Master Thesis Template Polimi

LaTeX template for master theses at Politecnico di Milano.

Latex tips

In this section, you can find some tips that can help you in writing texts on LaTeX.

Put a tilde after a period that is not a full stop.

wrong: Dr. House is a...
correct: Dr.~Dolittle is a...
Use \emph{} only the first time a new term is introduced, and never again.
Avoid using \vspace in figures unless it's absolutely necessary. It usually messes with the space below the caption.
Single quotation marks are produced in LaTeX using ` and '. Double quotation marks are produced by typing `` and ''. The undirected double quote character " produces double right quotation marks: it should never be used where left quotation marks are required (source).
Avoid defining your own chapters and sections styles. Stick to what the template uses.
Should you have to cite more than one reference at once, put them together inside the curly brackets.

wrong: \cite{foo}, \cite{bar}
correct: \cite{foo, bar}
Always add a ~ after et al. and vs. to avoid extra space

wrong: as shown by Doe et al. \cite{foo}, the...
correct: as shown by Doe et al.~\cite{foo}, the...
All \ref are preceded by a tilde.

wrong: Figure\ref{fig:mae}
correct: Figure~\ref{fig:mae}
The \autoref command provided by the hyperref package (included in the template) let you refer to items by automatically adding the inferred prefix. The following examples produce the same output.

correct: As shown in Figure~\ref{fig:mae}
correct: As shown in \autoref{fig:mae}

Other LaTeX suggestions

English tips

In this section, you can find some tips that can help you not to incur in common mistakes while writing in English.

Never use a hyphen after an adverb that ends in "ly"

wrong: widely-known paper
correct: widely known paper
Numbers one to ten should be written as words, greater numbers as digits.
Write gender-neutral. Avoid using "he/she", use plural or they. If absolutely necessary, use only "she".
Never use citations in their own as nouns.

wrong: as [22] shows...
correct: as the work of Doe et al. [22] shows...
Avoid using citations in the abstract. The abstract can be used on its own in different context (e.g., on the conference web page) so having a citation number there is pointless.
Do not forget the period at the end of the captions.
How to use i.e., e.g., vs., et al., and etc. Know what they mean (id est, exempli gratia, versus, et cetera, et alia). There is always a comma after e.g., and i.e., and they should not be ever used to begin a sentence. Always use a comma before etc.
Use "or" instead of "/".
Use a comma before the "and" when the "and" separates two full sentences.

wrong: I like apples and I adore pears.
correct: I like apples, and I adore pears.
Never put a comma between subject and verb. In lists, use a comma before the last item, even if it starts with "and".

wrong: We will eat meat, vegetables and bread.
correct: We will eat meat, vegetables, and bread.

wrong: I like apples, and pears.
correct: I like apples and pears.
The sounds of the acronym/initialism determines the use of "a" or "an".
Do not define acronyms if they are not actually used anywhere else in the text.
Do not use abbreviations such as: don't, isn't, aren't, we're, etc. Instead, use the expanded version: do not, is not, are not, we are, etc.
Do not be too verbose.

bad: We did this experiment in order to show...
better: We did this experiment to show...
"Section" and "Chapter" are uppercase if they refer to a specific section/chapter, with the relative number. If it is used in a generic fashion, then it is lower case. "In this section"/"In this chapter" senteces are always followed by a comma.

correct: In Section 4, we will show...
correct: In this section, we will show...
Always make sure that it is absolutely clear what you are referring to when you use "which", "it", "these", etc. The reader will back-track in the sentence and match the pronoun to the closest noun.
Write in direct form, the passive form confuses the reader because it is not clear who performs the action.

bad: A model that outperforms the state of the art has been built.
better: We built a model that outperforms the state of the art.
Write uniformly and make sure verbal tenses are consistent in periods/sections. It is convenient to stick to the present throughout all the thesis.
Avoid too many synonyms, as they confuse the reader.

Other English suggestions

Utilities

Grammarly: make your writing clear and engaging, eliminating grammar errors.
Ludwig Guru: helps you understand if your English sentence is correct and makes sense in the academic context.
Reverso Context: translate sentences in English according to the context relying on verified translation examples.

License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.

Contact

Ivan Marisca - @marshka

ste7en / master-thesis-template-polimi