Word:
LyX (the graphical frontend to LaTeX):
For those who wish to write their theses in LyX, Dr. Mike Short provides this complete example as a template. Keep the organization of the document the same, edit "cover.tex" by hand, and otherwise replace the template content with your own. Then you will have a complete document, formatted per MIT's regulations.
LaTeX:
Or you can just write Latex code using any text editor. Lulu Li recommend taking advantage of the command \newcommand{command}{definition}. This allows you to save time on some commonly used definitions. See examples at here, or run:
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