Thesis & Long Documents

How to Add a Dedication and Acknowledgments Page in LaTeX

Most theses include a dedication page and an acknowledgments section in the front matter. These are simple to add in LaTeX — here's how to create clean, properly formatted versions of both.

Dedication Page

A dedication page is typically centered vertically with minimal text:

% dedication.tex (or inline in main.tex)
\begin{titlepage}
\vspace*{\fill}
\begin{center}
\textit{To my parents, \\[0.5em]
who never stopped believing.}
\end{center}
\vspace*{\fill}
\end{titlepage}

Acknowledgments Page

Acknowledgments can be a chapter (report/book) or a section (article):

% For report/book class:
\chapter*{Acknowledgments}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgments}

I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof.\ Smith,
for their invaluable guidance throughout this research.

This work was supported by Grant No.\ 12345 from
the National Science Foundation.

Finally, I thank my family and friends for their
unwavering support.

Placing in the Document

Dedication and acknowledgments go in the front matter, before the table of contents:

\begin{document}
\frontmatter

\include{titlepage}
\include{dedication}
\include{acknowledgments}
\tableofcontents
\listoffigures
\listoftables

\mainmatter
\include{chapters/introduction}
% ...
\end{document}

💡 Tips

•Use \chapter*{} (with asterisk) so the acknowledgments chapter isn't numbered
•\addcontentsline adds the unnumbered chapter to the table of contents
•Keep dedications short — one or two lines is traditional
•Some universities have specific formatting requirements — check your template first

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