Johns hopkins University

AS: 173.308:

Advanced Physics Laboratory

Tobias

Marriage Course notes: Andrzej Novak Spring 2016

Contents
1 A first LATEX document
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.2 When, Why & Where LATEX? . . . . .
1.3 About TEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.4 Doing LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.5 EXERCISE 1: A first LATEX document
1.6 EXERCISE 1A . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1.7 The LATEX philosophy . . . . . . . . .

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3
3
4
5
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10
12

2 Math mode and more

2.1 Math mode . . . . . . . . . .
2.2 LATEX environments . . . . .
2.3 EXERCISE 2typing maths
2.4 Handling LATEX errors . . . .

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13
13
17
18
18

3 Complex documents
3.1 Cross-referencing . . . . . . .
3.2 Tables of contents . . . . . .
3.3 Bibliographies . . . . . . . . .
3.4 The auxiliary (.aux) file . . .
3.5 Putting a document in pieces
3.6 EXERCISE 3 . . . . . . . . .

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20
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21
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22
23

4 Pictures
4.1 The figure environment . . . .
4.2 The scissors-and-paste method
4.3 LATEXs picture environment .
4.4 Using the graphics package . .

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24
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25
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26

A LATEX on the web

28

B Glossary

29

Chapter 1
A first LATEX document
1.1

Introduction

Welcome to this introductory course in LATEX. It is very short, and is a sort

of crash, or head-on collision, into LATEX. It should get you startedafter
that, experience is crucial: you learn by doing, studying a certain aspect
of LATEX when you need to use it in your documents. There are numerous
free and published guides to LATEX, and you will certainly have to consult
these during the experience phase. Also, a good tip is to keep a notebook
(electronic and/or paper) for recording any useful pieces of LATEX code that
you discover.
All the documents for this course, including these notes and the exercises,
are on a website:
http://wwwf.imperial.ac.uk/~ejm/LaTeX/Website/
This course describes the current standard version of LATEX called 2
(pronounced, two E) which appeared in 1994. The previous version, which
first appeared in 1985 and is usually known as 2.09 (since the last version
released was 2.09) works slightly differently, and its important to bear this
in mind when you are looking up information in books or on the web.
The standard reference book is the LATEX User Guide & Reference Manual
by Leslie Lamport (Addison-Wesley). The second edition of 1994 describes
LATEX 2 . The first edition of 1986 describes LATEX 2.09. I dont think Lamport is the best book for learning, but you will need access to a copy sometimes. A much better book, especially for advanced LATEX features, is A
Guide to LATEX by Kopka & Daly (Third edition, Addison-Wesley, 1999).
Any unfamiliar technical terms used in these notes should be in the Glossary on page 29. If not, tell me.
3

I think the most important thing to know about LATEX at the start is
that it is NOT helpful to think of it as a word processor. Well, it is a word
processor in the sense that you can use it to make printed documents, but
how you go about this is very different from using the type of software that
is called a word processor, such as Microsoft Word. I would say that using
LATEX requires having the attitude of a computer programmer, and this is
quite a problematic issue in todays user friendly computer culture where
most computer users are discouraged from thinking about programming.
By the way, the X in the name LATEX is not pronounced as an X, but
rather as a Greek chi (), so TEX is tech (as in technical) and LATEX is
lay tech.

1.2

When, Why & Where LATEX?

When?
To learn LATEX requires an investment of time somewhat greater than for
word processing software. It just isnt the same kind of slick, idiot-proof
package, and you need to know a little bit about computers to use it. So,
when is it worthwhile to make the effort?
Typing mathematics. Easy typing of maths was central to the creation
of LATEX.
Typing a complex document, such as a scientific paper, report or thesis,
where you need a bibliography, a table of contents, an index, labelling
of equations and cross-referencing, and so on.
An apparent disadvantage of LATEX is that it is non-WYSIWYG (WhatYou-See-Is-What-You-Get), that is, as youre typing you cant see what the
output will look like. This is not a disadvantage, if you can adapt to the
idea, because you should find yourself caring more about the content of a
document and less about its format on the printed page, which is 95% of the
time handled automatically. This is, I believe, how word processing should
be. A WYSIWYG program like Word is actually quite good at automatic
formatting, if you know how to use it properly (but, in my experience, this
aspect of Word is not easy to use). However, there is nothing to compete
with LATEX for typing mathematics.
There are circumstances where LATEX is not the best choice of software.
For documents with little text and a lot of images (eg. photos), WYSIWYG
is probably preferable. Or, if you use the object linking feature of Microsoft
4

Office to include spreadsheet and database objects into a Word document;

LATEX has nothing comparable to this.

Why?
LATEX output is beautiful, virtually of professional-typeset quality.
The basic LATEX system is FREE.
LATEX makes typing easy in the sense that almost all formatting is
automatic, leaving the user to concentrate on content.
LATEX is written as plain text. Therefore it is compact, portable across
machines and operating systems, and transferable across the internet
via World-Wide-Web and email.
All major academic publishers accept papers and articles in LATEX form.
This speeds up the publishing process and reduces the chance of printing errors.

Where?
Free versions of LATEX exist for Intel-based PCs (Microsoft Windows, Linux),
Unix and Apple Macintosh. Commercial (non-free) versions offer extra features (roughly varying with the price charged), and in this course we will be
using MiKTEX. There are commercial WYSIWYG packages, e.g. BaKoMa
TeX Word 1 , or Scientific Word 2 , which create documents in LATEX format,
without the user needing to know any LATEX. If you find yourself strongly attached to WYSIWYG, but needing to produce LATEX for other people, these
may provide a compromise solution.

1.3

About TEX

LATEX is a super-set (macro package) of the typesetting language TEX, created

by Donald Knuth. Knuth was obsessive in making a program that could
format text like a human typesetter, and was very successful: most academic
publishers in the world use TEX in some part of their operations.
But TEX by itself, plain TEX as Knuth calls it, is not very easy to use
without programming skills because Knuth deliberately left out high-level
1
2

See: www.bakoma-tex.com
See: www.sciword.demon.co.uk/scientificword.htm

structure like standard formats (e.g. for reports and letters), leaving that for
other people to do. LATEX (originally created by Leslie Lamport) adds those
formats and other things to make using TEX easier. For a while, there were
other TEX macro packages around, notably AMSTEX and AMSLATEX used
and promoted by the American Mathematical Society. Nowadays, these have
been incorporated into the standard LATEX system.
LATEX and TEX are not two different languages so most TEX commands
can be used in LATEX. Ill point out some useful commands as we go along.
But there is sometimes a conflict where LATEX has re-defined a TEX command.
The TEXbook by Donald Knuth is the reference for TEX. You may need
to refer to it for doing things which are not in LATEX or to change the LATEX
standard for your own purposes.

1.4

Doing LATEX

The process of doing LATEX is essentially like writing computer programs

in, say, Fortran or C, and especially (you should be warned) in terms of its
frustrations. Programmers will recognise this in my description below. This
makes LATEX very different from any WYSIWYG program, where everything
is mouse and menu controlled.
The LATEX source file contains the plain (ASCII) text of a document
combined with formatting commands. Commands are usually preceded by
a backslash \. This and nine other characters are reserved for special
purposes:
\

&

Youll see later how they are all used. So if you actually want a %, for
example, you type: \%. The source file name MUST end in .tex.
A NOTE ON CASE: In different computer operating systems, command
and file names may or may not be sensitive to upper or lower-case letters. In
Unix (and Linux) they are; in Microsoft Windows they are not. Ill always
use lower case in these notes.
Figure 1.2 shows the file skeleton.tex, illustrating the essential components of a LATEX source file.
Given a source file, there is a program called latex which compiles it to
a typeset document, known as the DVI file with its name ending in .dvi.
DVI means DeVice Independent: this file may be used to show the document
on any viewing or printing device. Typically you will do one of two things:
preview it on the computer screen (using a DVI viewer program), or print

TeX|(TeX)
>



COMPILE Z
Z
Z

Z
~
Z

EDIT

PRINT

ZZ
}
Z

View+Print

>





Z
Z

PREVIEW 
View|(View)

Figure 1.1: The steps of doing LATEX.

% skeleton.tex:
% the essential components of a LaTeX file
%
% (N.B. % is the comment character, everything to
% the right of it on a line is IGNORED.)
\documentclass{article}
%
%
%
%
%

**** PREAMBLE ****

contains:
title/author/date information
definitions, short-hands, macros etc.
BUT NO text

\begin{document}
% **** BODY OF DOCUMENT ****
% ...the text itself
%
% N.B. the RESERVED CHARACTERS:
%
\ % $ ^ _ & # ~ { }
%
\end{document}

Figure 1.2: The essential components of a LATEX file.

7

it. The final program needed to use LATEX is a text editor to create and edit
source files.
Working in the most basic way, you will have three separate programs
for doing LATEX: a text editor, latex and a DVI viewer. With MiKTeX and
TeXworks, these are all combined and used through one program interface.
The steps in the LATEX cycle are shown in Figure 1.1 (this is an example
of a diagram created with LATEX picture commandssee Chapter 4). Most
time is spent in the EDIT/COMPILE/PREVIEW loop, with PRINTing at
the end of a typing session or when the document is finally complete. I
think you can now see why I compare doing LATEX to programming, and
youll discover another similarity: debugging! Your source file may contain
syntax errors in the LATEX commands, e.g. a mis-spelt command name or
a missing bracket. These you can only discover by running LATEX, which will
provide error messages. Correcting errors can be tricky, since like any other
sequential compiler program the effect of an error may only be trapped by
the program a long way after the error occurs in the source. More on this
later.

1.5

EXERCISE 1: A first LATEX document

For this exercise, either work on producing some text of your own in LATEX, or
work with the text contained in the file exer1.tex, which may be downloaded
from the WWW pages.
In the latter case, you should either edit that file, or type everything from
scratch, to make a document that looks like the one shown in the printed
answer.

Using MiKTeX
To use the text editor that MiKTEX provides, launch TeXworks. To create
a new LATEX source file, go to File/New. . . in the File menu. Alternatively,
save the file exer1.tex from the website and then use File/Open
Once you have entered your commands you need to compile the source
file (with the latex program), click on the green arrow at the top of the
program window. If there are no errors the preview window containing your
typeset document will appear. If there are errors, a Console output window
and LATEXerror window will appear showing the progress of the compilation
and associated error messages. If there is a question mark in the console
output window you will need to type q, x or r, to complete compilation

To do a preview only, without the compilation step, press the View

button.

Basics of LATEX
Consult the sample file skeleton.tex shown in Figure 1.2 to see the basic
framework of a LATEX file. You should add this first to exer1.tex. Note the
following:
All LATEX commands are case-sensitive, \Begin is different to \begin.
LATEX automatically formats paragraphs and pages, so text in the
source file can be broken-up across lines in whatever way is convenient. Extra spaces are usually ignored, but LATEX will not put spaces
after punctuation marks; insert these manually.
A \ command which ends in a letter must be followed by a SPACE
to tell LATEX that the command has finished.
Paragraphs are separated by one or more BLANK LINES. The first
line of a paragraph is usually indented; to prevent this, put \noindent
at the start. (The amount of indentation can also be set globally for a
whole document.)
Fonts: To emphasise text, use \em which gives italic within a block of
roman (default) text, and roman within italic; for example
here is some {\em emphasised} text
will appear as
here is some emphasised text
Note that a font-switching command affects all the text following,
therefore always enclose the text to be changed by a pair of braces
(curly brackets: {}).
To access italic and bold font styles, the approved (but not the only)
way for LATEX2 is to use the commands \textit and \textbf, for
example:
here is some \textbf{bold text}, some \textit{italic text}
and some \textbf{\textit{bold italic}} text
9

here is some bold text, some italic text and some bold italic
text
Font selection in LATEX is rather sophisticated; consult one of the guide
documents for the details (eg. A Guide to LATEX, section 4.1).
For this exercise, print the mathematical symbols as italic text, with
\textit. Maths typing is introduced in Chapter 2.
Quotation marks: single using and (left and right quotes, you may
have to search a little for the left quote key on your keyboard). Double
using and . The normal double quote character " is converted to
.
Dots . . . are got with \dots.
All the standard accents for languages that use the latin alphabet are
available. For example, \e makes e and \"o makes o. NOTE: If you
wish to use LATEX for typing in a language other than English, there
are macro packages around to make this easier, including for languages
such as Russian and Arabic which do not use the latin alphabet; see
Appendix D of A Guide to LATEX for information.

1.6

EXERCISE 1A

Having completed EXERCISE 1 successfully, try the following modifications

to exer1.tex and see the effects on the printed document.

Making a title
Insert into the preamble the following lines:
\title{Poincar\e and Fish}
\author{Max 6 by 2 Plank}
and then put the command \maketitle directly after \begin{document}.
Thus you should have a main title and author in a bigger font, and a date
automatically added. If you want no date, add to the premable \date{}, or
for an explicit date (or any other text): \date{1 January 0000}. There is
a useful command \today which will generate the current date.

10

Changing \documentclass
In exer1.tex I specified a document class called article. With this
argument, the \documentclass command loads a standard format file which
defines the page layout, sizes and styles of fonts for headings and other things
appropriate for a technical or scientific article. Other document classes
include report and letter, which well come to later. Try changing article
to report. What happens?
By default, documents are formatted for a physical paper size known as
US legal, the North American equivalent of A4 (its shorter and wider
but still fits on A4 paper), and a basic font size of 10 point, where 72
points = 1 inch. To change these settings you use a second argument to the
\documentclass command, with square brackets:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
this specifies A4 paper size and 12-point type. Some people prefer 11-point,
11pt.

Sectioning
Sectioning commands in LATEX include \chapter, \section, \subsection
and \subsubsection. Numbering is automatic. Modify exer1.tex to:
\section{Extract from a recent press article}
You must leave a blank line following any sectioning command, and by default
the first line of the first paragraph is not indented. Sometimes you dont want
numbering, and for this there are corresponding commands \section* etc.
Try it.

Sizes of fonts
Fonts may have different typefaces (bold-face, italic, etc.) and sizes. The sizes
are, for example, \small, \normalsize, \large, \Large, \huge. Like the
typeface commands, the size commands affect all text following, so enclose
the region of text within braces, {...}. Experiment with some font sizes.

Typing maths
Maths is introduced in Chapter 2 but you might want to start here. Mathematical type is enclosed in $ signs (because math is expensive, Knuth
says). For example, $ x_1^2 + 2x_1 + 2 = 0 $. Have a play and see what
11

comes out. Like ordinary text, maths text is formatted by LATEX, so ordinary
spaces are ignored. What happens if you put two $ signs, $$ y = 3x+1 $$
?

1.7

The LATEX philosophy

Hopefully after the first exercises youve got a feel for what creating a LATEX
document involves. Now its worthwhile to emphasise the fundamental philosophy of LATEX.
The aim of LATEX is to make the formatting of a document as automatic as
possible. Of course, there will be times when the standard format is not what
you want, or there is not a formatting command that you need. When this
happens you should strenuously avoid making ad hoc manual changes to your
text. You should instead create your own new commands, or modifications
to existing ones, in the preamble of the source file. Well do some examples
of this later. If the changes involve extensive modification to the global
appearance of a file you might even want to create your own document format
file, basing it on a standard one. It is also a good idea to insert comments
in a source file (a line beginning with %) when anything non-obvious is being
done.
The advantages of this approach are: (1) the LATEX source will be more
comprehensible both to you and other people. (2) The source will be portable
between different document formats without modification, so for example the
text of a research paper can (almost) instantly become a part of a thesis, or
vice versa (and often does). (3) Youll save yourself a lot of work overall by
making some effort to organise things properly.

12

Chapter 2
Math mode and more
2.1

Math mode

So far we have been working in text mode. All mathematics is typed in math
mode, which is quite distinct from text (it even uses a different italic font to
the text one). Math mode is very sophisticated and knows all the standard
typesetting rules for mathematical equations. For example, variables appear
in italic and functions in roman. Ordinary spaces in math mode are ignored
by LATEX, there are special commands for inserting space when necessary.
Math can be typed either inside a block of text, or in its own display
separate from text. Here is some math in text:
Let $G(x)$ be defined for $a<x<b$, $a,b\in R$. Therefore \dots
which looks like:
Let G(x) be defined for a < x < b, a, b R. Therefore . . .
Notice that the spacing between variables and operators (<, ) is inserted
automatically. The spacing and layout of math that you use in the source
file is purely for legibility. Now some display math:
Let
\[
G\colon R^3 \times R \to R^3
\]
be defined for the semi-intervals
\[
0< \mathbf{x} <\infty,\quad 0<t<\infty.
\]
13

which looks like:

Let
G : R3 R R3
be defined for the semi-intervals
0 < x < ,

0 < t < .

Notice the use of bold-face: font-switching commands in math mode should

be placed within braces as in text mode. \quad inserts extra space. A quad
is an old printers unit equal to the width of an M; \qquad is double this,
and should be used for equations with a side condition:
\[ F_n = F_{n-1} + F_{n-2},\qquad n\ge 2. \]
It is good style to punctuate equations correctly, especially putting a full stop
or comma on the end as appropriate. Sometimes it looks better to insert a
little more space before the punctuation: \, inserts a half space.
The commands $ (maths in text) and $$ (maths display) belong to TEX,
and LATEX has \(...\) and \[...\] instead. You should definitely avoid
using the $$ form, but also it is good practice to use LATEXs bracket forms
because it is a common mistake to miss out a closing \) or $ and most good
text editors can check for matching brackets, but cant check for $s.

Sub- and super-scripts

The operators for subscripts and ^ for superscripts work only on the next
character, so $x_12$ is x1 2. Use braces if more than one character is to
be subscripted, $x_{12}$ (x12 ). Sub- and super-scripts may be combined
2
straightforwardly: $X^2_{a+1}$ is the same as $X_{a+1}^2$ (Xa+1
). You
can put sub-sub- and super-super-scripts, or indeed to any level, by nesting:
2+x
$X^{y^{2+x_1}}$ (X y 1 ). Note, however, that there are only three font
sizes: normal, subscript and sub-subscript.

Fractions
Fractions may be indicated just with a /, as in x/(x^2+1), or using \frac:
\frac{x}{x^2+1}
x
+1
It is considered bad style to use \frac for maths in text, because this uses
smaller fonts than display maths, and fractions come out small and hard to
read.
x2

14

Functions
Functions should be typeset in roman font, and LATEX has a fair number
of function names built-in, for example $z = \sin^2 x \cos^3 y$ (z =
sin3 x cos2 y). Suppose the one you want isnt there. You might do the
following:
y = \mathrm{spoon}\,x
gives y = spoon x, where \, inserts a bit of space. This is OK if you only
need to refer to that function once or twice, what about many times? We
can define a new command in the preamble:
\newcommand{\spoon}{\mathrm{spoon}\,}
so that the new command \spoon does the job.
You can also define new commands to create shorthands for frequentlyused complicated constructions. For example:
\newcommand{\Nb}[1]{\parallel #1\parallel^{\flat_\rho}}
Notice the [1], this specifies that the command has 1 argument, so that
$\Nb{X}$ gives k X k[ . You can put any expression you like into the argument, and it will be inserted at the place marked by #1.
A big advantage of defining commands like this is that it becomes easy
to change things. For example, you decide that the function spoon should
really be Spoon. Its a trivial matter to change the definition, and all the
\spoons are untouched.

Delimiters (brackets)
LATEX can make brackets of any size. The easiest way is to use the \left
and \right commands, which will create a bracket big enough for whatever
is inside:
\[ \left( \frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a} \right) \].



b b2 4ac
.
2a
Here we used parentheses, but it works for any delimiter ([...], {...}, etc.).

15

Arrays and matrices

LATEXs \array command builds arrays of expressions, and in the case of
matrices we can put brackets around by the method just described. For
example:
\[ \left(
\begin{array}{ccc}
1-\lambda & -4 & x \\ %first row
3
& -2-\lmbda & y \\ %second row
-1 & \alpha & z-\lamba %third row
\end{array}
\right). \]

1
4
x
3
2
y .
1

z
The {ccc} specifies the position of the entries in each column: flush left (l),
centred (c) or flush right (r).
A possible shortcut for matrices (surrounded by parentheses) is TEXs
\pmatrix command. This gives the same output with less typing:
\pmatrix{
1-\lambda & -4 & x \cr
3
& -2-\lambda & y \cr
-1 & \alpha & z-\lambda \cr
}

Numbered equations and multi-line equations

The following creates a numbered equation. \[ and \] are not required, here
math mode is switched on and off by the \begin and \end commands:
\begin{equation}
x_1,x_2= \frac{-b\pm\sqrt{b^2-4ac}}{2a}\,.
\end{equation}

b b2 4ac
.
(2.1)
x1 , x2 =
2a
Sometimes a single equation is too big for one line, or you want a set of
equations grouped together. For example, again no \[ and \] required,

16

\begin{align}
x^2-3x+2 & =
\Rightarrow x & =
& =
\end{align}

0 ,\nonumber \\
\frac{3\pm\sqrt{9-4.2.1}}{2}, \nonumber \\
1,\quad 2.

x2 3x + 2 = 0,
x=

= 1,

9 4.2.1
,
2
2.

(2.2)

align automatically numbers every line unless there is a \nonumber. The

&s define the columns of the array. As written above, the = signs are
vertically aligned, which is the usual situation. Breaking long equations over
several lines is one of those few occasions where LATEXs formatting ability
fails. For advice on doing it, see A Guide to LATEX section 5.4.7.

2.2

LATEX environments

Weve now seen a number of commands that have a \begin{...} statement

and an \end{...} statement: document, array, equation and align. These
are called environments and are a fundamental part of LATEX. We can easily
define some of our own in the preamble. This defines a proof environment:
\newenvironment{proof}{{\scshape Proof. }\itshape}
{\hfill$\spadesuit$\par}
How it works: the second set of braces defines what to do at the
\begin{proof} command, and the final set what to do at the \end{proof}
command. An example of its use:
\begin{proof}
The proof is obvious to {\em any animal} with an ounce of
brain tissue between its ears! $E=mc^2$, right?
\end{proof}
Proof. The proof is obvious to any animal with an ounce of brain tissue
between its ears! E = mc2 , right?

17

Theorems and such like

Talking of proofs leads naturally to theorems, and there is a special command
for defining theorem-like environments. Examples:
\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{conjecture}[theorem]{Conjecture}
These define a theorem environment which will number Theorems according
to section (1.1, 1.2, . . . , 2.1, . . . 3.1), and a conjecture environment which
numbers Conjectures in the same sequence as Theorems. An example of
use:
\begin{theorem}[Gackworth]
$\spoon f \ge 79/42$.
\end{theorem}
\begin{conjecture}[Whackabath]
If $f$ is dithyrambic {\em and} iconoclastic, then
$\spoon f>107/42$.
\end{conjecture}
Theorem 2.1 (Gackworth) spoon f 79/42.
Conjecture 2.2 (Whackabath) If f is dithyrambic and iconoclastic, then
spoon f > 107/42.
The arguments in square brackets add the attributions.

2.3

EXERCISE 2typing maths

Some exercises on math mode are given separately. See the

WWW pages.

2.4

Handling LATEX errors

When latex finds an error. . .

. . . it stops crunching the file, prints out some form of error message, the
line number in the source file where the error occurred (useful), and some
18

often meaningless expression containing lots of low-level TEX. There isnt

much you can do to correct the problem at this point, although a very crude
correction system is there.
Your responses include the following: ignore the error message and press
<Return> in the text box below the Console output window the problem
may clear itself. If it doesnt and a whole pile more messages appear, you can
do q (for quiet) and latex will crunch through to the end. Alternatively,
type x to stop latex.
Now you are faced with some potentially nasty debugging! Check the
source code at the line numbers given by latex, there may be some trivial
syntax error at the line specified. The problem is that if you miss a closing
\] or $ this may not cause any syntax error until much later on, so you dont
know where the error actually is. Avoid such problems by running latex
pretty frequently as youre typing, that way the error will get pinned down
to the text you typed since the last latex.
LATEX errors can be nasty and obscure. This is why you really need a
LATEX Book or Guide close by. Also be ready to consult local experts.

Over- and under-full boxes

latex frequently generates warnings about overfull and underfull hboxes. An
overfull hbox means that a line is too long and the text has encroached
into the right margin: check the amount given in the warning message. This
is quoted in points, where 72 points = 1 inch, so a few points will be OK.
The problem is that latex could not find a sensible place to break a line
according to its rules. If the amount is big you will have to re-arrange the
paragraph (or math display). An underfull hbox occurs when a line is too
short and latex has had to insert more blank space than it thinks proper to
fill up a line. You can ignore these or re-arrange the offending paragraph.
If you use the draft option with\documentclass then a black rectangle
will appear in the typeset document wherever an overfull hbox occurs.
hbox problems get especially common when only a few words can fit on a
line. This may be when youre using an extra big font size, or extra narrow
margins. It may be a good idea in these cases to use \raggedright (with
braces to localise its effect), so that lines are not justified to the right margin.

19

Chapter 3
Complex documents
This chapter covers some topics related to the preparation of large and/or
complex documents with cross-references, bibliographies and related things.

3.1

Cross-referencing

Cross-referencing is very simple. You put a \label with a reference key on

any numbered object (chapter, section, equation, theorem, figure, etc.) and
then use \ref to get that number, or \pageref to get the page number.
Example: I did the following just now,
\section{Cross-referencing} \label{sec.cross}
so if I type
Welcome to Section \ref{sec.cross} on page \pageref{sec.cross}!
I get
Welcome to Section 3.1 on page 20!
The key can be anything, but its a good idea to include tags like sec, eq
or thm for clarity.

3.2

Tables of contents

Tables of contents are also very simple. Insert the command

\tableofcontents
at the place you want the table to appear, and the information will be read
from the .aux file (see below). There are similar commands for figures and
tables: \listoffigures and \listoftables. More auxiliary files will appear when you use these commands, ending in .toc, .lof or .lot.
20

3.3

Bibliographies

The posh way to do bibliographies is to use a separate program called

BibTEX, which allows you to create a single master file of references which
you can use in any document. It also allows a lot of control over the style of a
bibliography. Im not talking about that here: see the LATEX Book Appendix
B, and A Guide to LATEX Appendix B. There is a small example of how to
use BibTEXon the course website.
Heres a more basic way of doing it. Usually (but not necessarily) at the
end of a document, you put the bibliography information like this:
\begin{thebibliography}{99}
\bibitem{wilkins}
B. J. M. Wilkins, Topological Dynamics and the Haddock
Fishery, Unpublished, 1987.
\bibitem{strainer-wilkins}
T. I. Strainer \& B. J. M. Wilkins 1993,
A new result on Drivles Theorem, {\em Proc. Iceland Cod Fish
Soc. Lond. Ser. D}, {\bf 134} (8678--8679).
\end{thebibliography}
The 99 means a maximum of 99 items (this is to get a neat alignment for
the item numbers). The \begin command has the effect of starting a new,
un-numbered section called References. Each item begins with \bibitem
and a citation key, so that in the document you cite an item with its key,
\cite{wilkins}, which LATEX replaces by a (sequential) number in square
brackets.
BibTEX is a lot more powerful than the method just described, and well
worth a look. In addition, the college supported reference management softwares all support BibTEX format, for details of site licenses see
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/admin-services/library/
learning-support/reference-management/

3.4

The auxiliary (.aux) file

Every time you run latex a .aux file is made or refreshed. This file
contains things like the names of sections with their page numbers, crossreference \label and bibliography \bibitem information. When you run
21

latex a second time this information is read to create a table of contents,

and insert the right numbers into the \refs and \cites. So if any of these
numbers change in editing a document, LATEX must be run twice for the
changes to appear in the output.

3.5

Putting a document in pieces

When you are working on a large document, it can become inconvenient to

keep the whole thing in a single, large source file. Typically, youre only
working on a small part of the document at any one time, so recompiling
the whole document each time you run the latex program becomes tedious.
Then the thing to do is to split the source file into separate files, perhaps
each containing one chapter, and use a small master file to collect everything
together. The command:
\input{stuff}
reads the contents of the file stuff.tex and inserts it into the document
at the point of the \input. This is useful if, say, you have some big source
code for a diagram or picture which you may want to leave out until the final
printingjust comment out the \input with a %.
For split documents, though, you really want to load the .aux information
(with its cross-reference, bibliographic etc. information) but not the .tex,
and the \include command does exactly this. Heres an example of a master
file master.tex for a split document:
\includeonly{chap1,chap3}%files to be included when latex runs
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{report}
%% preamble
\begin{document}
\include{titlepage}
\include{chap1}
\include{chap2}
\include{chap3}
\end{document}

22

Together with this master file there will be four files: titlepage.tex,
chap1.tex, chap2.tex and chap3.tex. You use the \includeonly command to specify which files to load, but the .aux files for all the \included
files will be read. You compile the document just by compiling master.tex.

3.6

EXERCISE 3

An exercise on the Chapter 3 topics is given separately. See the

WWW pages.

23

Chapter 4
Pictures
Putting pictures into LATEX documents can be quite tricky. This is one
area where WYSIWYG programs have a certain advantage, because you can
create pictures, diagrams and graphs using other windows software and then
paste them directly into your document. Typically when writing a technical
document you have a lot of mathematics, which is why you choose LATEX,
and then want to include the odd diagram or graph of results. This chapter
covers some of the options for doing this.

4.1

The figure environment

As far as LATEX is concerned, any picture is just a rectangle of information

which has to be inserted somehow into your document. In TEX language
this is called a box. It is best not to manually format the position of
figure boxes, but to let the figure environment position it for you. (The
reason is that manual formatting will usually be fragile, it will work for one
arrangement of the document, but if you change the order of the document
or insert new material then the manual layout will no longer work). You can
specify the box to go here, which is OK for small boxes of height up to
about 5cm, but anything larger may give LATEX indigestion. In that case, you
must give LATEX the right to choose its own page, where you specify the top
or bottom of a text page, or on a page dedicated to figures. If youre unlucky
this might be 3 or 4 pages away from where you refer to it, but usually it
will be sensibly placed (and you can always use the \pageref command to
get its page number). Insert a figure like this:
\begin{figure}[h]
% the figure itself---see below
24

\caption{Some types of fish} %% optional

\label{fig.fish} %% optional
\end{figure}
where the [h] means here. Use t for top-of-page, b for bottom-of-page or
p, which puts the figure on a page devoted to figures: if space allows several
figures may appear on the same page. \caption is optional, the text inside
will be copied by the \listoffigures command.

4.2

The scissors-and-paste method

The computationally least sophisticated method to include figures is just to

define an adequate space within the figure box, then glue the pictures in by
hand. The command for making space is:
\vspace*{5cm}
and both cm and in are understood. The * here has a special meaning:
LATEX treats space as both compressible and expandable for purposes of formatting pages nicely, and usually this is OK, but for figure boxes it is crucial
that they have the exact dimension specified, so we use a * to impose fixed,
unchangable space.
This is of course a very crude method, but if youre in a hurry and dont
have all the diagrams you need in electronic form it can be the simplest and
fastest.

4.3

LATEXs picture environment

The picture environment allows for the creation of diagrams with text,
boxes, circles, lines and vectors (lines with arrows). It is convenient because
it is internal to LATEX, but the limitations are that lines may only take certain
slopes and that everything must be specified by explicit coordinates, which
can get very painful. The diagram on page 7 was drawn using it. Here is the
source code to give you an idea:
\begin{figure}[p]
% define the plotting space
\begin{picture}(210,140)(30,0)
25

% boxes
\put(5,70){\framebox(60,15){EDIT}}
\put(90,115){\framebox(60,15){COMPILE}}
\put(90,20){\framebox(60,15){PREVIEW}}
\put(170,70){\framebox(60,15){PRINT}}
% dashed boxes
\put(90,135){\dashbox{5}(60,15){\tt\small TeX|(TeX)}}
\put(90,0){\dashbox{5}(60,15){\tt\small View|(View)}}
\put(235,70){\dashbox{5}(60,15){\tt\small View+Print}}
% lines with arrows
\put(120,110){\vector(0,-1){70}}
\put(35,90){\vector(4,3){45}}
\put(80,30){\vector(-4,3){45}}
\put(120,110){\vector(4,-3){45}}
\put(155,28){\vector(4,3){45}}
\end{picture}
\caption{The steps of doing \LaTeX.}
\label{fig.steps}
\end{figure}
You dont need to specify any space for the figure, this is worked out automatically.
picture environment is certainly worth considering: see the LATEX Book
5.5, and A Guide to LATEX Chapter 6. The thing to bear in mind is that
line slopes may only take restricted values; therefore, plan your diagram fully
beforehand and do the lines first.

4.4

Using the graphics package

LATEX 2 (but not 2.09) includes several standard packages for importing
graphic images produced by other software.
A good image format to use is encapsulated Postscript (EPS), since this
can retain image quality when resized. Many programs will output EPS
26

format directly, and if they dont you can use a general graphics manipulation
program to convert an image from other formats (jpg, gif, bmp, etc.) into
EPS.
On the web site, youll find a small sample file illustrating the basic use
of the graphics package. For the details on this package and others, see A
Guide to LATEX Chapter 6.

27

Appendix A
LATEX on the web
There is a lot of material for LATEX available on the web. The basic system is
freely distributed on many web sites, and you will find versions of the software
for all the common types of computers, operating systems and printers.
Also, since (as youve seen) LATEX is a programmable, extensible system, there are many thousands of packages that extend LATEX in different
ways. For example, packages are available for using LATEX to write in all the
European languages that use Latin script. They provide special keyboard
mappings to make accented letters easier to type. More importantly, they
provide hyphenation rules to replace LATEXs rules for Englishthese are essential for the correct breaking of lines and formatting paragraphs correctly.
Beyond Latin script, you may also use LATEX to write in Greek, Russian,
Arabic, Farsi, Japanese, Chinese and others.
The main United Kingdom TEX and LATEX archive is:
www.tex.ac.uk
This is part of the international Comprehensive TEX Archive Network:
www.ctan.org
CTAN is very comprehensive but not so easy to browse around for basic
things. The following site provides a very good beginners overview, including
links to free online and printable manuals:
http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~yogi/latex.html
A search engine (such as www.google.com) is often the quickest way to track
down specific information, but make sure whether the information relates to
LATEX 2 or 2.09.

28

Appendix B
Glossary
ASCII: stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. A
standard set of 128 characters (upper case, lower case, numerals, symbols)
which is used almost universally in computer systems. The term ASCII
text is fairly synonymous with plain text.
Case-sensitive: used to describe a computer program that considers capital
(upper case) and small (lower case) letters to be different. LATEX, UNIX and
Linux are; Windows is not.
DVI file: the output file that results from running LATEX on a source (.tex)
file is called the DVI file. DVI stands for DeVice Independent, meaning that
the file contains the typeset document in a form which may be displayed or
printed on any viewing/printing device.
Knuth (Donald): inventor of the TEX typesetting language, and Professor
at Stanford University (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/knuth/).
LATEX Book: the Users Guide and Reference Manual, by Leslie Lamport
(pub. Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-52983-1). Also look at A Guide to
LATEX by Helmut Kopka and Patrick Daly (Third edition, Addison-Wesley,
1999, ISBN 0-201-39825-7).
Macro: a sequence of LATEX commands grouped into a definition using
\newcommand. Existing macros can be changed with \renewcommand. Macros
with arguments can become simple functions and subroutines. A powerful
programming feature of LATEX.
Preamble: the part of a LATEX source file between \documentstyle and
\begin{document}. Used for title/author details, (re-)defining commands

29

and macros.
TEX: is a typesetting language, designed for the creation of technical documents.
TEXbook: by Knuth (Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-13448-9).
Windows: with a capital W refers to the Microsoft Windows operating
system. windows with a small w refers to windows-type programs in
general.
WYSIWYG: stands for What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get. A term applied
to word processing software when the display on the screen is exactly equal
(in principle!) to what will appear on the paper output. What LATEX is not.

30