As a native speaker, I thought I knew enough to write competently in English: however, over the course of my PhD, I’ve realized that there is a lot I don’t know and plenty I know, but don’t know why I know, about the subtleties of the English language.
A typical conversation with my office colleague would start by him asking me which of two sentences was correct. I would then pick the one that sounded better. Then I’d try to work out why it was so. Finally, I’d consult some books to identify the appropriate rule or usage. In this way, we both learned a lot about writing in English.
The three most useful books were;
- “How to Punctuate”, George Davidson, Penguin Writers’ Guides, 2005.
- “Pocket Fowler’s: Modern English Usage”, ed. Robert Allen, Oxford University Press, 1999.
- “The Elements of Style”, W. Strunk Jr. and E.B. White, The Penguin Press, 2005. (a reprint of a classic book)
Finally, there is an Internet rule: any post which criticizes or corrects grammar will in itself contain a grammatical error. So be careful when you pick holes in other peoples writing.
Memoir: a good LaTeX class for a Thesis
Memoir is a LaTeX class that provides for an elegant and full featured thesis.
A simple template using Memoir can be downloaded from bitbucket at the following link:
Simply extract the zip file and read the Abstract section of the file thesis.pdf.
For further details about Memoir go to the following; CTAN Memoir Page