Theses/Dissertations using LaTeX

LaTeX is hands down the best tool to use when writing your thesis or dissertation. Instead of arguing the point, let me make a simple statement. Users of LaTeX know how to use MS Word, but use LaTeX instead. Users or MS Word don't know how to use LaTeX. It's that simple. If your adviser won't let you use LaTeX, my condolences. Your document will lack the polish of a professional typesetting system (Do you think journals typeset using MS Word?), and you will be tortured by cross reference and citation issues and inconsistencies. You likely use Word because that's all you've ever known. Hopefully you'll stopped crawling (using MS Word) and now walk upright (use LaTeX). If you don't, c'est la vie. Your loss. If you want to know a little about why to use LaTeX, consult some of the references below.
Regardless of whether you use LaTeX, it's important that you know how to properly archive your data. If you don't store your data in a readable format, you might as well delete it after you defend. You've made it useless. If you want to save is for potential future use, read my document on archiving your data. It's not a great document, but it's the best I've found.

Plotting (even if your not using LaTeX)

Making quality looking plots can be a challenge. Most graphics don't have fonts and/or font sizes that match the text, or they are all fuzzy, etc. One of the best package for generating publication quality graphs is gnuplot. It allows you to specify the size of the resulting graphic (so you don't have to "squeeze it") in your final document, the font, the font size, tic marks, etc. You can plot functions, as well as data, plus curve fit to it while plotting. It can be a little bit challenging at first, so a good place to start is with a tutorial such at the one at Harvey Mudd College and the one at Duke. Yes, you may think you can do this as well in Excel, but the reality is the cartoony plots in Excel look good in brochures and business presentations, not engineering and science technical papers.

WSU LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation style file

Use this, and you will have a consistent document that meets WSU guidelines. Don't add your own formatting. Use only structure commands. LaTeX Template for WSU Thesis (Created by Sean Mortara with my assistance).

Please send corrections or errors in this template to me. Some effort has been made to meet the WSU School of Graduate Studies Guidelines, and this template may actually be good enough, however no warranted is expressed or implied. The template is based on past theses. Please feed back any corrections to me.

Some Basic Introductions to LaTeX

These are, or will be, out of date, but are a good start in learning LaTeX. Pick and choose as you need. Get the more updated documents from CTAN (look for the dtx or tex file in the appropriate package) to get the latest documents. Send me the new file and I'll post it.

AMS LaTeX (How to do Math, AMS User Guide)
Gentle Introduction to TeX
Graphics Package
Making Double Lines in Tables
A Short Intro to LaTeX
For Mac Users
Windows users links

Windows Users

My current recommendations are to use:
  1. JabRef (Editing Bibliography database)
  2. Either MikTeX or TeXLive (I don't have enough to make a recommendation)
  3. TeXnicCenter (Includes built-in spell checker. See Options:Spelling. Select Check Spelling while typing)
    Forward and inverse search work automatically. Double click in Yap to go to that point in your editor. F5 in TeXnicCenter to go to that point in your dvi file. Windows users should use LaTeX->DVI until this works for PDFs. You can use LaTeX->PDF to directly make a PDF document (and should, because any other way makes a messy document). \usepackage{times} is a good idea.
  4. Ghostscript (you may want to use it to convert ps files to eps files)
  5. Adobe Acrobat Reader
Go to TeX on Windows for links.

Do not include file extensions when including files. LaTeX can chose the best you have, or switch from eps to pdf etc.

Use vector graphics at every instance possible (anything that is not a photograph). At the very least, save a version in vector form for your adviser. See archiving your data.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) Version

LyX is something like a GUI version that is easier for a novice to work on, but can be somewhat limiting for someone comfortable with more power available only when editing the raw LaTeX. Dr. Klingbeil is a strong fan of it, but I find directly typing formulas and macros using a dedicated LaTeX editor (Emacs is my favorite) to be much faster. If LaTeX is intimidating to you, use LyX. It still provides most of the benefits over Word (better cross referencing, cleaner/professional looking output). However, I'm not familiar with using my style file with it (or if it's even possible). However, Jeremy Daily did his dissertation in LyX just fine.

Checking Spelling

There is no excuse for not checking spelling in your latex document. Note that you cannot blindly believe whatever the spell checker says. Words such as "there" and "their" can be spelled correctly but be the wrong choice.
  1. Mac users: Use CocoAspell
  2. Windows users: Use aspell for Windows
  3. Linux users: install aspell and use it. It should be available as a package for your distribution.

Checking Grammar

LanguageTool (follow instructions to install and run) can be used on any platform with Java 5.0 or later installed. Be aware that it provides suggestions. Just like spelling, it is helpful in finding potential errors, not actual errors, and will often provide bad suggestions, just like MSWord.

Making Presentations (in LaTeX)

Here are a number of ways to make presentations out of your thesis easily. All the useful parts of PowerPoint without the garbage. In most cases you make PDF files from your latex document. Buttons, and incremental displays, and... can be set up.

Here is a Wright State University Beamer package I generated from another source. You can make pretty slick looking PDF presentations from it.