Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX
Frequently Asked Questions
1. General Use
1.1 How can I use single-spacing?
2. Bibliography and References
2.1 My bibliography or list of references is missing.
2.2 How do I refer to a web page in a bibliographic reference?
2.3 How do I include a source in the bibliography, but not specifically reference it in the thesis?
3. Submitting to the Graduate School
3.1 How do I add my name to the short abstract for the dissertation?
3.2 How do I add typed signatures to the electronic copy?
4. Package information
4.1 What packages are not compatible with this class?
4.2 What does the hyperref package do?
4.3 What options should be used with the hyperref package?
1. General Use
1.1 How can I use single-spacing?
You can use single-spacing with the
\singlespace
command. There is also a
\doublespace
command if needed to restore the default spacing. Note that single-spacing is only allowed in a few contexts. See the Graduate School documentation for details.
2. Bibliography and References
2.1 My bibliography or list of references is missing.
Run the script genbib.bat
2.2 How do I refer to a web page in a bibliographic reference?
Use the Electronic type in your references.bib file.
2.3 How do I include a source in the bibliography, but not specifically reference it in the thesis?
Use the \nocite{} command. This works the same as the \cite{} command, but will only include the reference in the bibliography, not in the list of references.
3. Submitting to the Graduate School
3.1 How do I add my name to the short abstract for the dissertation?
Use the command
\raisebox{1.15in}[-1.15in]{\hspace{0.5in}Timothy Toolan,
\hspace{0.5in} Major Professor: Donald Tufts}\hspace{-4.55in}
at the top of your abstract.tex file.
3.2 How do I add typed signatures to the electronic copy?
Add the options electronic to the documentclass command, as in
\documentclass[electronic]{urithesis}
then make sure the \signature{} and \deansignature{} statements are correct in the file thesis.tex.
4. Package information
4.1 What packages are not compatible with this class?
The only known incompatible package is chapterbib by Donald Arseneau. The reason for this incompatibility is that the support for references at the end of each chapter comes from inserting code from this package into appropriate places in the urithesis class file.
4.2 What does the hyperref package do?
When using pdflatex to create a pdf version of the thesis, the hyperref package will do the following:
- create a pdf table of contents in the pdf document
- all citations and references in the thesis will be hyperlinks that will go to the referenced equation, figure, bibliographic citation, etc…
- the table of contents in the thesis will be hyperlinks to the corresponding section in the thesis
4.3 What options should be used with the hyperref package?
- pdfborder={0 0 0} – this option makes the boxes that would appear around hyperlinks in the pdf document white, therefore they will be invisible
- plainpages=false – this option says to use the page numbers as they appear on the pages, instead of the Arabic equivalent. This will make the roman page numbers in the preliminary material have different numbers from the chapters of the thesis.
- pdfpagelabels – this option puts the page number as it appears on the page in the pdf file, therefore the first page of the first chapter will be page 1.