10 Tips on writing a Master Thesis in LaTeX with Overleaf
Tips and tricks that will make your LaTeX experience much much better.
During the last months I’ve been using LaTeX to write my Master Thesis. LaTeX is the current standard when it comes to writing scientific papers and alike as it greatly facilitates citing external sources and referencing sections, figures and tables from other parts of document, which can’t be said done with such ease with other tools (Yes I am looking at you Word).
In my case I used, Overleaf a widely known Online Latex Editor with Collaborative features. Overleaf removes some of the hassle of having a Latex editor in your computer such as managing packages, and syncing your work with the co-authors.
In this article I go over some of the tips and tricks that I found along the way.
1. Use a template
Sometimes it can be hard to get your thesis just as its suppose to, there’s many things to think about, how will the title page be, how are the references set up, how should the page numbering be etc. Most Universities provide a LaTeX template with all the necessary pre-configurations for it. If not, you can always find a good starting point here.
2. Set Spell Check to you language
You can set overleaf to do spell-checking in your language by going on the side menu. It will remove all the red squiggly lines.
⚠️Attention: This only check if the spelling is correct, any syntax error you have, will not be detected⚠️
3. Organize your project files
Most thesis are extensive documents with many chapters and if you don’t organize your project, soon enough you won’t know where stuff is. This is the file structure I use:
- Chapter Folder: contains all the chapters. If a chapter is too big I sub divide it into multiple files. I put a number before the each chapter to know just by the name, where it will appear.
- Images: an folder that contains sub-folders with images for each chapter.
- Tables: contains all the tables you have used
4. Add a \note command
Sometimes you want to add a note, to do something later. Just writing, “todo” in those places simply does not cut it, as it is hard to find. You could change the color of that text to red, but you may still not find them if you have a large document.
For this, add the commands below before the \begin{document}:
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand\note[1]{\textcolor{red}{#1}\PackageWarning{MyWarnings}{#1}}Then when you wish to add a note, just type on your document, besides showing that in red in the document, it will also show you a Warning on the logs.
\note{My Note}
5. Keep your references consistent
Throughout your whole document you will reference other parts of it, you may have to reference images, tables, or even other chapters and sections. In order to keep things or understandable I use the following notations for the labels:
TYPE:NAMEexamples:
sec:method1 //for sections
chap:intro //for chapters
tab:test1 //for tables
img:age_distributions //for images
6. Sync your Overleaf project with git
Overleaf is a great tool but you do need internet to use it. What if you are going to a spot where there is none available but you still want to crunch a bit on your Thesis? Well Overleaf uses the git versioning system so you can easily. clone your project onto your computer. Do all the additions you want offline and push them back once you have internet again. The changes you’ve made will be automatically added onto overleaf.
In case you don’t know how to use git, there is also the option to use Dropbox to do the synchronization.
While offline you can use a simple text editor, or tools such as TeXworks or TeXstudio that will help you out. I personally use VSCode in combination with a Latex plugin.
7. Add a Mendeley Account to it
Mendeley is a great tool where you can store all the scientific papers and thesis you read and it will automatically generate their bib reference. It has a great desktop application as well as a Browser Extension that lets you add a new document on the fly.
Overleaf has a seamless integration with Mendeley! So as soon as you add a paper to Mendeley you can automatically add a Reference to it in your thesis.
Follow the steps below to Link your Mendeley account
8. Use an Image to Latex Formula Converter
Sometimes you find a formula on a article that you wish to use or alter, or you have a formula written down on a piece of paper that you want to get into LaTeX.
Mathpix Snip is a great tool that allows you to do just that. You simply select the area around the formula that you want to copy and that is it. The free version lets you do this for 50 formulas each month which is more than enough.
9. Use a table generator
When you need to import, big tables to your thesis, doing it by hand will take you ages. For this there is this website:
You can simply copy and paste a table from excel or a Google Sheets, customize it it will generate the LaTeX code for you!
10. Use an external spell checker
After having a final version of you thesis, pass all of your thesis through a tool with spell checker, I personally use Word, but other tools such as Grammarly also do the job. Copy each section of text from the latex files into the tool and and fix them. Then copy the checked version back in Overleaf. You will be amazed with all the errors didn’t notice.
Conclusion
And that’s it, hopefully with these helpful tips will improve your productivity and make writing your thesis that much easier!
