The following thesis format templates should help you get started with formatting your thesis or dissertation. Georgia Tech provides free Overleaf Professional accounts for all students, faculty, and staff who would like to use the collaborative, online LaTeX editor for their projects.

LaTeX Resources

  • LaTeX Project
  • Texmaker
    • Set the Quick Build command configuration to: “PdfLaTeX + Bib(la)tex) + PdfLaTeX (x2) + View Pdf”.
    • Use the Quick Build command to compile and view your .pdf file.
    • If you decide to use a “build” subdirectory for output files, you must point BibTeX to the proper subdirectory.
  • MiKTeX

LaTeX Help

LaTeX is a powerful text processing and formatting tool that produces clean, consistent results. This high-quality typesetting system is a free service provided by Georgia Tech. It is available on many platforms and can be used with the editor of your choice. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents.

Although Graduate Education does not offer direct technical support, Tech does provide help via campus partners such as the Library and Overleaf (online LaTeX editor). Please check the Library events page for courses on LaTex, or contact Overleaf directly.

Many students have also found useful tips for dealing with specific problems by entering keywords such as "LaTeX formatting table captions" in their favorite search engines.

Most Common LaTeX to PDF Problem

The most common problem we see with Electronic Theses & Dissertations (ETDs) created in LaTeX is the altering of the page size, particularly an increase of the bottom margin to more than one inch, and sometimes an accompanying decrease in the top and/or right margins to less than the requisite one inch. Less frequently, there will also be problems with figures disappearing or changing appearance. The sizing error may be introduced inadvertently during the conversion from .dvi to .pdf or .ps when the program doing the converting defaults to the A4 European page size. Always check your PDF file after conversion, even if your source file looked perfect.

The following fixes have been found by your fellow Tech graduate students and passed along to the Graduate Thesis Office. We hope they help you:

  • First, before converting the .tex file to .dvi, make sure the class header file in your .tex file says something like "\documentclass[12pt, letter]{article}".
  • If you are converting the resulting .dvi file to a .ps file, be sure the dvips options specify "-P pdf -t letter".
  • When you are converting to .pdf from either the .dvi file directly or from a .ps file, locate the C:\texmf\dvipdfm\config\config\ or analogous folder for PDFs in your system. Replace the line "p a4" with "p letter".