Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

Options for the urithesis Class

The options in this chapter affect the overall appearance of the thesis, as well as indicating things like whether it is a masters thesis or a doctoral dissertation. If it is not clear what some of the terms mean, (like standard or manuscript format), refer to the Graduate School Thesis Overview.

Using Options With the urithesis Class

All options are added to the \documentclass{urithesis} line, which should be the first line in the file thesis.tex. They are enclosed in square brackets right after the word \documentclass, and multiple options should be separated by commas. An example of a dissertation with four committee members in a ten point font, would be specified as:

  \documentclass[phd,4committee,10pt]{urithesis}

Complete list of Options for urithesis Class

General options

The options in this section affect the overall appearance of the thesis, but all of them comply with the Graduate School guidelines for theses and dissertations.

  • phd, masters: this specifies whether this is a PhD. dissertation or a masters thesis. The default is masters.
  • 10pt, 11pt, 12pt: this determines the font size used throughout the document. The default is 12pt.
  • oneref: this will create a single list of references for the whole thesis, instead of a separate list of references at the end of each chapter. When this option is selected, the list of references will appear after the last chapter and before the first appendix. The default is to have a separate list of references for each chapter.
  • manuscript: this specifies that your thesis is in manuscript format. The only difference between this and standard format, is that each chapter will be called a manuscript. For instance, “Chapter 1” will now be “Manuscript 1”.
  • 3committee, 4committee, 5committee: this is the number of people on your core committee, which determines how many signature lines are needed on the signature page. Each committee consists of a minimum of three core members, plus the Dean of the Graduate School. The committee chairman does NOT sign the approval page. (If you are not sure how many core committee members you have, please consult with your major professor.) The default is 3committee.
  • sequential, nonsequential: this specifies whether you want numbering of figures, equations, and tables reset to 1 at the beginning of each chapter (nonsequential), or if you want the numbers to be sequential throughout the whole document. The default is sequential.
  • topnum, bottomnum: this specifies whether you prefer your page numbers on the top right or bottom center of the page. The default is bottomnum.
  • aparefs: this will cite references using the APA style, which is the last name of the author and year of publication, such as (Toolan, 2006), instead of the IEEE style, which is a number, such as [1].
  • electronic,hardcopy: the electronic version only differs from the hardcopy version on the Approval Page. The hardcopy version will have lines for the committee members to sign. Default is hardcopy.

Options for use while writing the thesis

The options in this section are intended to ease writing the thesis. All of the options in this section will prevent the thesis from conforming to the Graduate School guidelines, so none of these should be used when generating the final copy.

  • draft: when this option is specified, any overfull boxes are shown by a black box indicating the area that is too large. This is useful for finding anything that has gone outside the acceptable margins, like equations that are too long, or figures and tables that are too big. Only the filename of included figures are actually displayed.
  • draftbox: this is the same as the draft option, except figures are actually displayed.
  • simpleref: when specified, there will be a single list of references and no bibliography.
  • noprelim: when specified, all of the preliminary pages, (the pages before the start of chapter 1), are not generated. This can be used with the nobib option and the LaTeX command \includeonly{}, to produce a document containing only the chapter you are currently working on.
  • nobib: when specified, there will be no bibliography or list of references.