umass dissertation latex

Jump to navigation

• Contact/Visit
• RCF Support

UMass Thesis Style

Formatting a umass thesis in latex:.

Introduction

''The Typing Guidelines''

The Example Dissertation - Step by Step

Pre-Text: title.tex

The Body: 1-chapter.tex, 2-chapter.tex, bibliography.tex

thebibliography

• Download umthesis.sty Style File
• Download Chapter One
• Download Chapter Two
• Download the Bibliography
• Download Full Example Thesis

''Typing Guidelines'' and LaTeX:

In this guide, we explain how to transcribe a mathematical thesis into a printed format using LaTeX, and a so-called style file in which we incorporated much of what the Grad School requires in terms of preliminary pages, numbering and general formatting. DISCLAIMER: We have tried to design the output according to the Grad School's ''Typing Guidelines'', and have consulted with them on several occasions, but we cannot guarantee that they won't have any objections to the form of your thesis.

We will show how to use this style file, called umthesis.sty to typeset your dissertation by going step-by-step through a simple example. Once the essentials are explained, we will present an example that discusses more advanced features of our style file, and that demonstrates what we consider to be a good way of organizing a large document into little pieces so as to enable easy editing, proofreading, and even major revisions. We suggest that you keep those files as a template for your own thesis.

We had to make a number of choices which may not be exactly what you had in mind for your dissertation. Some of it could have, no doubt, be done differently. Our guiding principle was to make the package be as complete and easy to use as possible, while keeping very close to standard LaTeX. We wanted to reduce the task of typesetting your dissertation as much as possible to a ''mere'' typing task.

Let us briefly recall what elements you need according to the ''Typing Guidelines for Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations'' [ 1 ] which you have received from the Grad School. It requires

• a title page
• a copyright page
• a signature page

modeled after the samples starting on page 11 of the Guidelines [ 1 ]. Furthermore, you may want

• a dedication
• acknowledgments
• an abstract (required for doctoral dissertations)

The body of the dissertation should be typeset one-sided and double-spaced, with chapter headings all capitalized (a point of disagreement between us and the Grad School). Finally, your dissertation title should not contain any math symbols.

All of this can be done in standard TeX or LaTeX, and has been incorporated into the umthesis.sty style file, which is a modification of LaTeX' standard report style. It also contains a re-definition of the table of contents, the figure environment, and the lists of figures/tables, since the LaTeX standards don't conform to the Grad School's requirements. If you use figures or tables in your thesis, you must include a List of Figures/Tables which can be done quite easily if you use umthesis.sty .

To see how exactly all of this is done, we have prepared a brief example dissertation, and will lead you step-by-step through the crucial parts.

Using the File umthesis.sty :

The example dissertation can be downloaded via the links at the end of this guide. Opening the zip file will create a directory called umthesis-example that contains the following files:

• Your personal copy of the umthesis.sty style file
• Instructions.tex (latest version of this document)
• commands.tex
• 1-chapter.tex
• 2-chapter.tex and
• bibliography.tex

Alternatively, you can also get the example dissertation by logging in to a lab computer and typing the command ' get-umthesis-example ' in a terminal window. The will create a new folder ' umthesis-example ' in your home directory, containing the same files listed above.

The file umthesis.sty uses TeX commands to redefine some LaTeX macros. We have tried to provide some comments for the curious experimenter. However, in this guide, we will only be concerned with how to use this file, and not with how it works.

As our cunning naming scheme suggests, the 'chapter' files and bibliography.tex contain someone's actual (LaTeX) thesis; commands.tex defines new commands, personal abbreviations and additional fonts; title.tex appears to be concerned with preliminary pages, using a host of commands from umthesis.sty (moreover introducing us to Arthur, the author); and--finally--a file termed thesis.tex which appears to contain mostly gibberish.

Since importance and understandability are known to be inversely proportional to each other, our detailed examination will proceed in reverse order.

If you are preparing a large document such as a dissertation, it is clearly advisable to split it up into smaller pieces, say chapters. Using the LaTeX commands \include and \includeonly allows you to process one portion of the document at a time, taking into account the numbering in, and cross-referencing to other portions of your document. This is nicely described in chapter 8 of ''LaTeX for Everyone'' [ 2 ].

In this spirit, we have put the title page, the chapters and the bibliography into separate files, and have one master file, thesis.tex , that controls what is being processed. Here is what is looks like:

%%% This is the master file for your thesis, called ’thesis.tex’. % It loads essential setups, the umthesis.sty style % file, private definitions etc. but does not contain any % specific thesis text. % It just loads/includes the title pages, the chapters, the % bibliography and whatever else you may need. %%% %%%This following line was for use with latex, version 2.09 %%%\documentstyle[amstex,12pt,umthesis]{report} \documentclass[12pt]{report} %\usepackage{amstex} % v1.2 \usepackage{amsmath} % v2 \usepackage{amsfonts} % v2 \usepackage{umthesis} %%% Some ‘‘standard’’ newcommands. (some of those need AMS-Latex) % Specifies, among other things, what constitutes a Theorem, % a Corollary, a Lemma, a Proof etc. \input{commands.tex} % %%% %%% The dissertation consists of the following files, which % are \include’d in their proper places further down: \includeonly{title,1-chapter,2-chapter,bibliography} % %%% %%% This is the end of the end of the preamble. % May the document begin ..... \begin{document} % %%% %%% Page styles [default is ’preliminary’] % %\pagestyle{thesis} % Page # upper right hand corner. %\pagestyle{draft} % Page # as ’thesis’ with ‘DRAFT’ written on top. %\pagestyle{preliminary} % Page # at bottom middle %\pagestyle{draftpreliminary} % % Page # at bottom with ‘DRAFT’. %%% %%% List of Figures/Tables [default is both true] \figurespagetrue % We DO want a list of figures. \tablespagefalse % We do NOT want a list of tables. %%% %%% Preliminary pages (title, signature, copyright...) in file title.tex \include{title} % Makes everything before Chapter one. %%% %%% And now include the text of the chapters, bibliography etc. % The \includeonly command in the preamble determines what actually % gets included; e.g. appendix is ignored here (it doesn’t exist % anyway). \include{1-chapter} \include{2-chapter} \appendix \include{appendix} \include{bibliography} % %%% %%%% %% These are some gadgets that may make things more readable and dense! %% Can be skipped on first reading; make sure to play with this. %% %% % \beginsinglespace % Some single spaced text ...... % \endsinglespace % % In particular, % \beginsinglespace % \include{1-chapter} % \include{2-chapter} % \appendix % Use \soloappendix if it has one chapter only. % \include{appendix} % \include{bibliography} % \endsinglespace %%%% %%% That’s all ! \end{document} % %-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So what do we have:

• \documentclass[12pt]{report} starts your thesis as a LaTeX file using 12pt fonts (Fonts smaller that 12pt may lead to minuscule subscripts in math mode... something the Grad School likes to return!)
• \usepackage{amsmath} loads the 'amstex' option for LaTeX, and
• \usepackage{umthesis} loads the umthesis.sty option as a substyle of 'report'.

Since the specific designs of proofs, propositions, lemmata and corollaries and the conventions to number them are a highly personal matter, I have not included their definitions in umthesis.sty , but transparently defined some standard versions in commands.tex : theorem, assertion, proposition, lemma, definition, claim, corollary, remark, condition, example and proof. In addition, I have included some fairly simple examples that may be helpful in making even major changes. If you want to define some ''theorem-like'' environment, you need to give it a name not contained in the above list. Of course, you can remove the corresponding entries in commands.tex or give them a different name (e.g. your own 'proposition' environment could be called prp ).

• \pagestyle gives you a way to have LaTeXproduce dated draft copies of your thesis and change the location of page numbers; just try it!
• \figurespagetrue and \tablespagefalse tell LaTeXexplicitly that we want a List of Figures, but that a List of Tables should be omitted. The umthesis.sty default is to make both.
• \include{title} includes 'title.tex' which makes all the preliminary pages, detailed in the next section.
• \include{1-chapter} ... The reason for this strange naming scheme is ''unique file completion'': the first letter of the file name uniquely identifies the file, so that the ESC key in UNIX and the TAB key in Emacs will complete the full name after just typing the first letter
• Finally note that there is no file appendix.tex as part of our example, so it was omitted from the \includeonly list on purpose.

You see, if you discard all the comments, it's just two hands full of commands, most of them pure LaTeX. These let you control whether you want to process your entire thesis, or only a single chapter. So far, we have not seen much of umthesis.sty , except that it is being loaded.

The area where the umthesis.sty style file exerts most of its power--and which is, hence, full with of cryptic commands--is the file responsible for the required preliminary pages: title.tex .

First, let's take a look at title.tex :

As you can see, it begins with a long list of definitions that give LaTeX all the information it needs to produce the first three preliminary pages: the title page, the copyright page and the signature page. The command to actually do this is \beforepreface which makes sure these pages have the right format, do not have page numbers, are not listed in the table of contents, but are counted silently, etc.

If you want to dedicate your thesis to someone, you may use \dedicationsection{Dedication} . If you do not want the title ''Dedication'', replace it by a tilde (~). You can change font types, sizes, styles in the dedication text as you please.

The next two pages, Acknowledgments and Abstract, should get page numbers and be listed in the table of contents. \prefacesection{Title} provides exactly that, with ''Title'' as the headline of that page.

The ''Abstract'' page shows a way to get something fairly close to what the Grad School asks for in their sample.

Finally, \afterpreface takes care of the table of contents, and the lists of figures/tables (if \figurespagefalse or \tablespagefalse were not defined in thesis.tex ).

Recall that in order to get cross-references and page numbers in the table of contents right, you may have to run LaTeX twice (even three times in unfortunate circumstances).

The main part of the thesis is then fairly straightforward LaTeX. Therefore this part of the guide will highlight some potential pitfalls:

• Chapter headings need to be all in capital letters. You have to do that yourself.
• If you use math mode in figure captions, and chapter or section headings, you should use $ ... $ as opposed to \( ... \). . The latter is fragile : you get very stange error messages, and the corresponding entry in the Table of Contents, say, will be gobbled up.
• If you use commands that you have defined using \newcommand in headings or captions, you should put a \protect right before it (since such are fragile by default).

[T.O.C. TITLE]\{EXPLICIT CHAPTER TITLE\} ...

Note that the Grad School explicitly requires these two to be the same , but it may be necessary to add some extra space to the TOC entry (using the TeXcommand \phantom{...} ) for perfection.

• LaTeX provides a built-in numbering and referencing system that is superior to any other TeX dialect in that is does a lot automatically in a fairly intelligent way. I very strongly suggest that you do use LaTeX' referencing facilities in their unmodified form, i.e. use \label , \ref , and \pageref , \cite , and bibitem . The time learning about those is well-spent.

For completeness, but with hesitation did I decide to provide some information about the inner workings of LaTeX' referencing system, and how to make it go your way. This hesitation finds its expression in the tiny font size.

LaTeX automatically associates counters to environments--even user-defined ones--and deduces from the structure of the number when to increase it, and when to reset it to zero. To give an example using equations: The counter associated to the \begin{equation} — \end{equation} environment is called \theequation . If I define \def\theequation{arabic{chapter}.arabic{equation}} which means I want (6.4) for the above equation, then this tells LaTeX to increase the counter whenever another equation needs to be labeled, and to reset the counter to zero at the beginning of a new chapter. In effect, I told LaTeX that I want to number by chapter. Conversely, requesting (4) would tell LaTeX immediately that you want to label equations consecutively throughout the document. See Lamport C.7.3 for a more concise outline. Of course, you can take things into your own hands, by defining \def\theequation{arabic{equation}} , which makes labels like (4) and re-set the counter at the beginning of every chapter ''by hand'': \setcounter{equation}{0} . Again, I do recommend that you relegate such issues to the final stages of your dissertation typing project.

Note that LaTeX2e provides a command called \numberwithin{equation}{chapter} to handle these questions.

• If your appendix contains only one chapter, it should not be labeled APPENDIX A (since there is no APPENDIX B). Our umthesis.sty provides a command \soloappendix to replace the standard \appendix in this case.

Note that while you're working on your thesis, you may prefer single spacing to double spacing. In general, spacing of a document is controlled by

\renewcommand{baselinestretch}{x} ,

where x =1 in single-spacing and (around) x =1.7 is double-spaced.

The umthesis.sty style file let's you switch easily between single and double spacing mode within one and the same document:

\beginsinglespace – \endsinglespace and \begindoublespace – \enddoublespace .

For information on viewing, printing, including pictures please be referred to the ''LaTeXLocal-Guide'' [ 6 ].

The thebibliography environment has been redefined to match the Grad School's format requirements, while maintaining all functionality of \cite described in the LaTeX books.

Source Files From the Example Thesis:

Department of Mathematics and Statistics

• Make a Gift

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Theses and Dissertations

SCUA holds a nearly complete run of undergraduate honors theses , arranged chronologically by year and then alphabetically by author. A small selection of honors theses are available to view online at university’s institutional repository’s CHC Theses and Projects page . Honors theses can be viewed on site in the Special Collections and University Archives reading room. Starting in 2019, all undergraduate honors theses are submitted electronically.

• Paper honors theses (pre-2019) may take up to one to two business days to retrieve.
• Digital honors theses (2019 forward) must also be viewed on site in SCUA’s reading room, but they do not have a delay period from request to retrieval and access.

A spreadsheet list of honors theses can be consulted online. Email SCUA with your requests in advance of visiting. Please include the year, author’s full name, and the title for each thesis requested.

Masters theses and dissertations written by UMass Amherst students are not a part of the University Archives, but most are available in electronic form through the university’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks .

Contributors

Mass Agricultural College (1863-1931) , Mass State College (1931-1947) , UMass (1947- ) , UMass students

arx UMass Archives

Previous post

Leave a reply cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Templates — University of Massachusetts Amherst

Templates tagged University of Massachusetts Amherst

Show all Templates

Related Tags

Get in touch.

Have you checked our knowledge base ?

Message sent! Our team will review it and reply by email.

Email: 

Dissertation and Clinical Scholarly Project Submission Guidelines

• DNP Students: Next Steps for Online Submission
• EdD Students: Next Steps for Online Submission
• Costs for Submission
• Frequently Asked Questions

UMass Global Library Staff

• askalibrarian@​​umassglobal.libanswers.com
• UMass Global Library

Submission Guidelines

All students must begin the submission process by following the Initial Steps for Library Submission detailed in the next section . After receiving library approval, students will be given directions to proceed with online submission of their clinical scholarly project or dissertation .

All students are required to submit their thesis or dissertation online through the  Proquest Dissertations & Theses Global database. Students in the EDD program must also submit their dissertations to UMass Global Digital Commons .

Initial Steps for Library Submission

• Please check the "Last updated" dates above to ensure you are using the current version of the checklist for your discipline. 
• Either wet or digital signatures are acceptable. 
• Submissions without signatures or using an older version of a checklist will not be accepted .
• Signed checklist  in  one PDF .
• The dissertation or clinical scholarly project , with signed approval page, in one  PDF.
• A librarian will evaluate the dissertation/CSP for compliance.  Please allow at least three business days for a response.
• If the dissertation/clinical scholarly project does not meet the formatting requirements after two reviews, the student may be asked to work with a professional editor and/or have their chair review and submit a new checklist.
• Solutions for many common formatting issues are available under the Formatting Questions tab of the  Frequently Asked Questions  page.
• If no changes are needed , a librarian will send an approval email to the student and their dissertation chair with instructions for the next steps.

Submit Your Dissertation or CSP

Click or tap the button to submit your dissertation or clinical scholarly project

Checklists and Formatting Requirements

The appropriate Checklist is mandatory for all library submissions . The Checklist allows the Committee Chair and the Dissertations Librarian to verify that all format requirements have been completed properly. Please use the appropriate checklist for your program.

Though you are not required to use them, fillable templates for your thesis and dissertation are also provided to use during the writing process. Please note that these templates are optional and their specific formatting may not be ideal for all dissertations and theses. You may customize the look of many elements in the main body of the template or create your own document from scratch, so long as the elements required by the checklist are formatted appropriately. In the case of any discrepancies between checklist and template, the checklist has authority and is the final word on formatting requirements.

Checklists and Templates

Dnp templates.

• DNP Checklist Provides formatting guidelines for final CSP approval.
• DNP Template (optional) DNP Clinical Scholarly Project template.
• DNP Defense Slide Template This template is NOT for library submission. Please direct any questions about your defense to your dissertation committee.

EDD Templates

• EDD Library Checklist [Updated 03/15/204] Provides formatting guidelines for final dissertation approval by the library. EDD students must use this checklist to ensure that all dissertation formatting requirements have been met. Updated March 2024.
• EDD Template EDD dissertation template.
• How to convert Word document to PDF format
• Next: DNP Students: Next Steps for Online Submission >>
• Last Updated: Jun 17, 2024 2:37 PM
• URL: https://umassglobal.libguides.com/dissertations

Stack Exchange Network

Stack Exchange network consists of 183 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow , the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers.

Q&A for work

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search.

Make PhD citations say "dissertation" rather than thesis

At my school, PhD works are generally referred to as dissertations rather than theses.

My bibtex file has this entry:

And it gets rendered as:

Is there any way to make it say "PhD dissertation" rather than "PhD thesis"?

On another note, why is this the default in LaTeX? Would it be unusual or poor form to change it?

Edit: I'm using the plain bibliography style. I could probably use ieeetr as well:

• This depends on your bibliography style, not your .bib file. So you need to show the LaTeX code you are using to produce the bibliography for us to help you. –  Alan Munn Commented May 4, 2014 at 2:28
• @AlanMunn Thanks, see edit. Using plain style. –  jtpereyda Commented May 4, 2014 at 2:37

2 Answers 2

The text used in plain.bst is hard coded into the file itself, and so isn't customizable from within your document.

What you can do is make a copy of plain.bst and edit it, and then use the copy as your bibliography style.

On a TeX Live system, plain.bst is located in /usr/local/texlive/2013/texmf-dist/bibtex/bst/base/plain.bst . Make a copy of this file and call it plain-diss.bst (or some other name). Save this in the same folder as your document, or put it in your local texmf folder in texmf/bibtex/bst/ .

Edit the file and search for "thesis". You will find the following function:

Change "PhD thesis" to "PhD dissertation" and then save the file.

In your document, use \bibliographystyle{plain-diss} instead of {plain} .

The same general solution will also work for the ieeetr.bst .

A biblatex solution

Another way to do this would be to use biblatex , which provides easy customization of these sorts of things. Here's a schematic document that shows how to do this:

• Thanks! Worked perfectly. I had to search my system (Cygwin) for the file with find / -name plain.bst . My plain.bst was at /usr/share/texmf-dist/bibtex/bst/base/plain.bst . –  jtpereyda Commented May 15, 2014 at 16:35
• Somebody at my school also pointed out that my PhD titles were italicized while my master's titles were not. Comparing the entries, I changed format.btitle "title" output.check to format.title "title" output.check to make them not italic. –  jtpereyda Commented May 16, 2014 at 2:09

For a quick fix, you can use the type field, although it makes the file non portable.

• this seems perfect, but could you pls elaborate on the "non portable" part? –  davyjones Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 14:09
• @davyjones If you use the bib file for other purposes, you probably need to remove the type field. –  egreg Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 14:23
• that's nice. I thought the generated pdf file would be somehow self-contradictorily non-portable. Thanks~ –  davyjones Commented Aug 2, 2016 at 14:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for browse other questions tagged bibtex citing ..

• The Overflow Blog
• Community Products Roadmap Update, July 2024
• Featured on Meta
• We spent a sprint addressing your requests — here’s how it went
• Upcoming initiatives on Stack Overflow and across the Stack Exchange network...

Hot Network Questions

• Samourai wallet - my balance disappeared
• Hourly pay rate calculation between Recruiting and Payroll Systems
• Sort Number Array
• Where is the pentagon in the Fibonacci sequence?
• Python Program Automatically Changing Mac Wallpaper to Nasa's Astronomy Picture of the Day
• error when re-applying the permissions script into the original database - sql server
• How to determine relative contribution of explanatory variables in a linear regression
• Could two moons orbit each other around a planet?
• In the UK, how do scientists address each other?
• Cardinal of a set of integers with symmetry relations
• What's the gain from multistate model comparing to transition specific survival models?
• DH Encrypt by XOR
• Were there any stone vessels made in Paleolithic?
• Seeing edges where there are no edges
• Reversing vowels in a string
• TWR of near-term NTR engines
• Why does independent research from people without formal academic qualifications generally turn out to be a complete waste of time?
• Transparent Glass Material Eevee Blender version 4.2
• What is the meaning of @ and & in PennyLane?
• What is this thin stream coming out from somewhere near the engine?
• What is a trillesti?
• Who first promoted the idea that the primary purpose of government is to protect its citizens?
• confidence intervals for proportions containing a theoretically impossible value (zero)
• Error handling for singly linked list in C

Chemical Engineering

• Find Articles
• Find Chemical Engineering Books at the Science & Engineering Library
• Find Theses and Dissertations
• Find Reaction Information
• Find Chemical Prices
• Find Patents
• Related Research Guides

Theses and Dissertations

The databases below provide bibliographic information and limited full-text access to theses and dissertations from around the world. Theses and dissertations that are not available in full-text electronically can be requested through Interlibrary Loan .

Depositing Your Master's Thesis or Doctoral Dissertation

Master's theses and doctoral dissertations are archived in ScholarWorks according to guidelines set by the Graduate School . See the guide below for more information about the submission process.

• Dissertations & Theses by Erin Jerome Last Updated Mar 21, 2024 1685 views this year
• << Previous: Find Chemical Engineering Books at the Science & Engineering Library
• Next: Find Reaction Information >>
• Last Updated: Apr 3, 2024 10:58 AM
• URL: https://guides.library.umass.edu/chemeng

© 2022 University of Massachusetts Amherst • Site Policies • Accessibility

Navigation Menu

Search code, repositories, users, issues, pull requests..., provide feedback.

We read every piece of feedback, and take your input very seriously.

Saved searches

Use saved searches to filter your results more quickly.

To see all available qualifiers, see our documentation .

• Notifications You must be signed in to change notification settings

LaTeX Thesis Template for UMass Lowell

NatTuck/umlthesis

Folders and files.

Repository files navigation

Builds cleanly using TeXShop on MacOS X. Easily works in any reasonable LaTeX environment.

Run BibTeX first. It will parse the bibliography file, 'bibliography.bib' into a form usable by Latex.

Run LaTeX on 'main.tex' All other files are included in main.

The Preface is not required. I invented that myself. It is commented out in 'main.tex'. If you would like to use the preface, simply uncomment it and edit the 'preface.txt' file.

Thanks to Mark Micire, from whom I got this toolchain. I have incrementally improved it, as I'm sure he, and all the stewards before him, also did.

Eight HFA Graduate Students Receive Summer Dissertation Fellowship Funding from Graduate School

Eight graduate students in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA) have received summer dissertation fellowships from the Graduate School to help support their research and dissertation writing. 

Six students received $8,000, including Rafael Freire, Comparative Literature; Rowshan Chowdhury, English; Mitia Nath, English; Thakshala Tissera, English; Janell Tryon, English; Bing Xia, History; Thomas Daventry-Shea, Philosophy; Celia Sainz Delgado, Spanish and Portuguese Program. 

Two students—Yosho Miyata in the Department of Linguistics and Jia Zhang in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies—received $4,000 from the Graduate School in split-funded fellowships with each student’s department. 

The fellowship program is structured to include writing support throughout the summer. Students either participated in an in-person or self-directed dissertation writing retreat the first week of June, then join a bi-weekly virtual writing support group to check in on writing progress, share challenges or frustrations, and write in community for the remainder of the summer. 

The aim of the program is to alleviate some of the sense of isolation dissertators often experience, especially towards the end of the writing process when they are more likely to be burned out, according to Associate Director for Grants & Fellowships Heidi Bauer-Clapp, PhD’16. 

Global footer

• ©2024 University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Site policies
• Non-discrimination notice
• Accessibility
• Terms of use