Southampton PhD Thesis LaTeX Template

General

This thesis template follows the University of Southampton guidelines as described in May 2018 on the University web sites here and here.

This template was inspired by other templates by the following people:

• Steve Gunn
• William Woodhead
• Alexandra Diem

To use the template clone the repository and edit the corresponding *.tex files. Alternatively the class file sotonphd.cls can be copied into the appropriate texmf/tex/latex/ local folder. On a Mac with TeX Live installed the class file can be saved as follows: ~/Library/texmf/tex/latex/sotonphd/sotonphd.cls.

Preview

Download the thesis.pdf file for the full preview.

Title Page

Abstract

Chapter Text 1

Chapter Text 2

Part

Files included

The files included in this repository are the following:

• chapters/*: tex-files with containing individual chapters
• img/*: folder for pictures
• supplements/*: contains bibliography style files (*.bst), biblography files (*.bib), and can be used to store additional files needed for the thesis, such as additional packages (*.sty) etc.
• input_custom_include.tex: additional packages and custom command definitions to be included in the main thesis file
• input_frontmatter.tex: contains various elements of the front matters: the title page, the abstract, the table of contents, the list of figures and tables, the declaration of authorship, and the acknowledgments
• README.md: this information file; can be deleted after cloning the repository
• sotonphd.cls: the class file containing all the definitions and setting needed for the thesis
• thesis.pdf: a possible output of the pdflatex command
• thesis.tex: the main thesis tex-file

Required Packages

The following packages are loaded by the sotonphd.cls file:

• nag (Issues warnings if deprecated packages are used)
• float (in order to force figure placement with option [H])
• geometry
• mathtools
• amsfonts
• amssymb
• parskip (Leave some space between paragraphs instead of indenting a new paragraph)
• xcolor
• hyperref
• babel
• inputenc
• fontenc
• lmodern
• microtype
• natbib
• bookmark
• xspace (Used in the definition of the \etc custom command)
• setspace (Loads \singlespacing, \onehalfspacing, \doublespacing)
• graphicx
• caption (make "Figure x.x" be printed in bold face)
• fancyhdr (style page headers and footers)

Additionally, just for the example's sake, the following packages are loaded in the input_custom_include.tex:

• lipsum
• booktabs
• longtable
• tabu

These packages can be removed if not needed.

Class Options

The following options can be passed to the sotonphd class file

• sotonformat: sets the margins, the font, and the line spacing according to the university guidelines; if this option is not included then the margins have to be set manually by using the \geometry{} command, for example \geometry{inner=1in, outer=1.2in, top=1in, bottom=1in, paperwidth=190mm, paperheight=250mm}
• final: deactivates the \todo{} and \todomaybe{} commands defined in the class file
• print: disable colourful links

Command Definitions

The class file defines the following commands

• \todo{Things to do}
• \todomaybe{Things to maybe do}
• \eg
• \ie
• \etc

and the following maths operators

• \tr
• \id
• \diag
• \sech
• \csch
• \arcsec
• \arcCot
• \arcCsc
• \arcCosh
• \arcsinh
• \arctanh
• \arcsech
• \arcCsch
• \arcCoth

Metadata

The metadata have to be entered in the thesis.tex file using the following commands:

• \author{Name Surname}
• \title{Title}
• \date{Month Year}
• \university{University of Southampton}
• \faculty{Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering}
• \department{Physics and Astronomy}