Markdown
Since I used the Markdown language for the first time, I do all my notes in this particular style, because I think it is very easy and it just makes sence.
The structure of your thesis may look like this:
# Introduction
# First Chapter
## First Sub Chapter
## Second Sub Chapter
# Second Chapter
# Third Chapter
# Discussion
The command \tableofcontents
builds the table of contents out of your headers and sub headers and looks really clean. Furthermore you can include number_sections = true in the YAML header to number the sections of your thesis, which is a good idea.
Besides the headers Markdown also handles the format of text.
*italic*
**bold**
different font
If you have many variables, the readability of your thesis may profit if you to make them italic or in a different font. My variables had indices, therefore I could not use pure Markdown, but a \(\LaTeX\) command, which may look like this: $variable_{it}$
and results in \(variable_{it}\).