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Thesis Formatting

Note: If you have already started with the old thesis format (pre October 2009),and want to stick with it, you should go to the backup files for this format. The formats differ only very slightly in appearance, but this one is a little more flexible and the coding in uconnthesis.cls is considerably cleaner. Theses using either format have been accepted by the graduate school.

Introduction
If you write a Ph.D. thesis or a Master's thesis, you have to follow the guidelines of the graduate school.
A thesis is invariably written in some form of TeX / LaTeX. A UConn Thesis class has been defined to comply with the formatting requirements of the graduate school and to generate the standard pages (Acknowledgments, Bibliography, List of Figures, etc.)
A thesis is quite a large LaTeX project, so it should not be your first attempt at typesetting. This implies that you should have typed a couple articles, quizzes, homeworks or exams in LaTeX before embarking on this.

Step 1
Download the following files:

Make sure that you have downloaded all the files listed above, even if you think that you will not use them. Put them all into one directory. Most browsers (e.g. Safari on the Macs in the department) will put the files on your desktop. In this case create a new folder and put them all in there. In any case, make this move before you start compiling, because LaTeX generates a multitide of files when compiling and your desktop will turn into a (more?) disorderly mess.
Also make sure that the extensions are preserved. Some browsers have a tendency to slap on ".txt" at the end.

Step 2
Open a flat text editor. The best choice on the Macs in the department is most probably TeXShop. We have a lot of local documentation for TeX / LaTeX. Just look around and see what suits you best. When you are typing LaTeX code, it is usually clearer to use a fixed width font so that you have a clear view of your indentations and matrices (should there be any). In TeXShop, a good choice is "Courier Bold 14pts". This font also has different characters for "|" and lowercase L. This is particularly important if you are trying to typeset tables where both "|" and lowercase L are used in the declaration.

Step 3
You will now have to open some of the files that you downloaded and edit them.

  • bibliography.tex is not your first concern. The references that are listed in there are there to give you an idea about the exact format in which a book or article should be entered into this file.
  • introchapter.tex, chapter1.tex and chapter2.tex are almost empty; they are merely there to show you how to use titles and sections.
  • The file definitions.tex you can completely ignore if you want to. It contains (re)definitions of some symbols and a fairly long list of basic mathematical symbols and functions. It can be handy to get a certain feel for how to use "def" in LaTeX and you can also add whatever you end up using often in your thesis.
  • Most of the static data (title of the thesis, your previous degrees, your advisors, acknowledgment etc.) are entered in front_matter.tex. The comments in this file will explain you what to put where.
  • If you want to explain some of the notation that you use in your thesis, you should do so in notationpage.tex. It is technically part of the front matter of the thesis, but it is a separate file because this is probably the only part of the front matter data that changes as the thesis evolves.
  • You will probably not change much to settings.tex. This file loads a lot of the extensions to LaTeX and defines the elements of the amsthm.sty package, as is explained in the comments in settings.tex.
  • As you can guess, thesis.tex is the file where it all comes together. The includeonly command will allow you to compile only parts of your thesis if you prefer to do so. Note that you should compile the thesis twice to make sure that all the labels are set correctly.
  • In principle, you should never change anything to uconnthesis.cls.

Step 4
Write your thesis. Good Luck.