My Great Experiences with Latex!: How Latex super- simplified my thesis writing?

It was the third quadrant of my research scholar life when I was introduced to Latex. The earlier days we were comfortable with MS Word. We all were used to it’s inherent difficulties like page setup, margin setting, placing the right sized tables, placing the images at right positions, adding equations etc. We were so much attached to the tool that all such issues were taken as part of life. Just used to continue.

Then I was introduced to Latex by my Co- Supervisor. He insisted multiple times to try with Latex. His claim was with Latex, the only thing we need to do is to feed the matter and the rest of the issues like page setup, placement of equations, figures, tables all are taken care automatically by Latex.

Having a curious mind and an attitude of always trying new whenever possible, I thought let me verify his claims. That’s how my journey into Latex began.

In the beginning it was little uncomfortable due to the very fact that everything needs to be entered through keyboard. No mouse, no pick-n-place — all those we’ve been doing all the earlier days since we stated working with Windows.

With time, I slowly adopted myself to feeding the matter only through keyboard. Within a week’s time I was expert in maneuvering through the fine tricks Latex had in store.

Some basic advantages of working with Latex:

• All the feeding only through keyboard
• Auto formatting: usually the formats are made available by the publisher or the university as templates.
• Easy tailor-made formatting for equations, figures, tables, citations, references etc.
• During the document modification, the positions of the figures, tables are well maintained.
• Relative figure, equation, table, bibliography referencing.
• Multiple final text formats availability.
• Separate section wise, chapter wise documents be prepared and finally tailored to the required sequence.

With this idea, I began my journey into Latex. Few technical papers were prepared through Latex. Still couldn’t understand the actual power of Latex.

Started realising its power only when I began writing my thesis. Now some details I understood while preparing the thesis document.

• The whole document can be split into multiple sub-documents, each one maybe a chapter saved as a separate file, that can be sewed together in any order to form total document.
• The first sub-document contains the title, certificate, acknowledgements, list the titles of all other files to be tailored to form the final document and their order. The file names of the sub-documents are included into the main document in the proper order. Simply changing this order creates the document with totally new sequence.
• The table numbers, figure numbers, equation numbers, reference numbers are all recorded and used in relative format and hence the sequence never matters.

The most interesting part of my experience with Latex began after compiling the draft copy of my thesis. A loop of preparing draft copy, review by mentor and necessary corrections continued for multiple times.

Finally, reached the stage of getting the copy printed. Just one last time, I went to my mentor for his final approval. Something was upsetting about the sequencing of the chapters in my thesis. He too shown his dissatisfaction about it. After a long discussions , finally he said we should exchange the 3rd and 4th chapters of the thesis. He wanted 4th chapter to appear before the 3rd one and asked me how much time do I need to modify the document. I said just one minute!

He said “No jokes". Then he went on arguing as to how it wouldn’t be possible in just one minute. Yes he was right. Apart from the cut and paste activity, I’ve to change each reference in the two chapters. Like figure 3.4 must now become figure number 4.4, table 4.2 now be labeled and referred as table 3.2 and so on. All the references citing the equations, figures, tables, sections and all throughout the text must need updations. But neither I was wrong. The Latex is the novel tool that makes all these possible for me by itself. I just need to change the sequence in which the chapter numbers are included in the first sub- document. I just changed the order of chapters as 1,2,4,3,5,…. and that’s it.

In just a minute, I changed the sequence of chapters to be used and the final document with all necessary changes was ready!

Now it’s printed and submitted to the university for evaluation and its approval. In 3 months received the evaluation reports. I was asked for some explanations and hence modifications in my thesis. If the remark is about my research work, then I need to give proper explanation. Otherwise I need to cite others’ work to justify. All modifications except one are done with ease. But one thing that disturbed me was at some point in the thesis one paper somehow had not shown up in my bibliography and hence the citation was missing. All I need to do is to add the reference into my bibliography and cite it.

At this stage, again my worried mentor asked how do I manage it as this paper must be inserted in the right place in the alphabetically arranged bibliography. It only means that all the next references will be shifted by one. These changes must be reflected everywhere in my thesis. I assured him not to worry as we are using the relative referencing for all the citations and hence Latex will take care.

I just inserted the missing reference at right place in bibliography. That’s it. Everything simply fell into place and the whole document was ready for submission.

In the first case, to exchange two chapters of a thesis, in other platforms it would have taken at least a fortnight and still not confident whether all the changes are properly updated. But Latex solved it in one minute. That’s the power of Latex.

Then in the second case, inserting a new reference in the bibliography at any given location is equivalent to rewriting the whole thesis again taxing me a fortnight again at the same time losing all possible peace of mind. Thanks to Latex! It solved my problem by itself. It just took less than a minute to insert the missing reference.

With so many changes we are forced to do by the mentor and/ or reviewers along with the document, the contents page, list of figures, list of tables must update.

Manually updating the documents like thesis is highly complex task and sometimes next to impossible in maintaining the accuracy.

Added advantages:

• No need to prepare Table of contents. It’s automatically made ready be Latex for you and the contents page is ready. It contains all the required fields like chapter number, title of chapter, section titles, subsection titles and so on with page numbers.
• The list of tables, list of figures are automatically generated from the document.
• Proper referencing throughout the document is made.
• All the above get automatically updated if the document changes.
• The printing quality of the document on paper is exceptional. It simply matches with book printing quality.
• Most important, a big ocean of assistance is available online solving any sort of difficulties.

The essence of this story is, just worry about what you want to present in the document and leave all other issues to Latex to manage.

Every publisher / university will provide the Latex template to follow while preparing the document. Just use the template and concentrate only on what you want to say and leave all other issues to Latex.

Thanks Latex to enter my research life and over simplifying all the impossible tasks in papering my thesis.

Latex has many more built-in wonders hidden within itself and waiting for you to uncover them all.

So what are you waiting for? Make sure to start using Latex for all your future documents you prepare for any type of submissions.

See you soon with some more interesting experiences during my research life.