Editing LaTeX Dissertation Formatting Tips (section)

== Front matter ==

The only hard [https://grad.uw.edu/for-students-and-post-docs/thesisdissertation/etd-formatting-guidelines/ formatting requirements] for the electronic thesis or dissertation (ETD) are the copyright, title, and abstract pages. You can get Microsoft Word templates for each these pages from the graduate school or, as I did, you can use a [http://www2.ee.washington.edu/people/faculty/mamishev/word/ template in a single Word File] maintained by Alex Mamishev, Professor in Electrical Engineering.

I filled out the template and then exported the copyright, title_page, and abstract as separate <code>.pdf</code> files. I build a single pdf with all of my chapters and then use <code>pdftk</code> to staple on the front matter:

<pre>pdftk copyright_page.pdf title_page.pdf abstract.pdf ETD_version.pdf cat output diss_ecology_of_online_communities.pdf</pre>