Style and Use

Appearance.

Don't try to produce perfect copy from the start. Get the structure and content of the document right, and only then, at the last stage, sort out any odd formatting problems such as widows and orphans (see below), or extra spaces.

Emphasis.

Typography uses italics rather than underlining for emphasis. Don't overdo the use of emphasis, as it soon loses its effect. A further useful convention is to set the first occurrence of a significant technical term in boldface.

Widows &Orphans.

A widow is the last line of a paragraph appearing as the top line of a page. Similarly, an orphan is the first line of a paragraph appearing as the last line of a page. The page-breaking algorithm in is quite good, but these still occur from time to time. Careful use of \newpage can remove orphans, but leave such tasks until the very end of document production. Widows are harder to remove.

Style Options.

A dissertation should be produced using the following documentstyle options.

report style, which provides for the use of chapter headings.

11pt size. The default size for is 10pt, which is really too small when used with an A4-sized page.

a4 or a4wide options. These enlarge the printed area to make better use of a sheet of A4 paper. The a4 option leaves a larger margin and is probably the more suitable one to use. (The a4wide option makes use of the a4 option and they are mutually exclusive.)

dspaceon, which will need to be defined as in the first example of Chapter . Stretching the interline spacing by a factor of 1.3 is about right, but remember to turn it off for example and mathematical expressions as these may look odd in such spacing.

Glossary.

Appending a glossary of technical terms seems to be a growing trend, but if you do so, take care to obtain some good definitions. A glossary is really only justified where the topic makes use of many specialised terms.

Index.

You can produce these with , but the provision of an index is NOT recommended for dissertations. Better to provide a tableofcontents at the beginning, since this guides the reader more effectively.