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Instructions for the Use of a General LATEX Template
for LSU Theses and Dissertations
Michael W. Crochet
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Louisiana State University
July 28, 2006
1
Introduction
This document is intended to provide basic directions for using the included LATEX template
to create your thesis or dissertation. As of this writing, this template conforms to the
LSU Graduate School’s format and style requirements, as stated in the Guidelines for the
Preparation of Master’s Theses and Doctoral Dissertations, dated March 2006. Note that
these requirements are subject to change in future revisions of these guidelines, and the
current template may not be acceptable for the preparation of future electronic theses and
dissertations (ETDs). Furthermore, if your adviser, committee, or department has other
formatting/style requirements in addition to those found in the Graduate School guidelines,
this template may not necessarily meet your needs.
The provided template will generate a 12–point, full–justification, double–spaced document
with approximately 1–inch margins, consistent with the Traditional style described in the
Graduate School guidelines. By default, the resulting document contains the following,
properly formatted elements: Title Page, Acknowledgments, Table of Contents, List of Tables, List of Figures, Abstract, Body of ETD, References, Appendices, and Vita. Optional
ETD elements, such as the Copyright Page, Dedication, Preface, and a List of Nomenclature, are also available to you. To use the template, only a basic understanding of LATEX
is required. (Since you are considering writing your ETD in LATEX, this is a reasonable
assumption.)
The provided .tex and .cls files represent a rudimentary approach for producing a basic
ETD consistent with the LSU Graduate School requirements. Thus, if you have programming experience with LATEX macros and/or the underlying base TEX commands, feel free
to modify this template as you see fit.
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2
How To Use the Template
The following files should be included with the provided .zip file:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
the current document (instructions.pdf),
a LATEX class file (lsuetd.cls),
a template for an ETD containing two or more appendices (mainfile.tex),
a template for an ETD with only a single appendix (mainfileA.tex),
a template for an ETD with no included appendices (mainfileB.tex).
For Windows users, simply copy lsuetd.cls and each .tex file to the working directory
used by your LATEX editor (typically the My Documents folder). If you are using Linux,
copy these files to your home directory (e.g., /home/username). Except for the number
of appendices formatted, mainfile.tex, mainfileA.tex, and mainfileB.tex contain the
same commands and include identical features. Simply choose the template file based on
how many appendices (if any) you wish to include in your ETD.
2.1
How to Set Up Your ETD Files
When preparing a large document such as a thesis or dissertation, the most convenient
way to edit and assemble the manuscript is to divide the content into multiple .tex files.
Each chapter of the ETD is assigned its own .tex file (e.g., chapter1.tex, chapter2.tex,
. . ., chapterX.tex), as well as each appendix (e.g., appendixA.tex, appendixB.tex, . . .,
appendixY.tex). The References section also has its own file, named bibliography.tex.
All of these files must be in the same directory as the template file.
The template file (mainfile.tex, mainfileA.tex, or mainfileB.tex) serves as a root
file that accesses each individual chapter, appendix, or bibliography .tex file separately
and adds its contents to your ETD. This allows you to make changes to different parts
of your document more easily than sifting through the entire manuscript from start to
finish to make particular changes. This also saves a significant amount of space when
compiling the template, and avoids a lot of frustration when troubleshooting any LATEX
errors that may arise. This is the method used by the template to construct your
thesis/dissertation, and the one you must use for everything to work properly.
The names of the individual chapter/appendix/bibliography .tex files must also
follow the same scheme as described above.
The \input commands found in the template file act as a placeholder; for example, the
command \input{chapter1} takes all the contents of chapter1.tex and inserts them
into the template file word–for–word at the location of the \input command, just like a
cut–and–paste operation. Therefore, in the .tex files created for your chapters, appendices, and references, insert only the necessary text, equations, figures, formatting and
sectioning commands, environments, etc. Do NOT include preamble commands, and do
not include the \begin{document} or \end{document} commands (since these are found
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in the template file). Insert the title of your chapter or appendix in the template file itself,
but do not include the \chapter command within the individual chapter or appendix files.
You may use up to three (3) levels of subheadings within these .tex files, as necessary,
using the \section, \subsection, and \subsubsection commands, respectively. In your
bibliography.tex file, include only the necessary \bibitem commands and the references
themselves.
2.2
How to Add or Eliminate Chapters, Appendices, and Other
Elements
In the template files mainfile.tex, mainfileA.tex, and mainfileB.tex, it is assumed
that your ETD contains five (5) chapters. If your ETD contains more or less chapters, only
a few simple changes should be made to the template file used:
• Within the template file, immediately after the Abstract section, there is a section
containing several \input commands, as well as a sequence of \chapter, \doublespacing,
\pagebreak, and \singlespacing commands. After the last \singlespacing command in this section, insert the following commands to include Chapter X in your
ETD, where X= 6, 7, 8, . . .:
\chapter{Title of Chapter X}
\doublespacing
\input{chapterX}
\pagebreak
\singlespacing
and repeat for each additional chapter, as necessary. Each chapter to be included
in your ETD has these same five lines of input. Therefore, if you have less than
five chapters, simply “comment out” the five input lines corresponding to the unused
chapter in question by placing a % character at the far left of the input line. For
example, if you have only four chapters in your ETD, you must alter the commands
for Chapter 5 by placing % at the beginning of each line, as follows:
%\chapter{Title of Chapter 5}
%\doublespacing
%\input{chapter5}
%\pagebreak
%\singlespacing
Thus, all references to Chapter 5 have been eliminated.
• If you are using mainfile.tex as your template and want to include more than two
appendices, inserting the additional appendices is done in a nearly identical fashion
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as additional chapters. Near the end of the template file, there is a section containing
a sequence of \chapter, \vspace, \input, and \pagebreak commands, which is
located AFTER the \appendix command. To include Appendix Y, where Y = C, D,
E,. . ., add the following four lines after the last \pagebreak command in this section:
\chapter{Title of Appendix Y}
\vspace{0.5em}
\input{appendixY}
\pagebreak
and repeat for each additional appendix, as necessary.
• Within the template file, there are several blocks of “commented out” lines that generate optional thesis/dissertation elements, such as the Copyright Page, Dedication,
Preface, and List of Nomenclature. To include any of these elements in your ETD,
locate the block corresponding to the desired feature, and simply remove the % characters at the beginning of each of the six lines in the block, and insert the text for
these sections directly into the template file itself.
3
General Comments and Suggestions
Most of the formatting technicalities, such as those for the Table of Contents, List of Tables, and List of Figures, are handled automatically by the template. The only changes
to the commands in the template file that you need to make are those concerning the inclusion and/or removal of chapters, appendices, and optional ETD elements, as described
previously. Everything else in the template file is fairly self–explanatory, and I have included some additional comments to remind you where you need to add commands for
any necessary additional chapters or appendices. You must insert the text for the Title
Page, Acknowledgments, Abstract, and Vita directly into the template file, as well as the
titles of chapters and appendices; I have included sample text for each of these sections in
the template as examples. If you need to use other LATEX packages in addition to those
already provided in the template, insert them inside the \usepackage command, separated
by commas. For those of you who are interested in creating an improved LATEX template,
I have also added a few comments to describe the purpose of certain groups of commands.
Finally, there are several issues that I want to bring to your attention:
1. Even after using this template, check your final manuscript to ensure that it complies
with all of the requirements set forth in the Graduate School guidelines. Note that
this template WILL NOT automatically remove widows and orphans from
your text. You will have to do this manually.
2. If you include itemized lists such as this one in the body of your ETD, do not use
the standard itemize or enumerate environments, since they introduce extra white
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space in the body of the text that is not acceptable to the Graduate School. Instead,
use the compactitem and compactenum environments, respectively, to ensure that
the double–spacing is consistent within the list.
3. Although three levels of subheadings within a chapter are supported by this template,
only the top two are shown in the Table of Contents. This is because the numbering
of subsubsections within a chapter (for example, 2.1.3.1) becomes too cumbersome,
and this level of detail is not necessary to include in the Table of Contents.
4. When compiling the template file to generate your thesis/dissertation, be sure to
compile at least twice before converting the .dvi file to .ps or .pdf form. When
changes are made to the content that are reflected in the Table of Contents, List of
Figures, etc., LATEX will not generate the correct page numbering until after the second
time the template file is compiled. Also, make sure that your manuscript is written
on standard 8.5” × 11” letter paper when converting the .dvi file. For example, this
is done in Linux using the following command for conversion to PostScript:
dvips mainfile.dvi -o mythesis.ps -t letter
5. One of the best features of LATEX is its automatic cross–referencing function for bibliographic references (using the \cite command), and for equations and tables/figures
(using the \ref command). I strongly advise you to use this feature, particularly in
documents where the order of equations and figures may change drastically before
your ETD is finalized.
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