Browse Library
Sign In Start Free Trial
Close icon Search icon
Account
Browse Library Sign In Start Free Trial

Add to playlist

Create a Playlist

Modal Close icon
You need to login to use this feature.
  • Book Overview & Buying LaTeX Beginner's Guide
  • Table Of Contents Toc
LaTeX Beginner's Guide

LaTeX Beginner's Guide

4.6 (20)
Buy this Book
close
close
LaTeX Beginner's Guide

LaTeX Beginner's Guide

4.6 (20)
Buy this Book

Overview of this book

LaTeX is high-quality Open Source typesetting software that produces professional prints and PDF files. However, as LaTeX is a powerful and complex tool, getting started can be intimidating. There is no official support and certain aspects such as layout modifications can seem rather complicated. It may seem more straightforward to use Word or other WYSIWG programs, but once you've become acquainted, LaTeX's capabilities far outweigh any initial difficulties. This book guides you through these challenges and makes beginning with LaTeX easy. If you are writing Mathematical, Scientific, or Business papers, or have a thesis to write, then this is the perfect book for you. LaTeX Beginner's Guide offers you a practical introduction to LaTeX with plenty of step-by-step examples. Beginning with the installation and basic usage, you will learn to typeset documents containing tables, figures, formulas, and common book elements like bibliographies, glossaries, and indexes and go on to managing complex documents and using modern PDF features. It's easy to use LaTeX, when you have LaTeX Beginner's Guide to hand. This practical book will guide you through the essential steps of LaTeX, from installing LaTeX, formatting, and justification to page design. Right from the beginning, you will learn to use macros and styles to maintain a consistent document structure while saving typing work. You will learn to fine-tune text and page layout, create professional looking tables as well as include figures and write complex mathematical formulas. You will see how to generate bibliographies and indexes with ease. Finally you will learn how to manage complex documents and how to benefit from modern PDF features. Detailed information about online resources like software archives, web forums, and online compilers completes this introductory guide. It's easy to use LaTeX, when you have LaTeX Beginner's Guide to hand.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
close
close
close
LaTeX
Icon
LaTeX
Credits
Icon
Credits
About the Author
Icon
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Icon
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Icon
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Icon
Preface
Lock Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with LaTeX
Icon
Getting Started with LaTeX
Icon
What is LaTeX?
Icon
Installing LaTeX
Icon
Time for action – installing TeX Live using the net installer wizard
Icon
Time for action – installing TeX Live offline
Icon
Creating our first document
Icon
Time for action – writing our first document with TeXworks
Icon
Summary
2
Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs
chevron up
Icon
Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs
Icon
Understanding logical formatting
Icon
Time for action – titling your document
Icon
How LaTeX reads your input
Icon
Time for action – trying out the effect of spaces, line breaks, and empty lines
Icon
Time for action – writing special characters in our text
Icon
Formatting text – fonts, shapes, and styles
Icon
Time for action – tuning the font shape
Icon
Time for action – switching to sans-serif and to typewriter fonts
Icon
Time for action – switching the font family
Icon
Time for action – exploring grouping by braces
Icon
Time for action – exploring font sizes
Icon
Time for action – using an environment to adjust the font size
Icon
Saving time and effort – creating your own commands
Icon
Time for action – creating our first command using it as anabbreviation
Icon
Time for action – adding intelligent spacing to command output
Icon
Time for action – creating a macro for formatting keywords
Icon
Time for action – marking keywords with optional formatting
Icon
Using boxes to limit the width of paragraphs
Icon
Time for action – creating a narrow text column
Icon
Time for action – using the minipage environment
Icon
Breaking lines and paragraphs
Icon
Time for action – stating division points for words
Icon
Time for action – using microtype
Icon
Time for action – using line breaks
Icon
Exploring the fine details
Icon
Time for action – exploring ligatures
Icon
Time for action – using differently spaced dots
Icon
Time for action – comparing dots to ellipsis
Icon
Time for action – experimenting with accents
Icon
Time for action – using accents directly
Icon
Turning off full justification
Icon
Time for action – justifying a paragraph to the left
Icon
Time for action – centering a title
Icon
Time for action – centering verses
Icon
Displaying quotes
Icon
Time for action – quoting a scientist
Icon
Time for action – quoting TeX's benefits
Icon
Time for action – spacing between paragraphs instead of indentation
Icon
Summary
3
Designing Pages
Icon
Designing Pages
Icon
Defining the overall layout
Icon
Time for action – writing a book with chapters
Icon
Time for action – specifying margins
Icon
Time for action – finding the geometry package manual
Icon
Time for action – increasing line spacing
Icon
Using class options to configure the document style
Icon
Time for action – creating a two-column landscape document
Icon
Creating a table of contents
Icon
Time for action – adding a table of contents
Icon
Time for action – shortening the table of content entries
Icon
Designing headers and footers
Icon
Time for action – customizing headers with the fancyhdr package
Icon
Breaking pages
Icon
Time for action – inserting page breaks
Icon
Enlarging a page
Icon
Time for action – sparing an almost empty page
Icon
Using footnotes
Icon
Time for action – using footnotes in text and in headings
Icon
Time for action – redefining the footnote line
Icon
Summary
4
Creating Lists
Icon
Creating Lists
Icon
Building a bulleted list
Icon
Time for action – listing LaTeX packages
Icon
Time for action – listing packages by topic
Icon
Creating a numbered list
Icon
Time for action – writing a step-by-step tutorial
Icon
Customizing lists
Icon
Time for action – shrinking our tutorial
Icon
Time for action – modifying lists using enumitem
Icon
Producing a definition list
Icon
Time for action – explaining capabilities of packages
Icon
Summary
5
Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures
Icon
Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures
Icon
Writing in columns
Icon
Time for action – lining up information using the tabbing environment
Icon
Time for action – lining up font commands
Icon
Typesetting tables
Icon
Time for action – building a table of font family commands
Icon
Time for action – adding nicer horizontal lines with the booktabs package
Icon
Time for action – merging cells
Icon
Time for action – using the array package
Icon
Time for action – merging cells using the multirow package
Icon
Time for action – adding a caption to our font table
Icon
Inserting pictures
Icon
Time for action – including a picture
Icon
Managing floating environments
Icon
Time for action – letting a figure float
Icon
Time for action – embedding a picture within text
Icon
Summary
6
Cross-Referencing
Icon
Cross-Referencing
Icon
Setting labels and referencing
Icon
Time for action – referencing items of a top list
Icon
Producing intelligent page references
Icon
Time for action – introducing variable references
Icon
Time for action – referring cleverly
Icon
Summary
7
Listing Content and References
Icon
Listing Content and References
Icon
Customizing the table of contents
Icon
Time for action – refining an extensive table of contents
Icon
Creating and customizing lists of figures
Icon
Time for action – creating a list of diagrams
Icon
Creating a list of tables
Icon
Using packages for customization
Icon
Generating an index
Icon
Time for action – marking words and building the index
Icon
Creating a bibliography
Icon
Time for action – citing texts and listing the references
Icon
Time for action – creating and using a BibTeX database
Icon
Changing the headings
Icon
Summary
8
Typing Math Formulas
Icon
Typing Math Formulas
Icon
Writing basic formulas
Icon
Time for action – discussing quadratic equations and roots
Icon
Customizing displayed formulas
Icon
Time for action – typesetting multi-line formulas
Icon
Fine-tuning formulas
Icon
Building math structures
Icon
Stacking expressions
Icon
Writing theorems and definitions
Icon
Summary
9
Using Fonts
Icon
Using Fonts
Icon
Preparing the encoding
Icon
Time for action – directly using special characters
Icon
Installing additional fonts
Icon
Choosing the main font
Icon
Time for action – comparing Computer Modern to Latin Modern
Icon
Exploring the world of LaTeX fonts
Icon
Summary
10
Developing Large Documents
Icon
Developing Large Documents
Icon
Splitting the input
Icon
Time for action – swapping out preamble and chapter contents
Icon
Creating front and back matter
Icon
Time for action – adding a dedication and an appendix
Icon
Designing a title page
Icon
Time for action – creating a title page
Icon
Working with templates
Icon
Time for action – starting with a template
Icon
Summary
11
Enhancing Your Documents Further
Icon
Enhancing Your Documents Further
Icon
Using hyperlinks and bookmarks
Icon
Time for action – adding hyperlinks
Icon
Time for action – customizing the hyperlink appearance
Icon
Time for action – editing PDF metadata
Icon
Benefitting from other packages
Icon
Time for action – visiting the TeX Catalogue Online
Icon
Time for action – installing a LaTeX package
Icon
Designing headings
Icon
Time for action – designing chapter and section headings
Icon
Coloring your document
Icon
Summary
12
Troubleshooting
Icon
Troubleshooting
Icon
Understanding and fixing errors
Icon
Time for action – interpreting and fixing an error
Icon
Handling warnings
Icon
Time for action – emphasizing on a sans-serif font
Icon
Avoiding obsolete classes and packages
Icon
General troubleshooting
Icon
Summary
13
Using Online Resources
Icon
Using Online Resources
Icon
Web forums, discussion boards, and Q&A sites
Icon
Time for action – asking a question online
Icon
Frequently Asked Questions
Icon
Mailing lists
Icon
TeX user group sites
Icon
Homepages of LaTeX software and editors
Icon
LaTeX archives and catalogs
Icon
Friends of LaTeX
Icon
LaTeX blogs
Icon
Summary
1
Pop Quiz Answers
Icon
Pop Quiz Answers
Icon
Chapter 2: Formatting Words, Lines, and Paragraphs
Icon
Chapter 3: Designing Pages
Icon
Chapter 4: Creating Lists
Icon
Chapter 5: Creating Tables and Inserting Pictures
Icon
Chapter 6: Cross-Referencing
Icon
Chapter 7: Listing Content and References
Icon
Chapter 8: Typing Math Formulas
Icon
Chapter 9: Using Fonts
Icon
Chapter 10: Developing Large Documents
Icon
Chapter 11: Enhancing Your Documents Further
Icon
Chapter 12: Troubleshooting
2
Index
Icon
Index

Time for action – writing special characters in our text

We will write a very short example printing out an amount of dollars and a percent number, then we shall try more symbols:

  1. Create a new document and enter the following lines:

    \documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Statement \#1:
50\% of \$100 makes \$50.
More special symbols are \&, \_, \{ and \}.
\end{document}

  2. Typeset and view the output:

What just happened?

By putting a backslash before such a special symbol, we turned it into a LaTeX command. This command has the only purpose of printing out that symbol.

Note

The command for printing a backslash is \textbackslash. If you would like to know what \\ might be used for, it is used as a shortcut for a line break command. That's a bit odd, but line breaks occur frequently whereas backslashes are rarely needed in the output, therefore this shortcut has been chosen.

There's a wealth of symbols that we can use for math formulas, chess notation, zodiac signs, music scores, and more. We don...

CONTINUE READING
83
Tech Concepts
36
Programming languages
73
Tech Tools
Icon Unlimited access to the largest independent learning library in tech of over 8,000 expert-authored tech books and videos.
Icon Innovative learning tools, including AI book assistants, code context explainers, and text-to-speech.
Icon 50+ new titles added per month and exclusive early access to books as they are being written.
LaTeX Beginner's Guide
End of Section 2
Next Section
notes
bookmark Notes and Bookmarks search Search in title playlist Add to playlist download Download options
font-size Font size

Change the font size

margin-width Margin width

Change margin width

day-mode Day/Sepia/Night Modes

Change background colour

Close icon Search
Country selected
Close icon Your notes and bookmarks

Confirmation

Modal Close icon
claim successful
Order Page Read Now

Buy this book with your credits?

Modal Close icon
Are you sure you want to buy this book with one of your credits?
Close
YES, BUY

Submit Your Feedback

Modal Close icon
Modal Close icon
Modal Close icon