Requirements on the Submitted Thesis
There are only very few requirements on the format of the submitted thesis.
In addition to the title of the thesis and your name, the degree program for which the thesis is being submitted has to be stated on the cover page. Paper copies must be bound into a booklet or book.
With digital submission as PDF you obviously need to make sure that the supervisor and reviewers grading your thesis can actually view, read, and print the PDF file. Hence you should embed fonts and not use encryption. The first page of the PDF file (cover page) needs to contain the title of the thesis and the author.
The confirmation according to §18 (9) APSO, that the thesis represents your own work and that no other sources and/or resources than those listed were used, will be provided by the School Office, when handing in your thesis, or is included in the submission letter generated by the online thesis administration system, when uploading the PDF. If you are using a template from various sources, you may remove similar confirmations included therein.
The title in English language should conform to guidelines for the use of English in thesis titles. Entering your thesis’ title in the database you may use Unicode (see next section "Hints on entering special characters").
Hints on entering special characters
Special characters and formatting can be entered in thesis titles to a limited extent.
If your degree program is not managed via the online thesis administration, use the DSSNAT endpoint ths_check_thesis_title to perform a check of a thesis title for printability in TUM transcripts of records.
In addition to the thesis title used for TUMonline grade reports, in the online thesis administration you may enter a version in LaTeX, which is to be used for the presentation during the graduation ceremony, for example.
Greek letters can be used as Unicode characters in the thesis title. To use a Greek letter in the title of a thesis, select and copy the character below from the first column and paste it into the title field. Alternatively, you can enter Unicode characters directly using a key combination (Windows: hold down the Alt key and then press the Plus key followed by the hexadecimal Unicode and then release the Alt key).
| Letter | Name | Unicode Hex (Decimal) |
|---|---|---|
| Α | Greek capital letter Alpha | 0391 (913) |
| Β | Greek capital letter Beta | 0392 (914) |
| Γ | Greek capital letter Gamma | 0393 (915) |
| Δ | Greek capital letter Delta | 0394 (916) |
| Ε | Greek capital letter Epsilon | 0395 (917) |
| Ζ | Greek capital letter Zeta | 0396 (918) |
| Η | Greek capital letter Eta | 0397 (919) |
| Θ | Greek capital letter Theta | 0398 (920) |
| Ι | Greek capital letter Iota | 0399 (921) |
| Κ | Greek capital letter Kappa | 039A (922) |
| Λ | Greek capital letter Lambda | 039B (923) |
| Μ | Greek capital letter My | 039C (924) |
| Ν | Greek capital letter Ny | 039D (925) |
| Ξ | Greek capital letter Xi | 039E (926) |
| Ο | Greek capital letter Omikron | 039F (927) |
| Π | Greek capital letter Pi | 03A0 (928) |
| Ρ | Greek capital letter Rho | 03A1 (929) |
| Σ | Greek capital letter Sigma | 03A3 (931) |
| Τ | Greek capital letter Tau | 03A4 (932) |
| Υ | Greek capital letter Ypsilon | 03A5 (933) |
| Φ | Greek capital letter Phi | 03A6 (934) |
| Χ | Greek capital letter Chi | 03A7 (935) |
| Ψ | Greek capital letter Psi | 03A8 (936) |
| Ω | Greek capital letter Omega | 03A9 (937) |
| α | Greek letter Alpha | 03B1 (945) |
| β | Greek letter Beta | 03B2 (946) |
| γ | Greek letter Gamma | 03B3 (947) |
| δ | Greek letter Delta | 03B4 (948) |
| ε | Greek letter Epsilon | 03B5 (949) |
| ζ | Greek letter Zeta | 03B6 (950) |
| η | Greek letter Eta | 03B7 (951) |
| θ | Greek letter Theta | 03B8 (952) |
| ι | Greek letter Iota | 03B9 (953) |
| κ | Greek letter Kappa | 03BA (954) |
| λ | Greek letter Lambda | 03BB (955) |
| μ | Greek letter My | 03BC (956) |
| ν | Greek letter Ny | 03BD (957) |
| ξ | Greek letter Xi | 03BE (958) |
| ο | Greek letter Omikron | 03BF (959) |
| π | Greek letter Pi | 03C0 (960) |
| ρ | Greek letter Rho | 03C1 (961) |
| ς | Greek letter finales Sigma | 03C2 (962) |
| σ | Greek letter Sigma | 03C3 (963) |
| τ | Greek letter Tau | 03C4 (964) |
| υ | Greek letter Ypsilon | 03C5 (965) |
| φ | Greek letter Phi | 03C6 (966) |
| χ | Greek letter Chi | 03C7 (967) |
| ψ | Greek letter Psi | 03C8 (968) |
| ω | Greek letter Omega | 03C9 (969) |
| ϑ | Griechisches Theta-Symbol | 03D1 (977) |
| ϕ | Griechisches Phi-Symbol | 03D5 (981) |
| ϖ | Griechisches Pi-Symbol | 03D6 (982) |
| Ϝ | Griechischer letter Digamma | 03DC (988) |
| ϝ | Greek letter Digamma | 03DD (989) |
| ϰ | Griechisches Kappa-Symbol | 03F0 (1008) |
| ϱ | Griechisches Rho-Symbol | 03F1 (1009) |
Superscript, subscript, italics and bold characters can be used in the title of the thesis using HTML markup if this is justified by the content. To do this, include the character or characters that are to be formatted in the HTML tag from the second column of the following table.
| superscript | <sup>...</sup> | <sup>235</sup>U | 235U |
|---|---|---|---|
| subscript | <sub>...</sub> | YBa<sub>2</sub>Cu<sub>3</sub>O<sub>7-x</sub> | YBa2Cu3O7–x |
| italics | <i>...</i> | Characterisation and <i>in vivo</i> Application | Characterisation and in vivo Application |
| bold | <b>...</b> | in the field <b>C</b> | in the field C |
HTML markup, especially italics and bold, should only be used if they are semantically necessary (e.g. in biochemistry). If you would merely prefer the title of the thesis to be printed in bold, this is no reason to use the HTML tags!
In principle, all Unicode characters that are displayed in Arial can be used. However, do not use non-standard white space, line breaks and ligatures. Specify umlauts directly ("precomposed") and do not use the transcription with U+0308 ("decomposed"). For characters that are not listed here, see the list of Unicode blocks in Wikipedia or the Unicode Consortium - ideally, however, make sure that the character is contained in Arial. Instead of the italicized or bold characters from the Unicode block "Mathematical alphanumeric symbols", please use the HTML markup from the previous section. Please avoid copying the title from a word processor such as Word or the PDF of the paper, but enter the title again in the mask - when copying from word processors or PDFs, non-standard spaces, line breaks, ligatures or umlaut transcriptions often remain.
To use a Unicode character in the title of a thesis, select and copy the character at the bottom of the first column and paste it into the title field. Alternatively, you can enter Unicode characters directly using a key combination (Windows: hold down the Alt key and then press the Plus key followed by the hexadecimal Unicode and then release the Alt key).
| Character | Name | Unicode Hex (Decimal) |
|---|---|---|
| ← | arrow to the left | 2190 (8592) |
| ↑ | upwards arrow | 2191 (8593) |
| → | arrow to the right | 2192 (8594) |
| ↓ | downwards arrow | 2193 (8595) |
| ± | plus/minus | 00B1 (177) |
| √ | square root | 221A (8730) |
| ∫ | integral sign | 222B (8747) |
| ℓ | lower-case L in script | 2113 (8467) |
| ∞ | infinity | 221e (8734) |
If you are using Unicode characters not copied from this table, please check the printability of your thesis title at the DSSNAT endpunkt ths_check_thesis_title.
Optimization of the PDF file
If possible fill in the metadata fields of the PDF for author ("lastname, firstname") and title (the title as given in the database possibly followed by its translation separated by " / ") correctly. The upload form checks this and displays the metadata.
A suggestion for a LaTeX template for theses is available at the homepage of Philipp H. v. Loewenfeld. The TUM corporate design contains templates for final theses (in German) as well.
Should the PDF file become very large due to included high-resolution graphics, it might be useful to optimize the file using Adobe Acrobat or Ghostscript (e.g. via gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf).