibliography style, ask your adviser which format or journal you should use, then check out the BibTeX style page for a Reed edition, or CTAN.org for most other styles. 

A normal bibliography style (.bst) has formats for a PhD thesis and a Master's thesis, but no preset format for an undergraduate thesis. In your .bib file, use the Phd. thesis entry type, and in the optional type field, enter "Reed thesis" or "Undergraduate thesis" and that will be displayed instead of "Phd.thesis".

The default bibliography title is just "Bibliography," but if you want to change this, LaTeX gives you an easy way to do so. Here is an example of a bibliography renamed to "Works Cited." Note the placement after the command \backmatter and before the commands that make the bibliography ( \bibliographystyle and \bibliography ).

\backmatter \renewcommand{\bibname}{ Works Cited } \bibliographystyle{plain} \bibliography{thesis}

Special Topics In Thesis: Tricks to Make Life Easier

Thesis may be scary, but putting it together doesn't have to be. A number of recent alumni answered a call for recommendations to the next crop of seniors; here are the computer related gems.

Your thesis is big, or at least it will be soon enough. Instead of typing everything into the thesis template, you can have separate files for each chapter and then include them in the thesis template. To learn more about using the commands \include and \input , see the appropriate section in the advanced LaTeX documentation.

If you've made a table or figure, you have probably noticed the command \label{default} . If you want to refer to that table or figure elsewhere in your document, you need only to write \ref{default} and your typeset document will replace that ref with the number of the item. But you can refer to more than just tables and figures with ease:

• For figures and tables, the label command should be inserted right after the \caption .
• For equations or lists, the label command should be within the environment as a whole.
• For chapters or sections, it will refer to the first preceding section title, whether it is a subsection, section, or chapter.
• If you want the page number of the reference, use the \pageref{ marker } command. If you want just the reference, use the \ref{ marker } command. For correct spacing, you may wish to precede the reference commands with a tilde (~) if you are using the reference in a sentence or text.
• You will need to typeset your document at least twice to see cross-references reflect any changes. You will know that you need to typeset again if you see question marks where there should be references.

To add an appendix to your thesis, find \appendix towards the end of your thesis template. Right after the \appendix , it should have another \chapter command, in which you can specify the name of your appendix. This is what the template has:

\appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} \chapter{The Second Appendix, For Fun}

You can either write directly in the template as if the appendix is just another chapter, or stick an external document in using \input (for .tex documents only, see the documentation on this ) or \includegraphics (for PDFs and other formats, see below). Your appendices will appear in the Table of Contents as Appendix A: Appendix Name (the second appendix will be Appendix B, and so on). The appendix itself will have both Appendix A and the appendix title on separate lines.

If you want to remove the "appendix" part of your appendix title or otherwise modify how that part of the title is displayed, remove \appendix from your thesis, thus making your appendices into normal chapters. You then need to keep the appendix from being numbered as "Chapter # ", so make the following modifications to your document:

Original: \appendix \chapter{The First Appendix} To make the appendix named Appendix: The First Appendix, change the above to: \chapter*{Appendix: The First Appendix} \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Appendix: The First Appendix} \chaptermark{Appendix} \markboth{Appendix}{Appendix}

The \chapter* creates an unnumbered chapter and \addcontentsline adds the chapter to the Table of Contents with the title you specify. The commands \chaptermark and \markboth handle the headers. For more on modifying chapter names, look at the documentation on sectioning . To learn more about changing headers, read the Headers In a Thesis section.

Music Majors: There are two LaTeX related routes to typesetting music, MusicTeX and LilyPond. However, past music seniors have struggled to incorporate the files from both programs into their theses. The official CUS recommendation is to use Finale to typeset your music, then export the sheet music to PDF. (See this page to learn how to create pdfs in a program such as Finale.) Using \includepdf (with the package PDFPages ) is a great way to add them. PDFPages is a powerful and flexible way to include multi-page PDF files in your LaTeX document. Example: \includepdf[pages=1-8 offset=15 -15,scale=.80, frame=true,pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{Orlando.pdf}

Additional Resources

For a quick LaTeX Cheat Sheet, please visit https://www.stdout.org/~winston/latex/ .

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A template for creating a nice cheat sheet with LaTeX

academic-templates/tex-cheat-sheet-template

Folders and files, repository files navigation, ℹ️ introduction.

The goal of this template is to provide a nice-looking cheat sheet layout, easy to configure and fill in.

This cheat sheet template is a largely inspired but purified version of this template .

Here is an example preview:

🗃️ Structure

The template is structured in the following way:

• main.tex : This is the main TeX file to be compiled. Here you can include your payload.
• figures : This folder is aimed to contain logos and figures.
• styles : This folder contains the styles for defining the layout. Most of the included ones should not be edited.

⚙️ Compilation

The compilation can easilly be configured in Texmaker by defining a Quick Build Command :

Go to the menu Options

Select Configure Texmaker

Go to tab Quick Build

In the field User : (...) , replace the command with:

Then click OK

This will produce main.pdf .

📰 Making your cheat sheet

Parts that you should adapt:

• include images in figures and refer to these in main.tex

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