Thesis template

Or: yet another LaTeX thesis template.

This is what I'm using as the basis of my PhD thesis (don't ask how it's going). I don't expect to be reusing the template very often, but will use some of the tricks again and, who knows, it might be useful for you!

This template should contain most of the things that you need to get started:

A close-to-default theme that's a good starting point to build from;
A document structure, comprised of, in order:
- Title page;
- Abstract;
- Additional section for preface-like stuff (dedications, acknowledgements, executive summaries, and the like);
- A table of contents;
- A couple of proper sections of mostly “lorem ipsum”;
- Appendices;
- Acronym definitions; and
- References built from a BibTeX file.
A Makefile that uses the wonderful latexrun script;
A writing checker, checkwriting which can be run with make check to find weasel words, duplicates, and other common blunders in your writing; and
A directory structure, for organising the big mess that's coming.

Getting started

Using the template isn't too hard, just clone this repository to your computer and build the PDF file:

$ git clone git@github.com:alexpearce/thesistemplate.git Thesis
$ cd Thesis
$ make

The build script, latexrun, requires Python 3, whereas the default on most computers is Python 2. To install Python 3 on OS X when you already have Homebrew installed (which you should, it's great!), just do

$ brew install python3

When you're ready to get started, you'll probably want to go through the files in the chapters/ folder to remove the template text.

Writing

The template includes several packages designed to make writing your thesis easier, and to make the final product prettier with minimal effort. To try and summarise what's included:

booktabs for pretty tables (use vertical rules sparingly);
siunitx for easy units;
acronym for consisting acronyms (you don't need to remember if you've already defined that acronym); and
cleveref so you stop writing in Section~\ref{sec:foo} and just do in \cref{sec:foo}.

There are a few sentences at the beginning of the two included sections, which are otherwise just dummy text, to show you how you use some of the neat things these packages can do.

Every once in a while you might want to run the writing checker:

$ make check

This runs checkwriting, which can be helpful in finding common mistakes in the text. It can be a little overzealous, though, so take its advice with a little scepticism.

Contributing

If you think there's something missing from this template or if something isn't clear, open an issue and we'll get it fixed.