The Readingthesis LaTeX class which can be used for a PhD thesis, especially for the University of Reading (for which this class meets the style guides in the rules for submission of theses for research degrees, as of summer 2025).
To begin using this template, download all the files as a zip, and use your preferred LaTeX compiler to compile it. Ideally this template should be compiled with latexmk/pdflatex/biblatex.
An example of a compiled PDF can be seen here.
There is one file which needs to be edited, thesis.tex. At the start, it loads the Readingthesis class, with one option available. This can be printthesis, which has margins which are appropriate for a printed thesis (on two sides of the paper)---this should be the one used for submission. Two other options are screenthesis, which is similar, but with margins which look better on a computer screen and not for print, and bookthesis, which could be used for printing as a book (smaller dimensions).
It is also necessary to change the title, author, institution, and other fields to customise to your thesis.
The main content, text-wise, for the thesis are included in separate files, under the "text" folder. These files are included in the thesis.tex file near the bottom, using \\input{} fields. These can be adjusted based on the structure of your thesis. Most likely, it makes sense to use a separate file per chapter.
You can include a citation to something in the bibliography, such as \textcite{koschmieder_theorie_1924}, for an inline citation. For a citation in brackets, use \autocite{khalil_fog_2024}.
Note that figures can be added as shown below:
\begin{figure}[ht]
\centering{
\includegraphics[width=6cm]{figures/moon.jpg}
\caption[Short caption]{\label{fig-example}An example figure (the earth, as seen from the moon). Credit: NASA (public domain).}
}
\end{figure}
Tables can be added as shown below. There are online LaTeX table generators which can make life much easier.
\begin{table}[ht]
\centering{
\begin{tabular}{@{}llll@{}}
\toprule
No. & A & B & C \\ \midrule
1 & 1.2 & 4.9 & 2.3 \\
2 & 2.1 & 9.4 & 3.2 \\ \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\caption{\label{tab-example}An example table, complete with example data.}
}
\end{table}
A number of LaTeX packages are used in this template. Most of them are explained here. They are configured in the readingthesis.cls file.
Memoir is a package which is designed for typesetting books. It has many options which can be configured for things like chapter headings, page styles, etc.
The default chapter style for this thesis template is "dash" and the default page style is "ruled."
Hyperref is a commonly-used package for dealing with references and links. It is configured here to allow for URLs to break into multiple lines, to prevent lines from overhanging.
This package is widely used for figures. It is quite good.
This package is useful for some equation typesetting, including allowing equations to be broken into multiple lines.
This package should in theory make quotation marks look better.
This package is used for citations. It is configured to use the APA style.
The fontenc sets the font encoding to T1, which can possibly help with special characters like \textit{ë}. The newpxtext package sets the body font family to a Palatino clone, which I thought looks quite nice. However, I thought the Palatino math font was less ideal, so the newtxmath uses a "Times-like" font for the equations, which I thought looked much nicer.
This package allows you to use non-italicised Greek characters. This was particularly helpful for writing the units for micrometres, e.g., (100\ \mathrm{\upmu m}), without a weird appearance.
As far as I can understand it, the microtype package tries to do a lot of things to slightly adjust the spacing between letters to make the overall document look nicer and to avoid weird spacing problems that can be automatically avoided.
This package was used to allow non-justified footnotes, which I thought looked nicer.
This package is used to make tables look nicer.
Users of this template should feel free to add and remove additional packages as they desire.
In conclusion, Readingthesis is a customisable LaTeX template which is designed to be used for a PhD thesis at the University of Reading with minimal configuration to make it work out of the box.