table of contents latex thesis

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Writing a thesis in latex.

Writing a thesis is a time-intensive endeavor. Fortunately, using LaTeX, you can focus on the content rather than the formatting of your thesis. The following article summarizes the most important aspects of writing a thesis in LaTeX, providing you with a document skeleton (at the end) and lots of additional tips and tricks.

Document class

The first choice in most cases will be the report document class:

See here for a complete list of options. Personally, I use draft a lot. It replaces figures with a box of the size of the figure. It saves you time generating the document. Furthermore, it will highlight justification and hyphenation errors ( Overfull \hbox ).

Check with your college or university. They may have an official or unofficial template/class-file to be used for writing a thesis.

Again, follow the instructions of your institution if there are any. Otherwise, LaTeX provides a few basic command for the creation of a title page.

Use \today as \date argument to automatically generate the current date. Leave it empty in case you don’t want the date to be printed. As shown in the example, the author command can be extended to print several lines.

For a more sophisticated title page, the titlespages package has a nice collection of pre-formatted front pages. For different affiliations use the authblk package, see here for some examples.

Contents (toc/lof/lot)

Nothing special here.

The tocloft package offers great flexibility in formatting contents. See here for a selection of possibilities.

Often, the page numbers are changed to roman for this introductory part of the document and only later, for the actual content, arabic page numbering is used. This can be done by placing the following commands before and after the contents commands respectively.

LaTeX provides the abstract environment which will print “Abstract” centered as a title.

The actual content

The most important and extensive part is the content. I strongly suggest to split up every chapter into an individual file and load them in the main tex-file.

In thesis.tex:

In chapter1.tex:

This way, you can typeset single chapters or parts of the whole thesis only, by commenting out what you want to exclude. Remember, the document can only be generated from the main file (thesis.tex), since the individual chapters are missing a proper LaTeX document structure.

See here for a discussion on whether to use \input or \include .

Bibliography

The most convenient way is to use a bib-tex file that contains all your references. You can download bibtex items for articles, books, etc. from Google scholar or often directly from the journal websites.

Two packages are commonly used to personalize bibliographies, the newer biblatex and the natbib package, which has been around for many years. These packages offer great flexibility in customizing the look of a bibliography, depending on the preference in the field or the author.

Other commonly used packages

• graphicx : Indispensable when working with figures/graphs.
• subfig : Controlling arrangement of several figures (e.g. 2×2 matrix)
• minitoc : Adds mini table of contents to every chapter
• nomencl : Generate and format a nomenclature
• listings : Source code printer for LaTeX
• babel : Multilingual package for standard document classes
• fancyhdr : Controlling header and footer
• hyperref : Hypertext links for LaTeX
• And many more

Minimal example code

I’m aware that this short post on writing a thesis only covers the very basics of a vast topic. However, it will help you getting started and focussing on the content of your thesis rather than the formatting of the document.

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16 comments.

8. June 2012 at 7:09

I would rather recommend a documentclass like memoir or scrreprt (from KOMA-Script), since they are much more flexible than report.

8. June 2012 at 8:12

I agree, my experience with them is limited though. Thanks for the addendum. Here is the documentation: memoir , scrreprt (KOMA script)

8. June 2012 at 8:02

Nice post Tom. I’m actually writing a two-part (or three) on Writing the PhD thesis: the tools . Feel free to comment, I hope to update it as I write my thesis, so any suggestions are welcome.

8. June 2012 at 8:05

Thanks for the link. I just saw your post and thought I should really check out git sometimes :-). Best, Tom.

8. June 2012 at 8:10

Yes, git is awesome. It can be a bit overwhelming with all the options and commands, but if you’re just working alone, and probably on several machines, then you can do everything effortlessly with few commands.

11. June 2012 at 2:15

That’s what has kept me so far. But I’ll definitely give it a try. Thanks!

8. June 2012 at 8:08

What a great overview. Thank you, this will come handy… when I finally get myself to start writing that thesis 🙂

8. June 2012 at 14:12

Thanks and good luck with your thesis! Tom.

9. June 2012 at 4:08

Hi, I can recommend two important packages: lineno.sty to insert linenumbers (really helpful in the debugging phase) and todonotes (allows you to insert todo-notes for things you still have to do.)

11. June 2012 at 0:48

Thanks Uwe! I wrote an article on both, lineno and todonotes . Here is the documentation: lineno and todonotes for more details.

12. June 2012 at 15:51

Thanks for the post, i’m currently writing my master thesis 🙂

A small note: it seems that subfig is deprecated for the subcaption package: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Floats,_Figures_and_Captions#Subfloats

12. June 2012 at 16:05

Hey, thanks for the tip. Too bad they don’t say anything in the documentation apart from the fact that the packages are not compatible.

1. August 2012 at 21:11

good thesis template can be also found here (free): http://enjobs.org/index.php/downloads2

including living headers, empty pages, two-sided with front and main matter as well as a complete structure

2. August 2012 at 11:03

Thanks for the link to the thesis template!

15. November 2012 at 22:21

Hi Tom, I’m writing a report on spanish in LaTex, using emacs, auctex, aspell (~170pags. ~70 files included by now) and this blog is my savior every time because I’m quite new with all these.

The question: Is there anyway (other than \- in every occurrence) to define the correct hyphenation for accented words (non english characters like é)? I have three o four accented words, about the subject of my report, that occur near 100 times each, across several files, and the \hyphenation{} command can’t handle these.

20. November 2012 at 3:47

I was wondering what packages you load in your preamble. For a better hyphenation (and easier typing), you should use these packages:

See here for more details.

If this doesn’t help, please provide a minimal working example to illustrate the problem.

Thanks, Tom.

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LaTeX-Tutorial.com

Generate a table of contents in latex, latex offers features to automatically generate a table of contents, a list of figures and a list of tables. learn here how to use them., table of contents.

• List of figures

Generating a table of contents can be done with a few simple commands. LaTeX will use the section headings to create the table of contents and there are commands to create a list of figures and a list of tables as well. I will give a small example code to create a table of contents first:

After compiling the .tex file two times, you will get the following table of contents:

List of figures / tables

The generation of a list of figures and tables works the same way. I added a dummy figure and table and put the lists in the appendix of my document:

After compiling two times again, the lists will be generated like this:

Sometimes it makes sense to only show a subset of the headings for all sections or for a particular section. For this reason you can set a the tocdepth  by using the command \setcounter{tocdepth}{X}, where X is the desired depth. A value of 0 means that your table of contents will show nothing at all and 5 means, that even subparagraphs will be shown. The value has to be set in the preamble of your document and automatically applies to the whole document:

Using the example from above, the setting tocdepth = 1 will lead to the following output:

You can easily increase the verbosity of your table of contents, by setting tocdepth to something higher like 3, which would lead to the following output:

If you don’t want to change the depth for all sections, you can also adjust the tocdepth for each section individually. In this case you don’t have to set the tocdepth before the section which should have more or less depth.

This will generate the following table of contents, using the default tocdepth for the first section, but tocdepth = 1 for this section:

If you’re not happy with the spacing of the headings in your table of content, the easiest way of changing the spacing of your table of contents (and document in general) is by using the setspace package. First add \usepackage{setspace} to your preamble:

You can then proceed to set the spacing for individual parts of your document, including the table of contents like so:

Which will lead to the following output:

• Autogenerate a table of content using \tableofcontents
• Create lists of your figures and tables with \listoffigures and \listoftables
• Always compile twice to see the changes
• Globally change the depth with \setcounter{tocdepth}{X} ; X = {1,2,3,4,5}
• For single sections use \addtocontents{toc}{\setcounter{tocdepth}{X}} instead.

Next Lesson: 07 BiBTeX

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LaTeX forum ⇒ LyX ⇒ Add Front Matter to TOC (Table of Contents) in a Thesis

Add front matter to toc (table of contents) in a thesis.

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:02 am

Re: Add Front Matter to TOC (Table of Contents) in a Thesis

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:06 am

Post by frabjous » Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:10 am

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:34 am

frabjous wrote: Try the \addcontentsline command.

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 1:42 am

Post by frabjous » Sat Jan 23, 2010 3:27 am

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:07 am

frabjous wrote: It would probably make more sense for you to provide sample code that generates problems for you. I can't diagnose what's going wrong without seeing that. However, perhaps the sample document below will provide some guidance. \documentclass{report} \usepackage[english]{babel} \usepackage{blindtext} % for auto-generating text % \title{The Color Spectrum} \author{Roy G. Biv} \date{\today} % \begin{document} \renewcommand{\thepage}{\roman{page}} % \maketitle % \clearpage \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgements} \chapter*{Acknowledgements} Thanks Mom! % \clearpage \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Table of Contents} \tableofcontents % \clearpage \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{List of Figures} \listoffigures % \clearpage \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Preface} \chapter*{Preface} This document is silly. % \clearpage \setcounter{page}{1} \renewcommand{\thepage}{\arabic{page}} \chapter{First Real Chapter} \blindmathpaper % auto-generates text This chapter ends with a figure. \begin{figure} A figure. \caption{A figure.} \end{figure} % \chapter{Second Real Chapter} This chapter begins with a figure. \begin{figure} Another figure. \caption{Another figure.} \end{figure} \blindmathpaper % more auto-generated text % \end{document}

Post by frabjous » Sat Jan 23, 2010 4:15 am

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:00 am

Post by Ry J » Sat Jan 23, 2010 6:03 am

frabjous wrote: Oops, I didn't notice this was the LyX subforum. (I have to start paying attention to that.) I don't know anything about Lyx. If it allows you to mark-up the LaTeX yourself, you just need to change: \addcontentsline{toc}{lof}{list of figures} to \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{List of Figures} and it needs to go on the same page as the List of Figures, which is easiest to do by placing it right after a \clearpage command and right before the \listoffigures command. If this can't be done by editing the code directly in Lyx, then I don't know how to do it. I've never used LyX.

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Thesis and Dissertation Guide

• « Thesis & Dissertation Resources
• The Graduate School Home

• Introduction

Copyright Page

Dedication, acknowledgements, preface (optional), table of contents.

• List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

List of symbols.

• Non-Traditional Formats
• Font Type and Size
• Spacing and Indentation
• Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
• Formatting Previously Published Work
• Internet Distribution
• Open Access
• Registering Copyright
• Using Copyrighted Materials
• Use of Your Own Previously Published Materials
• Submission Steps
• Submission Checklist
• Sample Pages

I. Order and Components

Please see the sample thesis or dissertation pages throughout and at the end of this document for illustrations. The following order is required for components of your thesis or dissertation:

• Dedication, Acknowledgements, and Preface (each optional)
• Table of Contents, with page numbers
• List of Tables, List of Figures, or List of Illustrations, with titles and page numbers (if applicable)
• List of Abbreviations (if applicable)
• List of Symbols (if applicable)
• Introduction, if any
• Main body, with consistent subheadings as appropriate
• Appendices (if applicable)
• Endnotes (if applicable)
• References (see section on References for options)

Many of the components following the title and copyright pages have required headings and formatting guidelines, which are described in the following sections.

Please consult the Sample Pages to compare your document to the requirements. A Checklist is provided to assist you in ensuring your thesis or dissertation meets all formatting guidelines.

The title page of a thesis or dissertation must include the following information:

• The title of the thesis or dissertation in all capital letters and centered 2″ below the top of the page.
• Your name, centered 1″ below the title. Do not include titles, degrees, or identifiers. The name you use here does not need to exactly match the name on your university records, but we recommend considering how you will want your name to appear in professional publications in the future.

Notes on this statement:

• When indicating your degree in the second bracketed space, use the full degree name (i.e., Doctor of Philosophy, not Ph.D. or PHD; Master of Public Health, not M.P.H. or MPH; Master of Social Work, not M.S.W. or MSW).
• List your department, school, or curriculum rather than your subject area or specialty discipline in the third bracketed space. You may include your subject area or specialty discipline in parentheses (i.e., Department of Romance Languages (French); School of Pharmacy (Molecular Pharmaceutics); School of Education (School Psychology); or similar official area).
• If you wish to include both your department and school names, list the school at the end of the statement (i.e., Department of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine).
• A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Public Policy.
• A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the School of Dentistry (Endodontics).
• A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Department of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.
• A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education (Cultural Studies and Literacies).
• The words “Chapel Hill” must be centered 1″ below the statement.
• One single-spaced line below that, center the year in which your committee approves the completed thesis or dissertation. This need not be the year you graduate.
• Approximately 2/3 of the way across the page on the right-hand side of the page, 1″ below the year, include the phrase “Approved by:” (with colon) followed by each faculty member's name on subsequent double-spaced lines. Do not include titles such as Professor, Doctor, Dr., PhD, or any identifiers such as “chair” or “advisor” before or after any names. Line up the first letter of each name on the left under the “A” in the “Approved by:” line. If a name is too long to fit on one line, move this entire section of text slightly to the left so that formatting can be maintained.
• No signatures, signature lines, or page numbers should be included on the title page.

Include a copyright page with the following information single-spaced and centered 2″ above the bottom of the page:

© Year Author's Full Name (as it appears on the title page) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This page immediately follows the title page. It should be numbered with the lower case Roman numeral ii centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Inclusion of this page offers you, as the author, additional protection against copyright infringement as it eliminates any question of authorship and copyright ownership. You do not need to file for copyright in order to include this statement in your thesis or dissertation. However, filing for copyright can offer other protections.

See Section IV for more information on copyrighting your thesis or dissertation.

Include an abstract page following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “ABSTRACT” in all capital letters, and center it 2″ below the top of the page.
• One double-spaced line below “ABSTRACT”, center your name, followed by a colon and the title of the thesis or dissertation. Use as many lines as necessary. Be sure that your name and the title exactly match the name and title used on the Title page.
• One single-spaced line below the title, center the phrase “(Under the direction of [advisor's name])”. Include the phrase in parentheses. Include the first and last name(s) of your advisor or formal co-advisors. Do not include the name of other committee members. Use the advisor's name only; do not include any professional titles such as PhD, Professor, or Dr. or any identifiers such as “chair” or “advisor”.
• Skip one double-spaced line and begin the abstract. The text of your abstract must be double-spaced and aligned with the document's left margin with the exception of indenting new paragraphs. Do not center or right-justify the abstract.
• Abstracts cannot exceed 150 words for a thesis or 350 words for a dissertation.
• Number the abstract page with the lower case Roman numeral iii (and iv, if more than one page) centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Please write and proofread your abstract carefully. When possible, avoid including symbols or foreign words in your abstract, as they cannot be indexed or searched. Avoid mathematical formulas, diagrams, and other illustrative materials in the abstract. Offer a brief description of your thesis or dissertation and a concise summary of its conclusions. Be sure to describe the subject and focus of your work with clear details and avoid including lengthy explanations or opinions.

Your title and abstract will be used by search engines to help potential audiences locate your work, so clarity will help to draw the attention of your targeted readers.

You have an option to include a dedication, acknowledgements, or preface. If you choose to include any or all of these elements, give each its own page(s).

A dedication is a message from the author prefixed to a work in tribute to a person, group, or cause. Most dedications are short statements of tribute beginning with “To…” such as “To my family”.

Acknowledgements are the author's statement of gratitude to and recognition of the people and institutions that helped the author's research and writing.

A preface is a statement of the author's reasons for undertaking the work and other personal comments that are not directly germane to the materials presented in other sections of the thesis or dissertation. These reasons tend to be of a personal nature.

Any of the pages must be prepared following these guidelines:

• Do not place a heading on the dedication page.
• The text of short dedications must be centered and begin 2″ from the top of the page.
• Headings are required for the “ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS” and “PREFACE” pages. Headings must be in all capital letters and centered 2″ below the top of the page.
• The text of the acknowledgements and preface pages must begin one double-spaced line below the heading, be double-spaced, and be aligned with the document's left margin with the exception of indenting new paragraphs.
• Subsequent pages of text return to the 1″ top margin.
• The page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals (starting with the page number after the abstract) centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Include a table of contents following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “TABLE OF CONTENTS” in all capital letters, and center it 2″ below the top of the page.
• Include one double-spaced line between the heading and the first entry.
• The table of contents should not contain listings for the pages that precede it, but it must list all parts of the thesis or dissertation that follow it.
• If relevant, be sure to list all appendices and a references section in your table of contents. Include page numbers for these items but do not assign separate chapter numbers.
• Entries must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• Major subheadings within chapters must be included in the table of contents. The subheading(s) should be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• If an entry takes up more than one line, break up the entry about three-fourths of the way across the page and place the rest of the text on a second line, single-spacing the two lines.
• Include one double-spaced line between each entry.
• Page numbers listed in the table of contents must be located just inside the right page margin with leaders (lines of periods) filling out the space between the end of the entry and the page number. The last digit of each number must line up on the right margin.
• Information included in the table of contents must match the headings, major subheadings, and numbering used in the body of the thesis or dissertation.
• The Table of Contents page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Lists of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

If applicable, include a list of tables, list of figures, and/or list of illustrations following these guidelines:

• Include the heading(s) in all capital letters, centered 1″ below the top of the page.
• Each entry must include a number, title, and page number.
• Assign each table, figure, or illustration in your thesis or dissertation an Arabic numeral. You may number consecutively throughout the entire work (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.), or you may assign a two-part Arabic numeral with the first number designating the chapter in which it appears, separated by a period, followed by a second number to indicate its consecutive placement in the chapter (e.g., Table 3.2 is the second table in Chapter Three).
• Numerals and titles must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• Page numbers must be located just inside the right page margin with leaders (lines of periods) filling out the space between the end of the entry and the page number. The last digit of each number must line up on the right margin.
• Numbers, titles, and page numbers must each match the corresponding numbers, titles, and page numbers appearing in the thesis or dissertation.
• All Lists of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

If you use abbreviations extensively in your thesis or dissertation, you must include a list of abbreviations and their corresponding definitions following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS” in all capital letters, and center it 1″ below the top of the page.
• Arrange your abbreviations alphabetically.
• Abbreviations must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• If an entry takes up more than one line, single-space between the two lines.
• The List of Abbreviations page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

If you use symbols in your thesis or dissertation, you may combine them with your abbreviations, titling the section “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS”, or you may set up a separate list of symbols and their definitions by following the formatting instructions above for abbreviations. The heading you choose must be in all capital letters and centered 1″ below the top of the page.

Previous: Introduction

Next: Format

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• Table of contents

In a L a T e X document the table of contents can be automatically generated, and modified to fit a specific style, this article explain how

Introduction

To create the table of contents is straightforward, the command \tableofcontents does the job. Sections, subsections and chapters are included in the table of contents. To manually add entries, for example when you want an unnumbered section, use the command \addcontentsline as shown in the following example:

 Open this example in Overleaf

This example produces the following output:

Change the title of the table of contents

The default title for the table of contents is Contents ; it can be changed into whatever you need as the following example demonstrates:

The line \renewcommand*\contentsname{Summary} will write "Summary" instead of the default value. If you are using the package babel for international language support , the aforementioned command must be placed inside the braces of

Instead of English in \captionenglish write the name of the language you set in babel.

Further reading

For more information see:

• Creating a document in LaTeX
• Bold, italics and underlining
• International language support
• Cross referencing sections and equations
• Management in a large project
• Multi-file LaTeX projects
• Page numbering
• Single sided and double sided documents
• Multiple columns
• Font sizes, families, and styles
• Documentation Home
• Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

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• Copying a project
• Creating a project from a template
• Using the Overleaf project menu
• Including images in Overleaf
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• Using Track Changes in Overleaf
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• Drawing Diagrams Directly in LaTeX
• TikZ package

References and Citations

• Bibliography management with bibtex
• Bibliography management with natbib
• Bibliography management with biblatex
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• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using polyglossia and fontspec
• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using babel and fontspec
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Document structure

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• Code Highlighting with minted
• Using colours in LaTeX
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How to Write a Thesis in LaTeX (Part 2): Page Layout

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Author: Josh Cassidy (August 2013)

This five-part series of articles uses a combination of video and textual descriptions to teach the basics of writing a thesis using LaTeX. These tutorials were first published on the original ShareLateX blog site during August 2013; consequently, today's editor interface (Overleaf) has changed considerably due to the development of ShareLaTeX and the subsequent merger of ShareLaTeX and Overleaf. However, much of the content is still relevant and teaches you some basic LaTeX—skills and expertise that will apply across all platforms.

In the previous tutorial we looked at setting up the basic structure for a thesis. In this post we'll start customising the page layout using the geometry and fancyhdr packages. We'll continue working on the same project as last time and the first thing we will do is make the document two-sided so that we save paper by printing on both sides. To do this we add the keyword twoside into the document class command:

The geometry package

Next we'll load up the geometry package. To configure the page layout, we enter instructions into the square brackets of this command. The first thing we will do is change the paper size. By default the paper size is set to US letter but we'll change this to a4paper . Next we'll change the width of the text by entering the keyword width followed by an equals sign and a number in millimetres. We can also change the margin sizes at the top and bottom of the page:

You will notice that on even pages the text is positioned slightly closer to the right-hand side and on odd pages it's closer to the left. Or in other words, the inner margin is smaller than the outer:

This is due to us specifying the twoside option but it often confuses people. The reason LaTeX does this is because when you bind the document together, the smaller inner margins will be adjacent and then combined will be a similar size to the larger outer margins. This mean that the three columns of white space you get with a double page spread will be a similar size:

However, you may also want to compensate for the actual binding. To do this we will use the bindingoffset command and we'll choose to offset it by 6mm:

You can see that the margins have now shifted:

The fancyhdr package

Next we'll add in headers and footers using the fancyhdr package. First let's load up the package. Immediately after the \usepackage command we need to add the \pagestyle command and enter fancy into the curly brackets:

If we now compile the code you will see that a header has been added to all the pages except the title page, the contents page and the first page of each new chapter. By default, the headers all contain the chapter and section titles:

If you're happy with this layout you can leave it like this. However, I'm going to show you how you can customise it using two commands provided by the fancyhdr package: \fancyhead and \fancyfoot . The standard format for these commands is the command followed by square brackets and then curly brackets:

In the curly brackets we enter the text we want and in the square brackets we specify which parts of the header we want that text printed in. The fancyhdr package lets us add things in the left (L), right (R) and centre (C) of the header or footer and also lets us specify a different arrangement depending on whether its on an odd (O) or even (E) page. Here's an example of how we might customise our headers and footers:

Here's the meaning of the various commands used in the above LaTeX fragment:

• In the first line we've entered a blank \fancyhead command which clears all the header fields.
• In the second line we've told LaTeX that we want the text "Thesis title" on the right-hand side of the header for the odd pages and the left for even pages.
• The third line clears the footer fields using a blank \fancyfoot command.
• The fourth line makes the page number appear on the left of the footer for an even page and the right for an odd. The \thepage command returns the page number of the page it's used on.
• The \thechapter command in line five is similar to \thepage but, of course, typeset the chapter number.
• Lines five and six add some text about the chapter and author into the footer again in different places depending on whether the page is odd or even.

Now if we compile the document with this code in we can see the headers and footers have been added in:

Before moving on I should briefly introduce you to two more commands that you may find helpful when customising your headers and footers. The \leftmark and \rightmark commands. Here's an example of what the \leftmark command produces:

And an example of what the \rightmark command produces:

To change the thickness of the lines in the headers and footers we use this code entering a size in points:

I recommend you keep it fairly small to keep it looking sensible.

Finally I want to mention the \pagestyle command. If we have a page that we want completely clear of headers and footers, we can use this command entering the the keyword empty in as an argument; for example:

If we want a page with no headers or footers except for a simple page number at the bottom we would use the keyword plain . However you need to be aware that using this command changes the page style for all the pages following the command. Therefore we need to turn the page style back to fancy as soon as we want the headers back.

This concludes our discussion on page layout. In the next post we'll look at using images and tables.

All articles in this series

• Part 1: Basic Structure ;
• Part 2: Page Layout ;
• Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables ;
• Part 4: Bibliographies with BibLaTeX ;
• Part 5: Customising Your Title Page and Abstract .
• Documentation Home
• Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

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• Chemistry formulae
• Feynman diagrams
• Molecular orbital diagrams
• Chess notation
• Knitting patterns
• CircuiTikz package
• Pgfplots package
• Typesetting exams in LaTeX
• Attribute Value Matrices

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