Last modified: 2005 Jan 17
AUTHESIS is a package of files that produces a document which
conforms to American University's College of Arts and Sciences
(AU-CAS) dissertaion formatting requirements.
As of early 2002, there are two acceptable formats.
a) the AU-CAS traditional dissertaion formatting requirements,
as embodied in the Guide to Thesis Perparation,
and
b) the AU-CAS revised dissertation format,
and embodied in the published addendum to the Guide to Thesis Preparation.
Either one of the above options is acceptable,
it is up to the dissertation writer to select which format is more to their liking
(see instructions below on how to select either option).
However we strongly prefer the revised format,
which drops certain formatting requirements dating to the use of typewriters for thesis preparation.
AUTHESIS was initially hacked by Alan Cibils from UCTHESIS, which is available on CTAN. Faculty member Alan Isaac has done most of the work on AUTHESIS since Alan Cibils graduated. Currently bug reports should go to Alan Isaac.
For your convenience in proposal formatting, you may wish to use auproposal.sty with the article class. Just put the style file in your proposal folder and add the following in your preamble.
\usepackage{auproposal}
\title{Dissertation Title}
\author{Your Name}
\degreeyear{\today} %\today produces the current date, not just year
\degree{Doctor of Philosophy}
\chair{Your Chair}
\secondreader{Your Second Reader}
\thirdreader{Your Third Reader}
\degreefield{Economics}
The big proposal is that \maketitle command will then correctly format your title page.
\begin{titlepage}
\maketitle
\end{titlepage}
That is the big payoff. However, you will also be provided a frontmatter environment to contain a table of contents, if you wish.
IMPORTANT: You should use natbib.sty for citations, which is included in your LaTeX distribution. Please look within the file natbib.sty for information on how to use the LaTeX "\cite" commands. You will primarily use \citet (cite as text) and \citep (cite in parentheses).
If you are using the traditional AU-CAS format (but why would you??), you will also need the underline package in order to underline your bibliography book and journal titles and your section headings. We do not recommend going this route: the traditional format is an ugly hangover from the days of typewriters.
NOTE for Scientific Word Users: Adding a LaTeX package to Scientific Word will provide you with guidance on how to make authesis work with Scientific Word. You will want authesis.cst and AmericanUniversityThesis.shl. We do not provide any support for this, but we do want to hear about problems.
PDF PRINTING NOTICE: If you are using pdflatex or pdftex to generate .pdf files and printing them with the Acrobat Reader, make sure that the "fit to page" box is un-checked. If that box is checked, it will result in your thesis or dissertation being printed with incorrect margins.
We provide a template for you to get started: a test thesis with an associated bib file. It is strongly recommended that you look at this file to see how to code your LaTeX dissertation file.
This section is an updated version of the readme file provided with the UCTHESIS package (any similarities are purely intentional). By reading this you will hopefully get a good idea of what you need to be able to use AUTHESIS.
IMPORTANT: You should be aware of that file autest.tex produces a sample dissertation (by the fictitious, but very irritating, Perry H. Disdainful). Use this as a skeleton and fill in the appropriate information.
As a last resort (unless you are quite fluent in LaTeX and TeX), you can look at the files authesis.cls, auecon.clo, aucas.clo, and autxx.clo (where xx=10, 11, or 12 depending on the point size you choose) contain the code that produces your dissertation output. There are some comments in there that could be helpful. Cibils inserted comments with the literal ABC wherever he made a change to the original package. Isaac inserted comments with the literal AI wherever he made a change.
If you don't understand LaTeX at all, this file might help you get started, but, since you're going to be writing a 100+ page document, you should invest in a copy of the LaTeX manual (by Leslie Lamport the original author of LaTeX). Some people like the more detailed Guide to LaTeX2e (by Helmut Kopka and Patrick Daly).
The LaTeX Companion, by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (who have been involved in developping and supporting the new version of LaTeX) is also quite good. It gives a lot of additional information on commonly available style packages, and for advance users it includes useful information for writing or modifying classes.
IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are using BibTeX for your bibliography (which we strongly recommend) you must run LaTeX at least three times after running BibTeX. This is required in order to get correct page numbers in the table of contents and lists of figures and tables.
To use the AUTHESIS class, make sure that the authesis.cls file is on your TEXINPUTS search path and use the authesis class with appropriate options. For example, you can put the following command at the start of your input file: \documentclass[econ,11pt]{authesis}.
The AUTHESIS style is a modified version of the standard LaTeX REPORT style. The available commands are almost identical to those of the REPORT style, so your best starting point for documentation is probably the LaTeX manual written by Leslie Lamport.
The other key service provided by this class is that it generates correct front matter (title page, copyright page, abstract, etc.) with a fairly simple set of commands. The format of the front matter is specified quite explicitly in the document Guide to Preparation of Theses and Dissertations distributed by the AU College of Arts and Sciences, your department, or the library. It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you obtain a copy of this document and read it before you get too far into your dissertation given that it will be up to you to provide some of the formatting requirements. For example, table captions must go above the table, but figure captions must go below a figure. You need to know this kind of information to insert items in their appropriate place.
\degreeyear{}
\degree{}
\chair{}
\secondreader{}
\thirdreader{}
\degreefield{}
The title and copyright pages have extremely rigid formats that allow them
to be generated automatically once the above declarations have been made.
To generate them, invoke the macros
\maketitle
\maketitle
\copyrightpage
\maketitle is duplicated because you must have two copies of the title
page. You should probably invoke them in that order, because that's the
order required by the guidelines.
NOTE: The top margin on the title page must be 2 inches. Unfortunately, LaTeX adjusts the margins depending on how many lines there are in the dissertation title. I have calibrated the top margin to work for three line titles. If your title is longer or shorter you might have to go into authesis.cls and modify the top margin setting.
You need to provide two abstract pages, which are identical except that one must be numbered (in lower case roman numerals) and the other must be unnumbered. Also, only one of the abstract pages must have an entry in the table of contents. This presented a somewhat tricky problem which was solved by creating two separate abstract environments.
To generate an unnumbered abstract page:
\abstract
Abstract text here
To generate a numbered abstract page:
\abstractn
Same abstract text here (use cut and paste!).
Both Abstracts must be inside the Front Matter so that the pages are numbered correctly (in lower case roman). Therefore it is important that you place the \begin{frontmatter} command before the \abstract command.
The remaining front matter (dedication, table of contents, lists of figures and tables, acknowledgements) must be put inside the frontmatter environment, which ensures that page-numbering is handled properly. Within this frontmatter environment, you put the environments and commands for the rest of the front matter. There are environments for dedication and acknowledgements and the standard LaTeX commands for producing \tableofcontents, \listoffigures, and \listoftables.
The standard LaTeX commands are well documented in the LaTeX manual. You will probably have to hand edit the .lof (list of figures) and .lot (list of tables) files to make verbose captions more suitable for this front matter. Once you do this, remember to use the \nofiles macro to keep them from getting overwritten.
The acknowledgements and dedication environments make their contents start on a new page. The acknowledgements environment also put the word Acknowledgements in large, bold, centered text at the top of the page. For formatting the dedication page, you're on your own. After all, the dedication is a kind of poetry and there's no predicting the right way to format poetry.
The smalltabular and smalltabular* environments are equivalent to the tabular and tabular* environments, except that they use the \small font. The scriptsizetabular and scriptsizetabular* use the \scriptsize font.