Ucbthesis Instructions
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The UCB Thesis Class
Paul Vojta
Mathematics Department
vojta@math.berkeley.edu
Version 3.391
October 13, 2011
Abstract
This is a class file for theses and dissertations at the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley. It is based on the memoir class,
and therefore supports all of the functionality of that class.
It should generate a document that meets all of the ba-
sic formatting requirements given in the Dissertation Filing
Guide or the Thesis Filing Guide (as appropriate) produced
by the UC Berkeley Graduate Division and available on the
web at http://grad.berkeley.edu/policies/. This ver-
sion of the class is based on the April 2012 and February
2012 versions of the dissertation and thesis documents, re-
spectively.
1 Introduction
The ucbthesis class is a modified version of the standard L
A
T
E
Xmemoir
class that is accepted for use with University of California, Berkeley,
Ph.D. dissertations and Master’s theses. The available commands are
almost identical to those of the memoir class, so the recommended
starting point for documentation is general documentation for L
A
T
E
X.
Note: The documentation for the memoir class is long (currently
583 pages), and the vast majority of it is completely irrelevant to the
process of writing a thesis using ucbthesis.Do not print out the
documentation for the memoir class! Doing so would be a huge
waste of paper and money. Look to general L
A
T
E
X documentation
instead.
The key features of the class are:
1. The primary modification to the memoir class is the setting of the
margins and (for Master’s theses prior to 2011) use of pseudo-
double-spacing, since Berkeley’s rules for Master’s theses were
still designed for typewriters. The latter is achieved by increasing
the \baselinestretch parameter to 1.37. The \baselinestretch
is returned to a single-spaced value of 1.00 for elements like ta-
bles, captions, and footnotes and for all displayed text (quote,
quotation, and verse environments).
2. Margins are 1 inch on all sides.
3. Uses 12 point by default; you can use the 10pt or 11pt options
for those sizes (but note that only 12pt should be used for the
final submitted copy).
4. Page numbers are in the top right corner for all pages.
5. Complete, correct front matter for Berkeley dissertations can be
generated. If you are not a Berkeley student, you should make
sure that the front matter is OK with your school.
The ucbthesis class is derived from the ucthesis class—the name
has been changed to reflect the fact that it is (probably) only valid for
Berkeley theses. The ucbthesis class should be used for new theses
(at Berkeley); ucthesis may still be used for older theses submitted
prior to the change to electronic submission in Fall 2009, and will still
be maintained for this purpose.
A (partial) list of thesis classes at other University of California
campuses is available on the web at http://math.berkeley.edu/
~vojta/ucthesis.html.
2 Using the ucbthesis Class
2.1 Sample File
There is a sample dissertation (by the fictitious, but very irritating,
Perry H Disdainful) in the file ucbtest.tex. It also uses ucbtest.bib
as its bibliography database (though the contents of the database are
not important). Mostly this is useful as an example of how to produce
the front matter. If you don’t understand L
A
T
E
X at all, this file might
help you get started, but, since you’re going to be writing a 100+ page
document, you should look into more comprehensive information on
L
A
T
E
X. A list of T
E
X and L
A
T
E
X documentation is maintained at the
web page http://www.tug.org/interest.html#doc.
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2.2 Selecting the ucbthesis Class
To use the ucbthesis class, make sure that the ucbthesis.cls file is
on your TEXINPUTS search path and use the following command at
the start of your input file:
\ documen t class { ucbth esis }
2.3 Class Options
The options for the ucbthesis class are given in Table 1. They should
be selected on the \documentclass line, e.g.:
\ d oc um en tc lass [10 pt , dr aft ]{ uc bthesi s }
All options supported by the memoir class are also supported (al-
though some of them would not be very useful for a thesis).
2.4 Page Headers
If you want to use page headers or footers other than the default ones,
you should try using headerfooter.sty or fancyheadings.sty. The
myheadings pagestyle doesn’t work well and there is no workaround.
The headerfooter and fancyheadings styles are widely distributed,
well documented, and easy to use.
2.5 Overall Document Structure
The overall structure of a .tex file for a thesis is the same as most
other L
A
T
E
X files: a \documentclass line, followed by declarations
(e.g., \usepackage lines and macro definitions), and then one (or,
rarely, more) instances of a document environment.
Your best guide for what goes inside the document environment is
to follow the practice in the sample file ucbtest.tex. In a nutshell,
though, this consists of declarations and environments for the front
matter, followed by the main content of the thesis, and then the bib-
liography and any appendices. The structure of the part of the file
corresponding to the front matter is described in the next section.
3 Front Matter
In addition to setting the page layout and line spacing, the other
key service provided by the ucbthesis class is that it generates cor-
rect front matter (title page, approval page, abstract, etc.) with a
3
Option Description
phd Selects formatting for doctoral dissertation
(default)
masters Selects formatting for Master’s thesis sub-
mitted in 2012 or later: changes the word
“dissertation” on the title page to “thesis.”
oldmasters Selects formatting for Master’s thesis sub-
mitted in 2011 or earlier: selects double
spacing and changes the word “disserta-
tion” on the title page to “thesis.”
final Uses pseudo-double-spacing for Master’s
theses submitted in 2011 or earlier (default)
draft Uses single-spacing throughout the docu-
ment
12pt Sets the default font size to 12 points (de-
fault)
11pt Sets the default font size to 11 points. Note:
This option should be used only for draft
copies (e.g., to save paper). The final sub-
mitted copy must use 12-point fonts or
larger
10pt Sets the default font size to 10 points. Note:
This option should be used only for draft
copies (e.g., to save paper). The final sub-
mitted copy must use 12-point fonts or
larger
Table 1: Document class options
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fairly simple set of commands. This facility could be a little eas-
ier, but compared to an earlier state of affairs, it’s pretty slick. The
format of the front matter is specified quite explicitly in the docu-
ments “Dissertation Filing Guide” and “Thesis Filing Guide” produced
by the UC Berkeley Graduate Division and available on the web at
http://grad.berkeley.edu/policies/. The current version of the
class is based on the April 2012 and February 2012 versions of the
dissertation and thesis documents, respectively.
A complete example of the use of the front matter commands can be
found in the sample dissertation distributed with the class. Generally,
the part of the L
A
T
E
X file that generates the front matter consists of
the following portions:
•Declarations of text strings
•Macros to generate the title, approval, and copyright pages
•abstract environment
•frontmatter environment
These portions are described in the following subsections.
3.1 Declarations of Text Strings
To use the front matter macros and environments, you must first de-
clare the text strings listed in Table 2. This is done by invoking the
relevant macro with the string as its argument; for example, \title{
Snakes in Ireland}.
3.2 Title, Approval, and Copyright Pages
The title, approval, and copyright pages have extremely rigid formats
that allow them to be generated automatically once the above decla-
rations have been made. To generate them, invoke the macros
\ mak etitle
\approvalpage
\ copyri g htpage
You should probably invoke them in that order, because that’s the
order required by the guidelines. The approval page should not be part
of the submitted thesis, but the \approvalpage macro may be used to
generate the required approval page to be printed and submitted with
the thesis.
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Macro Description
\title Dissertation title
\author Your name as registered with UC (usually
with full middle name)
\degreeyear Year your dissertation will be granted
\degreesemester Semester (or term) your degree will be
granted
\degree The title of your degree (e.g. Doctor of Phi-
losophy)
\chair Title and name of your committee chair
(e.g. “Professor Michael A. Harrison”)
\cochair Title and name of your committee co-chair
(use with \chair, if you have a co-chair).
\othermembers The names of the other members of
your committee separated by linebreaks
(e.g. Professor Susan L. Graham\\
Professor Jim Pitman)
\numberofmembers The number of members on your committee.
This defaults to 3 (and thus is optional) and
can be any value between 3 and 6. It affects
the number of lines on the approval page
and the space between them.
\field The official title of your field. This is usu-
ally your department’s name, but at Berke-
ley, most Engineering degrees have a more
complex name. Be sure to check the guide-
lines for any special twists on the name of
your field.
\campus The name of your UC campus. This should
be capitalized (e.g. Berkeley). This is op-
tional, and defaults to Berkeley.
Table 2: Declarations for Front Matter
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3.3 Abstract Environment
Because you have to provide the text of the abstract, only the title can
be generated automatically. So, there is an abstract environment. It
generates the title and numbers the abstract in arabic numerals and
makes sure that it starts on new page.
The advisor’s signature no longer is required (or allowed) for the
abstract.
3.4 Other Front Matter
The remaining front matter (dedication, table of contents, lists of fig-
ures and tables, acknowledgements) must be put inside the frontmatter
environment, which ensures that page numbering is handled prop-
erly. Within this frontmatter environment, you put the environ-
ments and commands for the rest of the front matter. There are en-
vironments for dedication and acknowledgements, and the standard
L
A
T
E
X commands for producing \tableofcontents,\listoffigures,
and \listoftables should also go inside the frontmatter environ-
ment.
The standard L
A
T
E
X commands are well documented in the L
A
T
E
X
manual. You may have to hand edit the .lof (list of figures) and .lot
(list of tables) files to make verbose captions more suitable for this
front matter. Once you do this, remember to use the \nofiles macro
to keep them from getting overwritten.
The ucbthesis class provides acknowledgements and dedication
environments, which produce corresponding sections in the front mat-
ter and make them start on a new page. The acknowledgements envi-
ronment also puts the word “Acknowledgements” in large, bold, cen-
tered text at the top of the page. For formatting the dedication page,
you’re on your own. After all, the dedication is a kind of poetry and
there’s no predicting the right way to format poetry.
4 Obsolete Environments and Commands
Previous (unreleased) versions of the ucbthesis (and ucthesis) classes
defined environments for producing small tables with single spacing.
These environments are no longer necessary, since standard L
A
T
E
X now
handles the situation properly. Replace the \begin{...} commands
as indicated in Table 3, and change the corresponding \end commands
accordingly.
The ucthesis class also provided commands \smallssp and
\scriptsizessp; these should now be changed to \small\SingleSpacing
and \scriptsize\SingleSpacing, respectively.
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Environment Use Instead
smalltabular \small\begin{tabular}
smalltabular* \small\begin{tabular*}
scriptsizetabular \scriptsize\begin{tabular}
scriptsizetabular* \scriptsize\begin{tabular*}
Table 3: Obsolete environments
5 Installing the ucbthesis Class
To install the ucbthesis class, you need to install the file ucbthe-
sis.cls in your L
A
T
E
X class file repository. This generally should go
in a directory TEXMF/tex/latex/ucbthesis (where TEXMF is the base
of the texmf tree). Or, it can also be placed in the directory that you
use when running L
A
T
E
X on your thesis.
You should also install the documentation files
README
ucbthesis.tex
ucbthesis.pdf
ucbtest.tex
ucbtest.bib
in a similar directory under the documentation directory, generally
TEXMF/doc/latex/ucbthesis.
6 Modification History
Version 3.3 was the initial release of ucbthesis (it was forked from
ucthesis, hence the unusual version number). The package ucthesis
was created for non-electronic submissions, and should no longer be
used, except for printing out older theses. Version 3.3 was distributed
only within Berkeley.
Version 3.4 switched to using the memoir class, eliminated the
smalltabular,smalltabular*,scriptsizetabular, and scriptsizetabular*
environments and the \smallssp and \scriptsizessp commands,
and added support for co-chairs on the dissertation/thesis committee.
It was also modified for release on ctan.
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