Writing up

toiletduck

Well I'm nowhere near that stage just yet but was wondering what people use for it? I mean I hear lots of praise for LaTex, worth looking into? Word caused me so many problems on my thesis and project last year, right at the end of course...

Red Alert

I'd definitely use LaTeX for anything beyond a few pages, at least anything that needs chapters and sections. The referencing-related facilities alone would make the switch worthwhile, and the printed output is just gorgeous.

A few of LaTeX's lesser-known features that I use are PGF (which let you draw little diagrams within the LaTeX code). It has the advantage that all your graphics look consistent with the text.

toiletduck

Cheers, difficult to get into? I realise it's a markup language, and I do have a fair bit of experience with html so I imagine that would help.

Oh I just shudder about last May and Word going all funny on us just before we were to hand up. I won't go through that again!

Red Alert

It's OK but you're best tackling a short-ish document that includes figures and tables first just so you get used to the way it works. Are you on Windows/Mac/Linux? Get yourself a good editor that can do some basic syntax stuff - personally my favourite is Emacs.

machiavellianme

If you're doing a thesis in anything other than English/History etc, where equations will required, LaTeX is the only way to go. Word will spit back equations with venom and move them around and cause them to disappear and do god knows what else with them (not to mention awful numbering schemes)
WinEdt and MikTeX is a pretty good combination on Windows.

blucey

toiletduck wrote: »

Well I'm nowhere near that stage just yet but was wondering what people use for it? I mean I hear lots of praise for LaTex, worth looking into? Word caused me so many problems on my thesis and project last year, right at the end of course...

Unless you are doing lots of equations LaTex is the tool of satan. Learn to use, if you havent, the internal referencing and master documents attributes of word.

blucey

machiavellianme wrote: »

If you're doing a thesis in anything other than English/History etc, where equations will required, LaTeX is the only way to go. Word will spit back equations with venom and move them around and cause them to disappear and do god knows what else with them (not to mention awful numbering schemes)
WinEdt and MikTeX is a pretty good combination on Windows.

I did a phd in a fairly mathematical subject in Word. It works beautifully IF you go beyond the basic level. LaTex is great if you have 2000h to learn it.

Red Alert

I'd say I had a decent handle on it in less than 10 hours of usage... from a document security point of view it reads ordinary text files and puts out PDF, so it doesn't as such ever have a chance to corrupt the input files.

If you are using word I'd say it's worthwhile to make full use of the document structure stuff, like headings etc, so things like the table of contents can be done automatically.

toiletduck

Red Alert wrote: »

It's OK but you're best tackling a short-ish document that includes figures and tables first just so you get used to the way it works. Are you on Windows/Mac/Linux?

No Mac yet...:D Thanks for the advice!

eclectichoney

Depending on what college you are in, you may have access to bibliographic management software which can be helpful (I'm thinking of endnote, refworks etc.) Can make referencing and keeping track of citation a lot easier...

brianthebard

Does it make any discernible difference if you use Open office instead of Word?

Red Alert

Not particularly, the two are about the same.

AARRRGH

My supervisor recommended I use LaTex, but as I was a bit short for time I decided to use Word instead and to focus on writing a quality document rather than a lovely looking document.

My thesis result was an A, so it worked out ok for me.

I reckon if your thesis is good, your editor becomes fairly insignificant (assuming you know how to use proper headings, etc.)

Tom Dunne

brianthebard wrote: »

Does it make any discernible difference if you use Open office instead of Word?

I still think Open Office is too quirky for anything more than an essay with a couple of diagrams.

It makes no difference to the end result, only the pain in getting there.

brianthebard

I doubt I will be using any diagrams tbh, although its a bit early to tell. I quite like it so far though, it seems to be laid out better than word and everything you need is to hand so to speak.

IvyTheTerrible

I recently finished a 350+ page thesis, all with Word and it was grand. i had no problems. I did make plenty of back-ups as I was going along though, as I had heard the horror stories too. I had maybe 40 equations in the whole thing, and there was no problem with their formatting (actually I was complimented on the formatting and lack of typos in my viva!).

ucdperson

Word can do the job if you are organised and haven't many equations. Be sure to set up appropriate styles for paragraph, heading etc and use these for everything. The standard heading styles will give you a table of contents and you can use hyperlinks to refer to sections, so if these are renumbered then everything will change. Use the table and figure numbering, giving you a table of figures etc. Store your diagrams in files and link these to Word. Use Endnote or similar, these are invaluable for ensuring consistency and that you have referenced everything. There are Word to TeX converters, one approach is to use Word and port to TeX later in the day, I haven't tried this though. To be sure back up everything, and then again.

eclectichoney

I used to use open office for a while, but eventually gave in and bought Word. I also use Excel a bit and have to admit I find it a lot less clunky than the Open Office spreadsheet. That said I believe the new OO 3 is gonna be fantastic.

On 3 or 4 occasions over a couple of weeks, I pasted stuff in from a website into a doc to keep it for later. Everything fine, or so I thought, and then when I would open it a few days later all the formatting would be messed up and in some cases some of the text had vanished! :eek: It was fine for writing up documents yourself though. I just couldn't take the chance in case I pasted sth important from the web and then lost it, especially with something like a thesis. I guess it all comes down to personal preference. I think for an arts / humanities-based dissertation, any decent word processing software with TOC / cross-referencing capabilities will do to be honest!