3.4 The contents options

3.4.1 Bold vs. plain contents

In 2013 I received reports that the thesis office now requires all elements in the Table of Contents to have the same formatting as they are in the main document, which means that all section, subsection, and subsubsection headings need to be bold. Since this looks very ugly, I have created two options to turn it off, the [plaintoc] option (which makes all ToC entries plain) and [mixedtoc] option (which makes Chapters bold and other elements plain). I suspect that the thesis office checkers don’t notice this all the time so if you want to have a prettier table of contents and are willing to have that format be corrected, you can use these options to turn off the MSWord inspired ugliness of an entirely bold Table of Contents. I’ve made [plaintoc] the default. If you are forced by the thesis office to have an entirely bold ToC, use the [boldtoc] option.

3.4.2 Per-chapter bibliography contents format

I also have received inconsistent formatting requirements for per-chapter bibliographies. Some students have been told that they should appear in the Table of Contents formatted like sections, while others have been told they should be formatted like chapters, but without the leading space. The latter option is most consistent with how per-chapter appendices are formatted in the Table of Contents, and is therefore the default. If you are told that the per-chapter bibliographies should be formatted like sections, then use the [bibassection] class option. You should avoid using this option unless forced to use it.