A brief guide to LaTeX

What is LaTeX?

LaTeX is a document preparation and typesetting package. It has a number of big advantages over ordinary word-processing software, such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice:

  1. It does all the layout and typesetting for you, enabling you to concentrate on the content and structure.
  2. It has much better support for typesetting mathematical formulae than any word processor.
  3. It is the de facto standard for articles in mathematics and most areas of physics. LaTeX notation is widely used in other places (including in Python!) so it is a good idea to get used to it.
  4. LaTeX files are plain text, they can be shared by your colleagues without problems and you do not need any special software to read them.
  5. It is free and non-proprietary. You will not have to shell out money to buy software to use it, and it does not depend on a vendor who will change the standards on a whim.
It also has some disadvantages:
  1. It is not WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). You have to go through a two-step process (outlined below) to get output which you can view.
  2. It takes a little bit of time to learn and get used to.

How do I use LaTeX?

  1. Prepare your document in a plain text file. Make sure you use a plain text editor (such as pico, emacs or kedit), and that your filename ends in .tex (for example myfile.tex). You can use this template (and the associated figure) as a starting point.
  2. Type pdflatex myfile
    You may have to do this twice to get everything correct. This will produce a file myfile.pdf which you can view with your favourite pdf reader.
Alternatively, you can use an online LaTeX editor such as Overleaf (see below) to prepare your document.

More information

or come and ask me or anyone else in the department.