Dealing with Images

One of the harder parts of a dissertation is getting in your images correctly. My images were typically half a page, which created huge problems in trying to get the text to flow around the images. I finally gave up and just did hard page breaks around my images and longer tables. It was the only way to get it to work to my satisfaction. As an added benefit, it also increases that all-important page count.

Putting it together with a master document

I had hoped to put my dissertation all together as a master document. However, it just didn't work out. The picture were all messed up. I ended up cutting and pasting the chapters together, and then making changes manually. I am not sure there is a way to reliably put together a dissertation using Master documents. While it is theoretically possible, it just doesn't work in the real world. Save your work in chapters, but put it together by cut-and-paste is my suggestion. Perhaps my other suggestion would be to just do your dissertation in LaTex.

On a positive note, I have turned in my dissertation, and did so before the deadline. I have some formatting corrections to do, but they are not too big. Also, I finished my corrections for the third paper. They sent me the author proofs and I sent back a few changes. It should be published soon.