sections in thesis latex

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Creating Sections and Subsections in LaTeX

In our previous article, we discussed how to create a title page using LaTeX. In this post, we’ll tackle one of the first challenges you’ll encounter in writing a thesis with LaTeX: creating sections and subsections. There are two types of heading structures we’ll cover: those with numbering and those without.

Headings with numbers are used for major sections like Introduction, Model, and Conclusion. Headings without numbers are typically used for sections like References and Appendix. You can create numbered headings using \section{} and if you want them without numbering, you can use \section*{} by adding an asterisk (*) to the command. Subsections can be created similarly using \subsection{} and \subsection*{} for those without numbering. These are second-degree headings. If you want to add third-degree headings, you can use \subsubsection{} and \subsubsection*{} . All numbered headings you create in this way will automatically be added to the table of contents. For headings without numbers, you can add them to the table of contents using the \addcontentsline{toc}{section}{} command.

Example of Creating Sections and Subsections

Let’s provide a complete example of creating sections and subsections. You can directly add this content to your LaTeX document and run it to see the output.

In this example, we’ve assumed that the document consists of three chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, and Model. Under the Model chapter, we’ve added two subsections as examples. The first subsection, “Introduction to the Model,” is numbered, while the second subsection, “Results of the Model,” is not numbered.

When you compile the above example, you’ll get the output shown in the image below.

Adding numbered sections and subsections will automatically include them in the table of contents. If you plan to add fourth-degree headings or deeper, you’ll need to add additional commands for them to appear in the table of contents.

Feel free to ask us any questions if you encounter any problems while writing your thesis, article, assignment, or project with LaTeX. Learning to write with LaTeX can be a challenging and time-consuming process. If you don’t have the time or expertise, we can help you convert your handwritten or text editor documents into LaTeX. You can find more information about what we do on our services page. For inquiries about pricing , delivery, or any other questions related to LaTeX thesis writing, please contact us .

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LaTeX Resources for Graduate Students: Formatting of theses and dissertations

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• Formatting of theses and dissertations

Formatting and structure

The Cornell Graduate School has become increasingly flexible about the formatting of theses and dissertations.  There now are only seven core requirements . For the structure of theses and dissertations here is a list of required and recommended sections .

Latex template

Among the available thesis and dissertation templates provided by the Graduate School is also a LaTeX template (ZIP archive). This template has been uploaded to Overleaf and placed in the Cornell template directory . This template contains a small fix to avoid an error message about \ifpdf .

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• Last Updated: Sep 26, 2024 1:47 PM
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because LaTeX matters

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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• The Graduate Thesis: What is it?
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Formatting in LaTeX

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For formatting instructions and requirements see the Formatting section of the School of Graduate Studies website. The thesis style template for LaTeX ( ut-thesis ) implements these requirements. You are not required to use the template, but using it will make most of the formatting requirements easier to meet.

►► Thesis template for LaTeX .

Below are some general formatting tips for drafting your thesis in LaTeX.  In addition, there are other supports available:

• Regular LaTeX workshops are offered via the library, watch the library workshop calendar at https://libcal.library.utoronto.ca/
• With questions about LaTeX formatting, contact Map and Data Library (MDL) using this form
• There are also great resources for learning LaTeX available via Overleaf

Many common problems have been solved on the TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange Q & A Forum

LaTeX Template

To use the LaTeX and ut-thesis , you need two things: a LaTeX distribution (compiles your code), and an editor (where you write your code). Two main approaches are:

• Overleaf : is a web-based platform that combines a distribution (TeX Live) and an editor. It is beginner-friendly (minimal set-up) and some people prefer a cloud-based platform. However, manually uploading graphics and managing a bibliographic database can be tedious, especially for large projects like a thesis.
• A LaTeX distribution can be installed as described here . ut-thesis can then be installed either: a) initially, with the distribution; b) automatically when you try to compile a document using \usepackage{ut-thesis} ; or manually via graphical or terminal-based package manager for the distribution.
• The LaTeX distribution allows you to compile code, but provides no tools for writing (e.g. syntax highlighting, hotkeys, command completion, etc.). There are many editor options that provide these features. TeXstudio is one popular option.

Occasionally, the version of ut-thesis on GitHub  may be more up-to-date than the popular distributions (especially yearly TeX Live), including small bug fixes. To use the GitHub version, you can download the file ut-thesis.cls (and maybe the documentation ut-thesis .pdf ) and place it in your working directory. This will take priority over any other versions of ut-thesis on your system while in this directory.

LaTeX Formatting Tips

Here are a few tips & tricks for formatting your thesis in LateX.

Document Structure

Using the ut-thesis document class, a minimal example thesis might look like:

\documentclass{ut-thesis} \author {Your Name} \title {Thesis Title} \degree {Doctor of Philosophy} \department {LaTeX} \gradyear {2020} \begin {document}   \frontmatter   \maketitle   \begin {abstract}     % abstract goes here   \end {abstract}   \tableofcontents   \mainmatter   % main chapters go here   % references go here   \appendix   % appendices go here \end {document}

►►  A larger example is available on GitHub here .

You may want to consider splitting your code into multiple files. The contents of each file can then be added using \input{filename} .

The usual commands for document hierarchy are available like \chapter , \section , \subsection , \subsubsection , and \paragraph . To control which appear in the \tableofcontents , you can use \setcounter{tocdepth}{i} , where i = 2 includes up to \subsection , etc. For unnumbered sections, use \section* , etc. No component should be empty, such as \section{...} immediately followed by \subsection{...} .

Note: In the examples below, we denote the preamble vs body like:

preamble code --- body code

Tables & Figures

In LaTeX, tables and figures are environments called “floats”, and they usually don’t appear exactly where you have them in the code. This is to avoid awkward whitespace. Float environments are used like \begin{env} ... \end{env} , where the entire content ... will move with the float. If you really need a float to appear exactly “here”, you can use:

\usepackage{float} --- \begin{ figure}[H] ... \end {figure}

Most other environments (like equation) do not float.

A LaTeX table as a numbered float is distinct from tabular data. So, a typical table might look like:

\usepackage{booktabs} --- \begin {table}   \centering   \caption {The table caption}   \begin {tabular}{crll}     i &   Name & A &  B \\     1 &  First & 1 &  2 \\     2 & Second & 3 &  5 \\     3 &  Third & 8 & 13   \end {tabular} \end {table}

The & separates cells and \\ makes a new row. The {crll} specifies four columns: 1 centred, 1 right-aligned, and 2 left-aligned.

Fancy Tables

Some helpful packages for creating more advanced tabular data:

• booktabs : provides the commands \toprule , \midrile , and \bottomrule , which add horizontal lines of slightly different weights.
• multicol : provides the command \multicolumn{2}{r}{...} to “merge” 2 cells horizontally with the content ... , centred.
• multirow : provides the command \multirow{2}{*}{...} , to “merge” 2 cells vertically with the content ... , having width computed automatically (*).

A LaTeX figure is similarly distinct from graphical content. To include graphics, it’s best to use the command \includegraphics from the graphicx package. Then, a typical figure might look like:

\usepackage{graphicx} --- \begin {figure}   \centering   \includegraphics[width=.6 \textwidth ]{figurename} \end {figure}

Here we use .6\textwidth to make the graphic 60% the width of the main text.

By default, graphicx will look for figurename in the same folder as main.tex ; if you need to add other folders, you can use \graphicspath{{folder1/}{folder2/}...} .

The preferred package for subfigures is subcaption ; you can use it like:

\usepackage{subcaption} --- \begin {figure} % or table, then subtable below   \begin {subfigure}{0.5 \textwidth }     \includegraphics[width= \textwidth ]{figureA}     \caption {First subcaption}   \end {subfigure}   \begin {subfigure}{0.5 \textwidth }     \includegraphics[width= \textwidth ]{figureB}     \caption {Second subcaption}   \end {subfigure}   \caption {Overall figure caption} \end {figure}

This makes two subfigures each 50% of the text width, with respective subcaptions, plus an overall figure caption.

Math can be added inline with body text like $E = m c^2$ , or as a standalone equation like:

\begin {equation}   E = m c^2 \end {equation}

A complete guide to math is beyond our scope here; again, Overleaf provides a great set of resources to get started.

Cross References

We recommend using the hyperref package to make clickable links within your thesis, such as the table of contents, and references to equations, tables, figures, and other sections.

A cross-reference label can be added to a section or float environment using \label{key} , and referenced elsewhere using \ref{key} . The key will not appear in the final document (unless there is an error), so we recommend a naming convention like fig:diagram , tab:summary , or intro:back for \section{Background} within \chapter{Intro} , for example. We also recommend using a non-breaking space ~ like Figure~\ref{fig:diagram} , so that a linebreak will not separate “Figure” and the number.

You may need to compile multiple times to resolve cross-references (and citations). However, this occurs by default as needed in most editors.

The LaTeX package tikz provides excellent tools for drawing diagrams and even plotting basic math functions. Here is one small example:

\usepackage{tikz} --- \begin {tikzpicture}   \node [red,circle]  (a) at (0,0) {A};   \node [blue,square] (b) at (1,0) {B};   \draw [dotted,->]   (a) -- node[above]{ $ \alpha $ } (b); \end {tikzpicture}

Don’t forget semicolons after every command, or else you will get stuck while compiling.

There are several options for managing references in LaTeX. We recommend the most modern package: biblatex , with the biber backend.  A helpful overview is given here .

Assuming you have a file called references.bib that looks like:

@article{Lastname2020,   title = {The article title},   author = {Lastname, First and Last2, First2 and Last3 and First3},   journal = {Journal Name},   year = {2020},   vol = {99},   no = {1} } ...

then you can cite the reference Lastname2020 using biblatex like:

\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex} \addbibresource {references.bib} --- \cite {Lastname2020} ... \printbibliography

Depending on what editor you’re using to compile, this may work straight away. If not, you may need to update your compiling command to:

pdflatex main && biber main && pdflatex main && pdflatex main

Assuming your document is called main.tex . This is because biber is a separate tool from pdflatex . So in the command above, we first identify the cited sources using pdflatex , then collect the reference information using biber , then finish compiling the document using pdflatex , and then we compile once more in case anything got missed.

There are many options when loading biblatex to configure the reference formatting; it’s best to search the CTAN documentation for what you want to do.

Windows users may find that biber.exe or bibtex.exe get silently blocked by some antivirus software. Usually, an exception can be added within the antivirus software to allow these programs to run.

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Overleaf for Scholarly Writing & Publication: LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

• Reference Managers and Overleaf
• Adding Graphs, Tables, and Images
• Using Templates on Overleaf
• LaTeX Theses and Dissertations

LaTeX Theses and Dissertatons

Tips and tools for writing your LaTeX thesis or dissertation in  Overleaf, including templates, managing references , and getting started guides.

Managing References

BibTeX  is a file format used for lists of references for  LaTeX  documents. Many citation management tools support the ability to export and import lists of references in .bib format. Some reference management tools can generate  BibTeX  files of your library or folders for use in your  LaTeX  documents.

LaTeX on Wikibooks   has a  Bibliography Management  page.

Find list of BibTeX styles available on Overleaf   here

View a video tutorial on how to include a bibliography using BibTeX  here

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Collaboration tools

Every project you create has a secret link. Just send it to your co-authors, and they can review, comment and edit. Overleaf synchronizes changes from all authors, so everyone always has the latest version. More advanced tools include protected projects and integration with Git.

Collaborate online and offline with Overleaf and Git

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Getting Started with Your Thesis or Dissertation

How to get started writing your thesis in LaTeX

Writing a thesis or dissertation in LaTeX can be challenging, but the end result is well worth it - nothing looks as good as a LaTeX-produced pdf, and for large documents it's a lot easier than fighting with formatting and cross-referencing in MS Word. Review this video from Overleaf to help you get started writing your thesis in LaTeX, using a standard thesis template from the  Overleaf Gallery .

You can  upload your own thesis template to the Overleaf Gallery   if your university provides a set of LaTeX template files or you may find your university's thesis template already in the Overleaf Gallery.

This video assumes you've used LaTeX before and are familiar with the standard commands (see our other  tutorial videos   if not), and focuses on how to work with a large project split over multiple files.

How to Write your Thesis/Dissertation in LaTeX: A Five-Part Guide

Five-Part LaTeX Thesis/Dissertation  Writing Guide

Part 1: Basic Structure   corresponding  video

Part 2: Page Layout   corresponding  video

Part 3: Figures, Subfigures and Tables   corresponding  video

Part 4: Bibliographies with Biblatex  corresponding  video

Part 5: Customizing Your Title Page and Abstract   corresponding  video

Link Your ORCID

Link yo ur  ORCiD  account  to your  Overleaf account  via the  ORCID @ CMU Portal

Open Knowledge Librarian

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Chapters, Sections and Text ​

Chapters and sections ​.

The chapters and sections of the document will automatically be numbered and indexed by LaTeX. For that to happen, the chapters and sections have to be explicitly defined. There are up to seven levels of depth, but \part{} and \chapter{} are only available in the book and report document type (used in the report/thesis template):

As a result, a simple \tableofcontents command can print the table of contents without any hassle. It is also possible to have a chapter or section not appear in the table of contents by having it unnumbered. This can be done by adding an asterisk (*) at the end of the command, before the opening curly bracket:

The layout and style of the chapter and section titles can be changed with the package titlesec . That is not quite within the scope of this documentation though. With a bit of LaTeX knowledge and the information below, you might nonetheless be able to make some minor changes.

Navigate to the class file ( tudelft-report.cls ) and find the lines where these titles are formatted. The standard format used in this template is:

For example, the \chapter{} is formatted with the following lines:

In this example:

• < shape > is set to display to put the label on a different line.
• < format > is used to move the title and label to the right with \flushright .
• < label > includes the chapter number with \thechapter , but also increases and changes the font of the number with \fontsize{96}{96} and \largetitlestyle respectively.
• < sep > specifies the horizontal separation between the label and the title (or the vertical separation in case of display ). In this case, the no extra vertical spacing is added.
• < before code > formats the title body: the size is increased and the font changed.

Take a look at the other instances of \titleformat to see other possible parameters. If you would like to know more, try searching online or take a look at the package documentation

Basic Text Formatting ​

The three basic text formatting types are bold, italics and underline:

If you want to emphasize with italics, you might want to use \emph{} instead, as it will adapt to the context. In normal or bold text, the word(s) will be italicised. If the text is already italicised, the behavior of the command is reversed. As a result, the word(s) will always stand out in some way.

LaTeX-Tutorial.com

Using latex paragraphs and sections, learn how to structure your document using sections and paragraphs in latex. a brief introduction to headings and the basic file layout., sectioning elements (sections, subsections, paragraphs etc.), example output of sections and subsections, hierarchy of sectioning elements.

We have created a very basic document in the previous lesson, but when writing a paper, it’s necessary to structure the content into logic units. To achieve this, LaTeX offers us commands to generate section headings and number them automatically. The commands to create section headings are straightforward:

The section commands are numbered and will appear in the table of contents of your document. Paragraphs aren’t numbered and won’t show in the table of contents. Here an example output using sections:

In order to get this output, we just have to add a few lines to our program from lesson 1:

The following picture shows the hierarchical structure of all elements:

I have used the following code to get this output:

It’s very easy to structure documents into sections using LaTeX. This feature also exists in Word, but most people don’t use it properly. In LaTeX it is very effortless to have consistent formatting throughout your paper. In the next lesson I will give a short introduction to packages and show some basic math typesetting. This is where LaTeX really excels.

• LaTeX  uses the commands \section , \subsection and \subsubsection to define sections in your document
• The sections will have successive numbers and appear in the table of contents
• Paragraphs are not numbered and thus don’t appear in the table of contents

Next Lesson: 03 Packages

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Global structure

When LaTeX processes an input file, it expects it to follow a certain structure. Thus every input file must contain the commands

The area between \documentclass { ... } and \begin { document } is called the preamble . It normally contains commands that affect the entire document.

After the preamble, the text of your document is enclosed between two commands which identify the beginning and end of the actual document:

You would put your text where the dots are. The reason for marking off the beginning of your text is that LaTeX allows you to insert extra setup specifications before it (where the blank line is in the example above: we'll be using this soon). The reason for marking off the end of your text is to provide a place for LaTeX to be programmed to do extra stuff automatically at the end of the document, like making an index.

A useful side-effect of marking the end of the document text is that you can store comments or temporary text underneath the \end { document } in the knowledge that LaTeX will never try to typeset them:

Document classes

When processing an input file, LaTeX needs to know which layout standard to use. Layouts standards are contained within 'class files' which have .cls as their filename extension.

Here, the class parameter for the command \documentclass specifies the .cls file to use for the document. It is recommended to put this declaration at the very beginning. The LaTeX distribution provides additional classes for other layouts, including letters and slides. It is also possible to create your own, as is often done by journal publishers, who simply provide you with their own class file, which tells LaTeX how to format your content. But we'll be happy with the standard article class for now. The options parameter customizes the behavior of the document class. The options have to be separated by commas.

Example: an input file for a LaTeX document could start with the line

which instructs LaTeX to typeset the document as an article with a base font size of 11 points, and to produce a layout suitable for double sided printing on A4 paper.

Here are some document classes that can be used with LaTeX:

Here is a comprehensive list of document classes .

The generic document classes that come with LaTeX offer some layout flexibility, which is why they have a lot of options in common. Non-generic classes (those provided by university departments or publication houses) may have different options than those shown below or no options at all. Normally, third-party classes come with their own documentation. The most common options for the generic document classes are listed in the following table:

For example, if you want a report to be in 12pt type on A4, but printed one-sided in draft mode, you would use:

While writing your document, you will probably find that there are some areas where basic LaTeX cannot solve your problem. If you want to include graphics, colored text or source code from a file into your document, you need to enhance the capabilities of LaTeX. Such enhancements are called packages. Some packages come with the LaTeX base distribution. Others are provided separately. Modern TeX distributions come with a large number of packages pre-installed. The command to use a package is pretty simple: \usepackage :

command, where package is the name of the package and options is a list of keywords that trigger special features in the package. For example, to use the color package, which lets you typeset in colors, you would type:

You can pass several options to a package, each separated by a comma.

The document environment

At the beginning of most documents there will be information about the document itself, such as the title and date, and also information about the authors, such as name, address, email etc. All of this type of information within LaTeX is collectively referred to as top matter . Although never explicitly specified (there is no \topmatter command) you are likely to encounter the term within LaTeX documentation.

A simple example:

The \title , \author , and \date commands are self-explanatory. You put the title, author name, and date in curly braces after the relevant command. The title and author are usually compulsory (at least if you want LaTeX to write the title automatically); if you omit the \date command, LaTeX uses today's date by default. You always finish the top matter with the \maketitle command, which tells LaTeX that it's complete and it can typeset the title according to the information you have provided and the class (style) you are using. If you omit \maketitle , the title will never be typeset.

Using this approach, you can only create a title with a fixed layout. If you want to create your title freely, see the Title Creation section. You should remember, however, that the goal of LaTeX is to leave formatting to the documentclass designer, and if you wish to submit your work to multiple publishers then you should avoid designing a custom title.

As most research papers have an abstract, there are predefined commands for telling LaTeX which part of the content makes up the abstract. This should appear in its logical order, therefore, after the top matter, but before the main sections of the body. This command is available for the document classes article and report , but not book .

By default, LaTeX will use the word "Abstract" as a title for your abstract. If you want to change it into anything else, e.g. "Executive Summary", add the following line before you begin the abstract environment:

Sectioning commands

The commands for inserting sections are fairly intuitive. Of course, certain commands are appropriate to different document classes. For example, a book has chapters but an article doesn't. Here are some of the structure commands found in simple.tex .

Notice that you do not need to specify section numbers; LaTeX will sort that out for you. Also, for sections, you do not need to use \begin and \end commands to indicate which content belongs to a given block.

LaTeX provides 7 levels of depth for defining sections (see table below). Each section in this table is a subsection of the one above it.

All the titles of the sections are added automatically to the table of contents (if you decide to insert one). But if you make manual styling changes to your heading, for example a very long title, or some special line-breaks or unusual font-play, this would appear in the Table of Contents as well, which you almost certainly don't want. LaTeX allows you to give an optional extra version of the heading text which only gets used in the Table of Contents and any running heads, if they are in effect. This optional alternative heading goes in [square brackets] before the curly braces:

Section numbering

Numbering of the sections is performed automatically by LaTeX, so don't bother adding them explicitly, just insert the heading you want between the curly braces. Parts get roman numerals (Part I, Part II, etc.); chapters and sections get decimal numbering like this document, and appendices (which are just a special case of chapters, and share the same structure) are lettered (A, B, C, etc.).

You can change the depth to which section numbering occurs, so you can turn it off selectively. By default it is set to 3. If you only want parts, chapters, and sections numbered, not subsections or subsubsections etc., you can change the value of the secnumdepth counter using the \setcounter command, giving the depth level you wish. For example, if you want to change it to "1":

A related counter is tocdepth , which specifies what depth to take the Table of Contents to. It can be reset in exactly the same way as secnumdepth . For example:

To get an unnumbered section heading which does not go into the Table of Contents, follow the command name with an asterisk before the opening curly brace:

All the divisional commands from \part* to \subparagraph* have this "starred" version which can be used on special occasions for an unnumbered heading when the setting of secnumdepth would normally mean it would be numbered.

If you want the unnumbered section to be in the table of contents anyway, use package unnumberedtotoc [ 1 ] . It provides the command

which will take care of a proper header as well. \addpart and \addchap are also available. KOMA classes provide those commands by default.

If you don't want to use package unnumberedtotoc, you have to do everything by hand using \addcontentsline and \markright{} (or even \markboth{}{} ).

Note that if you use PDF bookmarks you will need to add a phantom section so that hyperlinks will lead to the correct place in the document. The \phantomsection command is defined in the hyperref package, and is Commonly used like this:

For chapters you will also need to clear the page (this will also correct page numbering in the ToC):

Section number style

See Counters .

Ordinary paragraphs

Paragraphs of text come after section headings. Simply type the text and leave a blank line between paragraphs. The blank line means "start a new paragraph here": it does not mean you get a blank line in the typeset output. For formatting paragraph indents and spacing between paragraphs, refer to the Paragraph Formatting section.

• Table of contents

All auto-numbered headings get entered in the Table of Contents (ToC) automatically. You don't have to print a ToC, but if you want to, just add the command \tableofcontents at the point where you want it printed (usually after the Abstract or Summary).

Entries for the ToC are recorded each time you process your document, and reproduced the next time you process it, so you need to re-run LaTeX one extra time to ensure that all ToC pagenumber references are correctly calculated. We've already seen how to use the optional argument to the sectioning commands to add text to the ToC which is slightly different from the one printed in the body of the document. It is also possible to add extra lines to the ToC, to force extra or unnumbered section headings to be included.

The commands \listoffigures and \listoftables work in exactly the same way as \tableofcontents to automatically list all your tables and figures. If you use them, they normally go after the \tableofcontents command. The \tableofcontents command normally shows only numbered section headings, and only down to the level defined by the tocdepth counter, but you can add extra entries with the \addcontentsline command. For example if you use an unnumbered section heading command to start a preliminary piece of text like a Foreword or Preface, you can write:

This will format an unnumbered ToC entry for "Preface" in the "subsection" style. You can use the same mechanism to add lines to the List of Figures or List of Tables by substituting lof or lot for toc . If the hyperref package is used and the link does not point to the correct chapter, the command \phantomsection in combination with \clearpage or \cleardoublepage can be used (see also Labels and Cross-referencing ):

To change the title of the ToC, you have to paste this command \renewcommand { \contentsname }{ <New table of contents title> } in your document preamble. The List of Figures (LoF) and List of Tables (LoT) names can be changed by replacing the \contentsname with \listfigurename for LoF and \listtablename for LoT.

The default ToC will list headings of level 3 and above. To change how deep the table of contents displays automatically the following command can be used in the preamble:

This will make the table of contents include everything down to paragraphs. The levels are defined above on this page. Note that this solution does not permit changing the depth dynamically.

You can change the depth of specific section type, which could be useful for PDF bookmarks (if you are using the hyperref package) :

In order to further tune the display or the numbering of the table of contents, for instance if the appendix should be less detailed, you can make use of the tocvsec2 package ( CTAN , doc ).

Book structure

The standard LaTeX book class follows the same layout described above with some additions. By default a book will be two-sided, i.e. left and right margins will change according to the page number parity. Furthermore current chapter and section will be printed in the header.

If you do not make use of chapters, it is barely useful to use the book class.

Additionally the class provides macros to change the formatting of some places of the document. We will give you some advice on how to use them properly. [ 2 ]

• The frontmatter chapters will not be numbered. Page numbers will be printed in roman numerals. Frontmatter is not supposed to have sections, so they will be numbered 0.n because there is no chapter numbering. Check the Counters chapter for a fix.
• The mainmatter chapters works as usual. The command resets the page numbering. Page numbers will be printed in arabic numerals.
• The \appendix macro can be used to indicate that following sections or chapters are to be numbered as appendices. Appendices can be used for the article class too:

Only use the \appendix macro once for all appendices.

• The backmatter behaves like the frontmatter. It has the same issue with section numbering.

As a general rule you should avoid mixing the command order. Nonetheless all commands are optional, so you might consider using only a few.

Note that the special content like the table of contents is considered as an unnumbered chapter.

This is one traditional page order for books.

• Information (copyright notice, ISBN, etc.)
• Dedication if any, else empty
• List of figures (can be in the backmatter too)
• Preface chapter
• Some subordinate chapters

Bibliography

• Glossary / Index

Special pages

Comprehensive papers often feature special pages at the end, like indices, glossaries and bibliographies. Since this is quite a complex topic, we will give you details in the dedicated part Special Pages .

Any good research paper will have a complete list of references. LaTeX has two ways of inserting your references into a document:

• you can embed them within the document itself. It's simpler, but it can be time-consuming if you are writing several papers about similar subjects so that you often have to cite the same books.
• you can store them in an external BibTeX file and then link them via a command to your current document and use a BibTeX style to define how they appear. This way you can create a small database of the references you might use and simply link them, letting LaTeX work for you.

To learn how to add a bibliography to your document, see the Bibliography Management section.

Notes and references

• ↑ unnumberedtotoc
• ↑ http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/20538/what-is-the-right-order-when-using-frontmatter-tableofcontents-mainmatter

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How to make chapter*, section* and subsection* appear in the table of contents

I need to produce a PDF document in which I need some "chapters" (along with its sections and subsections) to be non-numbered but still included in the ToC.

This is for my master thesis. I'm using the book document class, because I don't like memoir defaults.

If I use \chapter* , then LaTeX remove the chapter from the ToC. But I'm required to have those as well in the ToC. Furthermore, the headings (fancy) are not changed with \chapter* .

The overall structure of the thesis is:

How can I make \chapter* , \section* , and \subsection* to appear in the ToC and to modify the headers?

I think I may be using some packages that interfere with the way headers and footers are generated. The answer of smilingthax gets the first part of the question responded: I have now my \chapter*s on the TOC.

This is my full preamble:

5 Answers 5

I don't think an specialized command exists for that. But you can use

to add it to the TOC. BTW, I didn't have problems with \chapter* and fancy, so I used:

• 4 This works almost as expected. I have the chapters on the TOC, but headers are not updated. I have a \chap{Introduction}, but the pages of that chap get the "List of figure" header. –  manu Commented Nov 10, 2010 at 21:54
• 4 Try adding \chaptermark{#1} resp. \leftmark / \rightmark. See also: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/… –  smilingthax Commented Nov 11, 2010 at 21:46
• 1 Thanks to all. I solved all my problems with \chaptermark and also with \phantomsection. –  manu Commented Feb 16, 2011 at 15:51

Variations on this question have been asked and answered several times on the TeX-specific sister site :

• Creating unnumbered chapters/sections (plus adding them to the ToC and/or header)
• \tableofcontents does not list the unnumbered chapter
• How to use \section*{something} without removing it from the Table of Contents?
• Redefine \section* so it behaves exactly as \section except leaves out the number

I'm going to copy over Werner's answer to the last of those, because it demonstrates a different technique from any of the existing answers to this question: redefine \section so that the only effect of \section* is to skip printing the section numbers. This will work even when sectioning commands are being issued from the guts of packages you don't control.

[...] Redefine \section to capture and condition on when the starred-version is used. Upon finding \section* , issue it just like you would \section , but remove the number-printing mechanism through an appropriate setting of the counter secnumdepth .

xparse provides an easy interface for (re)defining commands that may have a s tarred version, as well as an o ptional argument.

(To do the same thing to \chapter , \subsection , etc., search-and-replace section appropriately, and adjust the temporary value used for secnumdepth .)

I have solved it using the following:

I have just added this line \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Introduction} after the \chapter {Introduction}*. Then I have written my writings of this chapter. Now it appears in the table of contents perfectly.

I had the same problem and solved it with smilingthax' answer and comments. As it didn't work to use only \leftmark or \rightmark , here is a command that you can use to (i) make a chapter non-numbered (ii) add it to the TOC and (iii) have a correct page header.

The same works for sections (and subsections respectively):

\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}

worked for me as a solution if you used the un-asterisk version of \chapter{} etc for the book class. Hyperref works as well if you wanted a linkable ToC along with my solution. Make sure to compile it twice to get it to work on both the ToC and inline.

Unfortunately however, your preamble killed my TexStudio attempt to check to see if it worked for your exact code, but I have faith.

Used TeXstudio 2.6.2 (SVN 4110M) Using Qt Version 4.8.5, compiled with Qt 4.8.5 R On Windows 7 64-bit

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How to Write a Thesis in LaTeX (Part 5): Customising Your Title Page and Abstract

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 post we looked at adding a bibliography to our thesis using the biblatex package . In this, the final post of the series, we're going to look at customising some of the opening pages. In the first video we made a rather makeshift title page using the \maketitle command and by using an \includegraphics command in the \title command. Although this works, it doesn't give us as much flexibility as we may want.

The Title Page

A much better way to do this is to use the titlepage environment. We'll do this in a separate .tex file and then input it. The first thing we'll do is enclose everything in the title page within the center environment so it's all aligned to the centre. Next we need to instruct L a T e X to leave a gap between the top of the page and the first line of text. To do this we use the \vspace command followed by a length. We also need to add an asterisk into the command to make sure L a T e X doesn't decide to ignore the command. Next we'll add the thesis title in bold font using the \textbf command. To leave a gap between this and the next line of text we use the \vspace command again, this time without the asterisk. Next we'll add in a subtitle followed by some more vertical space and then the author name in bold font. This concludes what we want at the top of the title page—the rest of the content we'll add at the bottom of the title page.

To separate these two sections out we'll use the \vfill command which will automatically add in the amount of vertical space needed for the content to fill the page. Next we'll add in a line of text to specify what degree the thesis is being submitted for. The double backslash is used to create a new line. We'll then add more space before adding in the university logo specifying it's width as a fraction of the text width. Finally we'll add in some information about the university and the date.

Now in the main .tex file we can replace the \maketitle command with an input command linked to our new title page. If we now compile the code we can see all the items have been correctly processed:

However, the text is quite small so we'll go back and change the font sizes. To do this we'll use one of the simple font-sizing commands. There are ten of these to choose from, ranging from smallest to largest they are:

Let's make the title as big as it can be (using these simple commands) by choosing \Huge . We'll then make the subtitle two steps smaller using \large . When we use one of these commands they affect all the text in it's scope. Therefore in it's current state all the remaining text on the page will appear in the size of the subtitle. We'll keep it like this for the author name and degree title but we'll drop down one size for the university details and the date:

The abstract

We can also customise other pages, such as the abstract. Instead of using an unnumbered chapter, we'll create a new .tex file, customise the layout and then input it. At the top of this file we need to change the page style to plain in order to stop the headers being added in. Now in a similar way to the title page we'll add in some custom titles and then the abstract text.

This is what it will look like added in:

This concludes our series on writing a basic thesis. If you want to play around with the thesis we've created in this series you can open the project in Overleaf .

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 .
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Make Publications section on thesis

I would like to make a section in my Ph.D. thesis dedicated to the publications (structured as if it is a chapter).

This is the code I am currently using for my thesis (without considering the package list):

How can I insert the publications section?

• Maybe the biblatex-publist package would do what you want? –  Bernard Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 15:09
• And then the code for inserting the publication list how would it look like? –  letoppina Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 15:34
• biblatex-publist looks like it's conceived to typeset one's list of publications as a standalone document, and not as a part of a master document, like the phd thesis. I say that after a brief look at the documentation. –  Alessandro Cuttin Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 16:13
• Actually, I never used this package. If it can't work as part of the master document, you might try to filter a bibliography containing your publications with a keyword, adding this keyword (say ‘own’) to the bibliography items for which you're an author, then print it with a \printbibliography[keyword=own] command. –  Bernard Commented Aug 24, 2020 at 16:58
• @Bernard indeed it is the approach I suggested ;) –  Alessandro Cuttin Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 11:43

Back in the days, I've managed to do that as follows, with biblatex (which I encourage you to adopt).

Add a keyword in the bibtex entries of the publication of yours, like keywords = {mine} .

Then, for normal references, use \printbibliography[notkeyword=mine] (so that your publications are filtered out).

Then, with the help of refcontext , create your list of publications. I used \nocite{} to set the order of appearance, since refcontext is called with [sorting = none] . By using \nocite{} , it is assumed that your works are not referenced throughout the text, and are only listed at the end of the manuscript. This is also the reason why notkeyword is required in the previous step.

Indeed you don't need to separate references.bib from mypublications.bib , but it is likely that you are going to use the different bib files of your papers separately, and it is fastest to add those files separately, instead of merging them (unless there are duplicates, of course).

• 1 Always my best regards...and +1. –  Sebastiano Commented Mar 11, 2021 at 21:03

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