Typing Your University of Georgia Thesis With LATEX - Artificial ...

Typing Your 

University of Georgia 

Thesis With L A TEX: 

Frequently Asked Questions 

Michael A. Covington 

Artificial Intelligence Center 

The University of Georgia 

Athens, GA 30602-7415 

http://www.ai.uga.edu/∼mc 

Last revised 2000 April 28 

1 What is L A TEX? 

L A TEX, by Leslie Lamport, is an extension of TEX, the computer typesetting 

system designed by Donald Knuth. This software system is used to typeset 

books, journals, papers, and theses in the mathematical sciences. Knuth and 

Lamport had two goals in designing it: 

• To use the computer to equal the quality of the best conventional typesetting. 

No longer does “word processing” mean “a poor substitute for 

real printing.” 

• To separate the jobs of the author and the typesetter. 

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Other word processors turn the screen into a blank piece of paper and let 

you type on it. L A TEX isnotyourtypewriter, it’s your typist. For example, 

to mark the beginning of a chapter, you type something like this: 

\chapter{Literature Review} 

and L A TEX automatically determines what a chapter heading should look 

like. It does this by consulting a style sheet. You do not have to worry about 

whether you’ve hit Enter the same number of times at the beginning of each 

chapter, or whether all the chapter headings are centered and the margins 

are correct. That’s the (automated) typist’s job. 

2 How is “L A TEX” pronounced? 

The X in TEX is actually a Greek chi, with the sound of ch in Scottish loch or 

German ach. Thus,TEX is pronounced “tekh.” It is short for Greek tekhnē 

“art, craft.” 

L A TEX is pronounced ‘‘lah-tekh” in the Northeast, ‘‘lay-tekh” in England and 

the South, and several different ways in the West. 

3 What’s it like to run L A TEX? 

L A TEX isnot a single integrated piece of software. It has several parts. The 

normal process for typing and printing a paper is as follows. On finding an 

error or discovering that a change is needed, you can go back to any earlier 

step at any time. 

1. Use a text editor (Windows Notepad or whatever text editor you like) 

to type your document on a file whose name ends in ṫex. 

2. Go to a command prompt and run latex to create a .dvi file. 

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3. Optionally, preview the .dvi file on-screen. Some of us skip this step. 

4. Run dvips to convert the .dvi file to PostScript. 

5. Use GhostView to view the PostScript file and print it (even if you do 

not have a PostScript printer). 

4 Who benefits the most from using L A TEX? 

Those who need to typeset mathematical formulas or computer programs; 

those whose theses are likely to be published by a book publisher; and those 

who plan to submit their theses electronically. 

5 Who should not use L A TEX? 

If you consider yourself a “computer dummy” and can use only the simplest 

software, or if you do not have the time or patience to learn a new set of 

technical skills, you won’t like L A TEX. On the other hand, you probably will 

not type your thesis correctly with a conventional word processor either. 

(Let’s face it, typing a thesis correctly is a technical challenge, no matter 

what software you do it with!) You should hire a typist. 

6 What are MikTEX, emTEX, teTEX, etc.? 

These are implementations of L A TEX for particular computers, incorporating 

Knuth and Lamport’s original computer programs plus various tools to make 

them easier to use or more versatile. All of them are 100% compatible with 

the original L A TEX. 

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7 Is there L A TEX for Macintosh, Linux, Amiga, 

Sun, BeBox...? 

Yes. L A TEX has been ported to a huge variety of computers and produces 

identical output on all of them, using identical file formats. If you have 

Linux, you almost certainly already have L A TEX. 

8 What is L A TEX2ε? 

The version of L A TEX that has been in use for the last several years. It was 

preceded by L A TEX 2.09. Those are the only two version of L A TEX thathave 

been distributed widely. There will eventually be a L A TEX 3, but not very 

soon. 

9 Where do I get L A TEX? 

You can download it free of charge from various sites; follow the links on 

Michael Covington’s web page (http://www.ai.uga.edu/∼mc). You can sometimes 

borrow a CD-ROM containing MikTEX and GhostView from the Artificial 

Intelligence Center. 

10 Where is the documentation for L A TEX? 

In the book LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, by Leslie Lamport, 

2nd edition, published by Addison-Wesley. You must buy this book. 

Other books about L A TEX are useful but are not the official guide. 

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11 Where can I get help with L A TEX? 

First, read Lamport’s book. You cannot get along without it. 

Second, you can ask questions on the newsgroups comp.text.tex (international) 

and uga.tex-latex (local, only accessible on campus). 

Third, if you have problems that are specific to uga.sty, and particularly 

if uga.sty does not appear to be meeting UGa thesis format requirements, 

please contact me (Michael Covington, mc@uga.edu). 

12 What is uga.sty? 

A style sheet for L A TEX that makes it follow the format for University of 

Georgia theses and dissertations. 

13 Where do I get uga.sty and how do I install 

it? 

Download it from ftp://ftp.ai.uga.edu/pub/tex/uga-thesis. Be sure to get 

the latest version. 

Install it by putting it in the same directory as your thesis, or in directory 

texmf/tex/latex of your TEX system. 

Be sure to get the file ugasampl.tex along with it. 

14 Where is the documentation for uga.sty? 

You’re looking at part of it. The rest is in the files uga.sty and ugasampl.tex. 

You can and must read these files with your text editor. 

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15 Do I have to get uga.sty before typing my 

thesis? 

No. You can type your thesis using the L A TEX report documentclass (described 

in Lamport’s Book); this will enable you to produce neat, singlespaced 

copies of the work in progress. When it’s finished, get uga.sty and 

make the small additions to your thesis that are described there. 

16 What are the required parts of a thesis 

typed with uga.sty? 

They are described in uga.sty itself, which you can read with your text 

editor. Alternatively, you can use ugasampl.tex as sample to imitate. 

17 Why is my table of contents blank or incorrect? 

You must run L A TEX twice in order to get a correct table of contents. The 

first time, it keeps records of where things are; the second time, it actually 

generates the table of contents. If the table of contents is long, you may need 

to run L A TEX three times to ensure that adequate space is left for it. 

18 How do I type a percent sign? 

See Lamport’s book. A quick answer: Type “\%”. 

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19 How do I type a tilde (∼)? 

This character often occurs in web addresses. You will quickly discover that in 

L A TEX, when you type “~” you get a blank. (Specifically, you get a “required 

space,” a space that cannot be broken across a line break.) 

To get “∼” type“$\sim$”. 

20 What are italics used for? 

All of the things that would be underlined in a handwritten document, including 

titles of books, foreign words, and the like. 

In linguistics, it is normal to put foreign words in italics and their definitions 

in single quotes. For example, Agatha Christie’s famous detective is named 

after the French word poireau ‘leek’. 

21 What is underlining used for? 

Almost nothing. Roman type is not normally underlined; use italics instead. 

22 What is typewriter type used for? 

Computer program languages, whether displayed or quoted in text. 

example, here is part of a program written in C: 

For 

for(i=100,i>0,i--) 

{ 

printf("%d bottles of beer on the wall...\n"); 

} 

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It demonstrates how to use the for statement to count down from 100 to 1. 

23 What is the verbatim environment used 

for? 

Computer programs, as just demonstrated. 

24 What is sans-serif type used for? 

Almost nothing except labels within illustrations. 

25 How do I type the bibliography? 

See Lamport’s book. L A TEX allows you to refer to bibliography items in your 

text with markers such as \cite{Chomsky} then have L A TEX automatically 

turn these into bracketed numbers in the bibliography. 

With uga.sty, simply use the thebibliography environment exactly as 

Lamport describes it. This will produce a bibliography in the form of an 

unnumbered chapter at the end of your thesis. 

26 What if each chapter has its own bibliography? 

If you have bibliographies at the ends of the individual chapters, use the 

environment chapterbibliography instead of thebibliography. It works 

exactly the same way except that the bibliography becomes a normally num- 

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ered section, not an unnumbered chapter. There is an example of this in 

ugasampl.tex. 

The chapterbibliography environment is provided by uga.sty. 

27 What if I don’t like bracketed numbers? 

Here is an example of a trick to get L A TEX to print a bibliography without 

bracketed numbers. Basically, you are telling L A TEX to put the author’s name 

in place of the bracketed number. Note that this involves using \item rather 

than \bibitem. 

\begin{thebibliography}{} 

\item[Covington, Michael A.] 

\emph{Natural Language Processing for Prolog Programmers.} 

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1994. 

\item[O’Keefe, Richard A.] 

\emph{The Craft of Prolog.} 

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. 

\end{thebibliography} 

When doing this, don’t use the \cite command; instead, handle your references 

manually. 

You can do exactly thesamethingwithchapterbibliography. 

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28 Why is there too much space after some 

of the periods? 

L A TEX assumes that every period marks the end of a sentence, so it leaves 

extra space after it. You should use a required space (~) after every period 

that does not mark the end of a sentence. Type “T.~S.~Eliot” toprint 

“T. S. Eliot” or the like. 

Alternatively, right after \begin{document} you can issue the command 

\frenchspacing 

in order to turn off the extra space after periods. “French” spacing is perfectly 

acceptable in an American thesis. 

29 Why do some words hang out past the 

right margin? 

When L A TEX cannot break a line satisfactorily, it leaves a word sticking out 

into the margin and gives you an “Overfull hbox” error message. It is up to 

you to rearrange the text so that it fits. 

30 What is an overfull hbox? 

See previous question. 

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31 How do I turn off justification? 

Justification means printing with a straight right margins. It is not required 

for University of Georgia theses, and if your text contains many formulas, 

web addresses, or other unbreakable items, you may get considerably neater 

results by turning it off. To do this, issue the command 

\raggedright 

immediately after \begin{document}. 

You may need to turn off justification only within a bibliography. In that 

case, put the \raggedright command after \begin{thebibliography} or 

\begin{chapterbibliography} as the case may be. It will then affect only 

the bibliography. 

32 How do I put a picture into my thesis? 

Here’s the process... 

1. Learn the difference between a vector (“draw”) program and a bitmap 

(“paint”) program. Vector programs, such as Corel Draw and Micrografx 

Windows Draw, tell the computer to draw lines at particular 

positions; they are the right tool for generating diagrams of all types. 

Bitmap programs are only for working with digitized photographs and 

the like; their output has an unpleasant stairstep appearance when 

enlarged or resized. 

2. Produce professional-quality artwork. (You may want to hire a professional 

illustrator.) Artwork in your thesis should look as good as the 

artwork in published books. 

3. Save your artwork as an encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file with no 

TIFF header. (The drawing software may ask you whether you want a 

TIFF header; say no.) 

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4. Use the graphics package (described in Lamport’s book) or the epsf 

package to incorporate your art into your L A TEX document. One way 

to do this is as follows: 

(a) Add the command \usepackage{epsf} right after \documentclass. 

(b) Use the command \centerline{\epsffile{xxxxxxx.eps}} (with 

the appropriate filename substituted) to put the picture in your 

document. Normally this will be within a figure environment as 

described in Lamport’s book. 

33 How do I put a Windows screen shot into 

my thesis? 

When writing about software, you many need a picture of the computer 

screen with a program running. Under Windows 95 and up, you can “take 

a picture” of the screen, by pressing Print Screen (or Alt-Print Screen if 

you only need the current window). This puts a copy of the screen into 

the Windows clipboard. Then open up your favorite paint program (bitmap 

program) and choose Paste. Edit the picture to your satisfaction, save it, 

and export it as encapsulated PostScript. For the rest of the process, see the 

previous question. 

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