This page contains frequently asked questions send to the LaTeX Support with fixes and/or explanations.
“Where can I find a template for my thesis?”
For Overleaf, here.
It can also be downloaded through gitlab.
However, before committing yourself to a template, be sure to ask your supervisor for specific requirements since that can differ from thesis to thesis and the template is only for general purpose.
If there are specific requirements to your thesis and they seem too cumbersome to try out yourself, please contact the support and we’ll sort something out.
“There are huge gaps (spacing) in my document where I place my figures. How come?”
LaTeX is responsible for placing your figure. You essentially don’t get to decide by default. You can tell LaTeX where you would prefer your figure to be and it will prioritize your preferences, but with no guarantees. A lot of users circumvent this by using the [H]-placement specifier. This will cause the figure to be exactly in the order that it is in the code, but it can also cause weird spacing, as LaTeX tries to minimize that by default, but you took full control. Try [ht!] instead and see if it suits your need.
Bibliographies
“My citations don’t show up like I want them to. How do I change this?”
Look to your preamble in your document and look for where the biblatex package is used. It has a parameter called style which can take one of a couple of different options. The most common one would be to set style=numeric such that citations are numbered. You can find more styles and further information on Overleaf’s documentation.
“My citations are just showing up in bold text – what’s up with that?”
From my experience, you most likely have trouble importing the .bib-file which contains the information about your sources. This is commonly due to two things:
- The file name,
references.bibis incorrect in\addbibresource{references.bib}. Make sure to double check this before moving forward as this is an easy fix and common mistake to make. - Syntax errors in .bib-files are very common and sometimes hard to identify. It could be a single missing comma. E.g. if you get the error
BibTeX: syntax error: found "year", expected end of entry ("}" or ")") (skipping to next "@")check for which source entry you get that error in the .bib-file and thoroughly look through the syntax.
“The bibliography doesn’t seem to change when I change the code.”
This commonly occurs when you want to change the style of the bibliography.
Since the bibliography is handled by external an external program and files hidden in Overleaf, this can be a bit tricky to troubleshoot. The easy route is to clear the cache of the project. In Overleaf you have to navigate to “Logs and output files” (which is to the right of the “Recompile” button). A trash can icon can be found on the bottom right of this window. Clicking this will erase cached files forcing LaTeX to refresh bibliography’s settings and hopefully fixing the problem.
“Why don’t my source show up in my bibliography?”
By default a source has to be cited to show up in the bibliography. If you want to get around this you can write \nocite{*} somewhere after \begin{document} and sources in your .bib file will show up.
Template specific
“My margins change on every other page? How do I make them consistent?”
When defining the document class (e.g. \documentclass{article} there are options to give it parameters such as twoside which shifts the margin on every other page. This is smart if you intend on printing the document since it will leave a wider margin in the middle when you hold the document in person.