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I am writing my master thesis with classicthesis. I am afraid margins are too wide and I was considering modifying them. I am definitely not a LaTeX guru so I surfed on the internet to find how much smaller I can make them to keep the it looking awesome.

I came up with this:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,oneside,titlepage,%
headinclude,footinclude,BCOR5mm,%
numbers=noenddot,cleardoublepage=empty,%tablecaptionabove
]{scrbook}
\usepackage[eulerchapternumbers,subfig,beramono,pdfspacing]{classicthesis}
\usepackage{arsclassica}
\areaset[5mm]{400pt}{699pt}
\setlength{\marginparwidth}{7em}%
\setlength{\marginparsep}{2em}%

Does it make sense for printing on one side only?

Shouldn't the margins be different?

Can I make them smaller?

EDIT: I presented the theses, still I do not have an answer to how the margins have to be for documents to be printed front-only, so I will just leave the question open.

Irene
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  • Please help us to help you and add a minimal working example (MWE) that illustrates your problem. It will be much easier for us to reproduce your situation and find out what the issue is when we see compilable code, starting with \documentclass{...} and ending with \end{document}. –  Mar 21 '14 at 12:11
  • Your 'MWE' does not compile since pdflatex complains about subfigure as option to classigthesis. I added that package to my solution below. –  Mar 21 '14 at 14:41
  • Yes sorry, I have that package loaded, I didn't add a minimal example because I consider it more a theoretical question than a practical one. I am more in need of margin advice than code help. Which margin should I use? Are there any best practices? Because the ones furnished by classicthesis appear huge for a master thesis, at least for my own personal point of view. No? – Irene Mar 21 '14 at 16:53
  • I suggest margins of about 2cm on the left/right side of a page, and, say, 1.5cm at the bottom and top. However, there may be restrictions by supervisors, corporate design issues etc. You can change the left and right margins to be different at will, as they usually are when printed as book. –  Mar 22 '14 at 05:55
  • What do you mean by printing on one side? –  Mar 22 '14 at 05:58
  • front only, not in the back of the page, for some (unknown) reasons theses in my university are typically printed on one side only, therefore I thought that left and right margins should have been different. I do not have any guidelines by my supervisor, that is why I was looking for some advice. – Irene Mar 22 '14 at 09:57
  • It is not so much the margins in the classicthesis class being too big as your paper is too big. The margins have been carefully chosen to make it easy to read (~66 characters per line). The only reasonable options for reducing the margins from a typographic standpoint are 1) use a large font, 2) use smaller paper, or 3) use two columns. See this discussion: Why are default LaTeX margins so big. – mforbes Apr 22 '14 at 08:45
  • @mforbes i still do not understand if, having to print on one side only, i should make the left and right margin different and, if so, how big to make them. I do not think they should be equal, as if I was printing o both sides of the sheet. – Irene Apr 26 '14 at 15:20
  • In book design, the outer margin is larger than the inner to give an appealing double-page spread (sometimes called the Canons of page construction). Printing on only one side gives you more freedom. However, I would seriously push your university to accept a well-design two-sided single-spaced thesis as this will be much easier to read and a better use of paper. Universities sometimes have old traditions that no longer make sense, and if approached with a logical argument will accept beautiful two-sided, single-spaced theses. – mforbes Apr 27 '14 at 07:47

1 Answers1

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You can use the geometry package, with specific margins (see below), in order to print only on 'recto' pages, you can use the everyshi package, as explained in an answer to this question How to insert a blank page or other annotation space next to each page

However, the blank 'verso' pages are included in page number counting. 

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,titlepage,%
headinclude,footinclude,BCOR=5mm,%
numbers=noenddot,cleardoubleempty,onesided]{scrbook}
\usepackage{subfigure}
\usepackage[eulerchapternumbers,subfig,beramono,pdfspacing]{classicthesis}
\usepackage{arsclassica}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{blindtext}


\usepackage{everyshi}
\areaset[5mm]{400pt}{699pt}

% Now with onesided option to scrbook the left margin is always larger, which
% allows 'assembly' to a book.
% Change the margins to your needs
\geometry{lmargin=2cm,rmargin=1.5cm,bmargin=2cm,tmargin=1.5cm}

% This is taken from 
% https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/43523/how-to-insert-a-blank-page-or-other-annotation-space-next-to-each-page

\makeatletter
\EveryShipout{%
\ifodd\c@page\relax%
\vbox{%
%INSERT ANY CONTENT HERE
}%
\thispagestyle{empty} % Preventing page headers, numbers to be printed
\newpage%
\fi%
}
\makeatother



\begin{document}

\chapter{My first chapter}

\blindtext[8]  


\chapter{Yet another chapter}

\blindtext

\end{document}

Change the parameters in \geometry as you wish. I do not know which margins you want to have exactly, so I used some 'arbitrary' values.

Community
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