Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes

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Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

Adding a title, author and date
22-28 minutes
In this guide, we hope to give you your first introduction to LaTeX.

The guide does not require you to have any prior knowledge of
LaTeX, but by the time you are finished, you will have written your
first LaTeX document, and hopefully will have a good knowledge of
some of the basic functions provided by LaTeX.
LaTeX (pronounced LAY-tek or LAH-tek) is a tool used to create

professional-looking documents. It is based on the WYSIWYM
(what you see is what you mean) idea, meaning you only have
focus on the contents of your document and the computer will take
care of the formatting. Instead of spacing out text on a page to
control formatting, as with Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer,
users can enter plain text and let LaTeX take care of the rest.
LaTeX is used all over the world for scientific documents, books, as
well as many other forms of publishing. Not only can it create
beautifully typeset documents, but it allows users to very quickly
tackle the more complicated parts of typesetting, such as inputting
mathematics, creating tables of contents, referencing and creating
bibliographies, and having a consistent layout across all sections.
Due to the huge number of open source packages available (more
on this later), the possibilities with LaTeX are endless. These
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packages allow users to do even more with LaTeX, such as add

footnotes, draw schematics, create tables etc.
One of the most important reasons people use LaTeX is that it

separates the content of the document from the style. This means
that once you have written the content of your document, we can
change its appearance with ease. Similarly, you can create one
style of document which can be used to standardise the
appearance of many different documents. This allows scientific
journals to create templates for submissions. These templates have
a pre-made layout meaning that only the content needs to be
added. In fact there are hundreds of templates available for
everything from CVs to slideshows.
The first step is to create a new LaTeX project. You can do this on
your own computer by creating a new .tex file, or else you can
start a new project in Overleaf. Let's start with the simplest working
example:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
First document. This is a simple example, with no
extra parameters or packages included.
\end{document}
You can see that LaTeX has already taken care of the first piece of
formatting for you, by indenting the first line of the paragraph. Let's
have a close look at what each part of our code does.
Open an example in Overleaf
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The first line of code declares the type of document, known as the
class. The class controls the overall appearance of the document.
Different types of documents will require different classes i.e. a
CV/resume will require a different class than a scientific paper. In
this case, the class is article, the simplest and most common
LaTeX class. Other types of documents you may be working on
may require different classes such as book or report.
After this, you write the content of our document, enclosed inside
the \begin{document} and \end{document} tags. This is
known as the body of the document. You can start writing here and
make changes to the text if you wish. To see the result of these
changes in the PDF you have to compile the document. To do this
in Overleaf, simply hit Recompile. (You can also set your project to
automatically recompile when you edit your files, by clicking on the
small arrow next to the 'Recompile button and set 'Auto Compile
to 'On.)
If you are using a basic text editor such as gedit, emacs, vim,
sublime, notepad etc., you will have to compile the document
manually. To do this, simply run pdflatex <your document> in
your computers terminal/command line. See here for more
information on how to do this.
If you are using a dedicated LaTeX editor such as TeXmaker or

TeXworks, simply hit the Recompile button. Consult the programs
documentation if you are unsure of where this is.
Now that you have learnt how to add content to our document, the
next step is to give it a title. To do this, we must talk briefly about
the preamble.
In the previous example the text was entered after the
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\begin{document} command. Everything in your .tex file

before this point is called the preamble. In the preamble you define
the type of document you are writing, the language you are writing
in, the packages you would like to use (more on this later) and
several other elements. For instance, a normal document preamble
would look like this:
\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
Below a detailed description of each line:
\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper]{article}
As said before, this defines the type of document. Some
additional parameters included in the square brackets brackets
can be passed to the command. These parameters must be
comma-separated. In the example, the extra parameters set
the font size (12pt) and the paper size (letterpaper). Of
course other font sizes (9pt, 11pt, 12pt) can be used, but if
none is specified, the default size is 10pt. As for the paper
size other possible values are a4paper and legalpaper;
see the article about Page size and margins for more details
about this.
This is the encoding for the document. It can be omitted or
changed to another encoding but utf-8 is recommended.
Unless you specifically need another encoding, or if you are
unsure about it, add this line to the preamble.
To add a title, author and date to our document, you must add three
lines to the preamble (NOT the main body of the document). These
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lines are
\title{First document}
This is the title.
\author{Hubert Farnsworth}
Here you put the name of the Author(s) and, as a optional
parameter, you can add the next command:
\thanks{funded by the Overleaf team}

This can be added after the name of the autor, inside the
braces of the title command. It will add a superscript and a
footnote with the text inside the braces. Useful if you need to
thank an institution in your article.
\date{February 2014}
You can enter the date manually or use the command \today
so the date will be updated automatically at the time you
compile your document
With these lines added, your preamble should look something like
this
\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper, twoside]

{article}
\title{First document}
\author{Hubert Farnsworth \thanks{funded by the
Overleaf team}}
\date{February 2017}
5 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
Now that you have given your document a title, author and date,
you can print this information on the document with the
\maketitle command. This should be included in the body of the
document at the place you want the title to be printed.
\begin{document}
\maketitle
We have now added a title, author and date to our

first \LaTeX{} document!
\end{document}
As with any code you are writing, it can often be useful to include
comments. Comments are pieces of text you can include in the
document which will not be printed, and will not affect the document
in any way. They are useful for organizing your work, taking notes,
or commenting out lines/sections when debugging. To make a
comment in LaTeX, simply write a % symbol at the beginning of the
line as shown below:
\begin{document}
\maketitle
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We have now added a title, author and date to our

first \LaTeX{} document!
% This line here is a comment. It will not be

printed in the document.
\end{document}
We will now look at some simple text formatting commands.
Bold: Bold text in LaTeX is written with the \textbf{...}

command.
Italics: Italicised text in LaTeX is written with the \textit{...}

command.
Underline: Underlined text in LaTeX is written with the

\underline{...} command.
An example of each of these in action is shown below:
Some of the \textbf{greatest}

discoveries in \underline{science}
were made by \textbf{\textit{accident}}.
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Another very useful command is the \emph{...} command. What

the \emph command actually does with its argument depends on
the context - inside normal text the emphasized text is italicized, but
this behaviour is reversed if used inside an italicized text- see
example below:
Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

in science
were made by accident.
\textit{Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

in science
were made by accident.}
\textbf{Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

in science
were made by accident.}
Moreover, some packages, e.g. Beamer, change the behaviour of

\emph command.
We will now look at how to add images to a LaTeX document. On

Overleaf, you will first have to upload the images.
Below is a example on how to include a picture.
\usepackage{graphicx}
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\graphicspath{ {images/} }
\begin{document}
The universe is immense and it seems to be
homogeneous,
in a large scale, everywhere we look at.
\includegraphics{universe}
There's a picture of a galaxy above

\end{document}
LaTeX can not manage images by itself, so you will need to use a
package. Packages can be used to change the default look of your
LaTeX document, or to allow more functionalities. In this case, you
need to include an image in our document, so you should use the
graphicx package. This package gives new commands,
\includegraphics{...} and \graphicspath{...}. To use
the graphicx package, include the following line in you preamble:
\usepackage{graphicx}
The command \graphicspath{ {images/} } tells LaTeX that

the images are kept in a folder named images under the current
directory.
The \includegraphics{universe} command is the one that
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actually included the image in the document. Here universe is the

name of the file containing the image without the extension, then
universe.PNG becomes universe. The file name of the image
should not contain white spaces nor multiple dots.
Note: The file extension is allowed to be included, but it's a good

idea to omit it. If the file extension is omitted it will prompt LaTeX to
search for all the supported formats. It is also usually
recommended to use lowercase letters for the file extension when
uploading image files. For more details see the section about
generating high resolution and low resolution images.
Captions, labels and references
Images can be captioned, labelled and referenced by means of the

figure environment as shown below:
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.25\textwidth]{mesh}
\caption{a nice plot}
\label{fig:mesh1}
\end{figure}
As you can see in the figure \ref{fig:mesh1}, the

function grows near 0. Also, in the page
\pageref{fig:mesh1}
is the same example.
10 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
There are three important commands in the example:
\caption{a nice plot}: As you may expect this command

sets the caption for the figure. If you create a list of figures this
caption will be used there. You can place it above or below the
figure.
\label{fig:mesh1}: If you need to refer the image within your

document, set a label with this command. The label will number the
image, and combined with the next command will allow you to
reference it.
\ref{fig:mesh1}: This code will be substituted by the number

corresponding to the referenced figure.
When placing images in a LaTeX document, we should always put

them inside a figure environment or similar so that LaTeX will
position the image in a way that fits in with the rest of your text.
Note: If you are using captions and references on your own

computer, you will have to compile the document twice for the
references to work. Overleaf will do this for you automatically.'
Lists are very simple to create in LaTeX. You can create lists using
different list environments. Environments are sections of our
document that you want to present in a different way to the rest of
the document. They start with a \begin{...} command and end
with an \end{...} command.
There are two main different types of lists, ordered lists and
unordered lists. Each will use a different environment.
Unordered lists
11 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
Unordered lists are produced by the itemize environment. Each

entry must be preceded by the control sequence \item as shown
below.
\begin{itemize}
\item The individual entries are indicated with
a black dot, a so-called bullet.
\item The text in the entries may be of any
length.
\end{itemize}
By default the individual entries are indicated with a black dot, so-
called bullet. The text in the entries may be of any length.
Ordered lists
Ordered list have the same syntax inside a different environment.

We make ordered lists using the enumerate environment:
\begin{enumerate}
\item This is the first entry in our list
\item The list numbers increase with each entry
we add
\end{enumerate}
As with unordered lists, each entry must be preceded by the control

sequence \item, which will automatically generate the number
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labelling the item. The enumerate labels consists of sequential

numbers starting at one.
One of the main advantages of LaTeX is the ease at which

mathematical expressions can be written. LaTeX allows two writing
modes for mathematical expressions: the inline mode and the
display mode. The first one is used to write formulas that are part
of a text. The second one is used to write expressions that are not
part of a text or paragraph, and are therefore put on separate lines.
Let's see an example of the inline mode:
In physics, the mass-energy equivalence is stated

by the equation $E=mc^2$, discovered in 1905 by
Albert Einstein.
To put your equations in inline mode use one of these delimiters: $

... $, $ ... $ or \begin{math} ... \end{math}. They
all work and the choice is a matter of taste.
The displayed mode has two versions: numbered and unnumbered.
The mass-energy equivalence is described by the

famous equation
\[ E=mc^2 \]
discovered in 1905 by Albert Einstein.

In natural units ($c = 1$), the formula expresses
the identity
13 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
\begin{equation}
E=m
\end{equation}
To print your equations in display mode use one of these delimiters:

\[ ... \], \begin{displaymath} ...
\end{displaymath} or \begin{equation} ...
\end{equation}. $$ ... $$ is discouraged as it can give
inconsistent spacing, and may not work well with some math
packages.
Important Note: equation* environment is provided by an

external package, consult the amsmath article.
Many math mode commands require the amsmath package, so be

sure to include it when writing math. An example is shown below of
some basic math mode commands.
Subscripts in math mode are written as $a_b$ and

superscripts are written as $a^b$. These can be
combined an nested to write expressions such as
\[ T^{i_1 i_2 \dots i_p}_{j_1 j_2 \dots j_q} =

T(x^{i_1},\dots,x^{i_p},e_{j_1},\dots,e_{j_q}) \]
We write integrals using $\int$ and fractions

using $\frac{a}{b}$. Limits are placed on
integrals using superscripts and subscripts:
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\[ \int_0^1 \frac{1}{e^x} = \frac{e-1}{e} \]
Lower case Greek letters are written as $\omega$

$\delta$ etc. while upper case Greek letters are
written as $\Omega$ $\Delta$.
Mathematical operators are prefixed with a

backslash as $\sin(\beta)$, $\cos(\alpha)$,
$\log(x)$ etc.
The possibilities with math in LaTeX are endless and it is

impossible to list them all here. Be sure to check out our other
articles on
Mathematical expressions
Subscripts and superscripts
Brackets and Parentheses
Fractions and Binomials
Aligning Equations
Operators
Spacing in math mode
15 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
Integrals, sums and limits
Display style in math mode
List of Greek letters and math symbols
Mathematical fonts
We will now look at how to write abstracts, as well as how to format

a LaTeX document into different chapters, sections and paragraphs.
Abstracts
In scientific documents it's a common practice to include a brief

overview of the main subject of the paper. In LaTeX there's the
abstract environment for this. The abstract environment will
put the text in a special format at the top of your document.
\begin{document}
\begin{abstract}
This is a simple paragraph at the beginning of the
document. A brief introduction about the main
subject.
\end{abstract}
\end{document}
Paragraphs and newlines
\begin{document}
16 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
\begin{abstract}
This is a simple paragraph at the beginning of the
document. A brief introduction about the main
subject.
\end{abstract}
Now that we have written our abstract, we can

begin writing our first paragraph.
This line will start a second Paragraph.

\end{document}
When writing the contents of your document, if you need to start a

new paragraph you must hit the "Enter" key twice (to insert a
double blank line). Notice that LaTeX automatically indents
paragraphs.
To start a new line without actually starting a new paragraph insert

a break line point, this can be done by \\ (a double backslash as in
the example) or the \newline command.
Care should be taken that multiple \\ or \newlines are not used

to "simulate" paragraphs with larger spacing between them, as this
can interfere with LaTeX's typesetting algorithms. The
recommended method to do so is to keep using double blank lines
to create new paragraphs without any \\, and then add
\usepackage{parskip} to the preamble.
17 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
You can find more information in the Paragraphs and new lines
article.
Chapters and Sections
Commands to organize a document vary depending on the

document type, the simplest form of organization is the sectioning,
available in all formats.
\chapter{First Chapter}
\section{Introduction}
This is the first section.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer

adipiscing
elit. Etiam lobortisfacilisis sem. Nullam nec
mi et
neque pharetra sollicitudin. Praesent imperdietmi
nec ante.
Donec ullamcorper, felis non sodales...
\section{Second Section}

adipiscing elit.
Etiam lobortis facilisissem. Nullam nec mi et
neque pharetra
sollicitudin. Praesent imperdiet mi necante...
18 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
\subsection{First Subsection}
Praesent imperdietmi nec ante. Donec ullamcorper,
felis non sodales...
\section*{Unnumbered Section}
adipiscing elit.
Etiam lobortis facilisissem
The command \section{} marks the beginning of a new section,

inside the braces is set the title. Section numbering is automatic
and can be disabled by including a * in the section command as
\section*{}. We can also have \subsection{}s, and indeed
\subsubsection{}s. The basic levels of depth are listed below:
-1 \part{part}
0 \chapter{chapter}
1 \section{section}
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2 \subsection{subsection}
3 \subsubsection{subsubsection}
4 \paragraph{paragraph}
5 \subparagraph{subparagraph}
Note that \part and \chapter are only available in report and
book document classes.
For a more complete discussion about the document structure see

the article about sections and chapters.
Creating a simple table in LaTeX
Below you can see the simplest working example of a table
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ c c c }
cell1 & cell2 & cell3 \\
cell7 & cell8 & cell9
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
The tabular environment is the default LaTeX method to create

tables. You must specify a parameter to this environment, in this
case {c c c}. This tells LaTeX that there will be three columns
20 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
and that the text inside each one of them must be centred. You can
also use r to align the text to the right and l for left alignment. The
alignment symbol & is used to specify the breaks in the table
entries. There must always be one less alignment symbol in each
line than the number of columns. To go to the next line of your
table, we use the new line command \\. We wrap the entire table
inside the center environment so that it will appear in the center of
the page.
Adding borders
The tabular environment is more flexible, you can put separator

lines in between each column.
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
\hline
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
You can add borders using the horizontal line command \hline
21 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
and the vertical line parameter |.
{ |c|c|c| }: This declares that three columns, separated by a

vertical line, are going to be used in the table. The | symbol
specifies that these columns should be separated by a vertical line.
\hline: This will insert a horizontal line. We have included

horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the table here. There is no
restriction on the number of times you can use \hline.
Below you can see a second example.
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{||c c c c||}
\hline
Col1 & Col2 & Col2 & Col3 \\ [0.5ex]
\hline\hline
1 & 6 & 87837 & 787 \\
\hline
2 & 7 & 78 & 5415 \\
\hline
3 & 545 & 778 & 7507 \\
\hline
4 & 545 & 18744 & 7560 \\
\hline
5 & 88 & 788 & 6344 \\ [1ex]
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
22 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
Creating tables in LaTeX can be a bit tricky sometimes, so you may

want to use the TablesGenerator.com online tool to export LaTeX
code for tabulars. The File > Paste table data option lets you copy
and paste data from spreadsheet applications.
Captions, labels and references
You can caption and reference tables in much the same way as
images. The only difference is that instead of the figure
environment, you use the table environment.
Table \ref{table:data} is an example of referenced

\LaTeX{} elements.
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{||c c c c||}
\hline
Col1 & Col2 & Col2 & Col3 \\ [0.5ex]
\hline\hline
1 & 6 & 87837 & 787 \\
2 & 7 & 78 & 5415 \\
3 & 545 & 778 & 7507 \\
4 & 545 & 18744 & 7560 \\
5 & 88 & 788 & 6344 \\ [1ex]
\hline
23 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
\end{tabular}
\caption{Table to test captions and labels}
\label{table:data}
\end{table}
Note: If you are using captions and references on your own

computer, you will have to compile the document twice for the
references to work. Overleaf will do this for you automatically.'
To create the table of contents is straightforward, the command

\tableofcontents does all the work for you:
\title{Sections and Chapters}

\author{Gubert Farnsworth}
\date{ }
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
24 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
\section{Introduction}
This is the first section.

adipiscing
elit. Etiam lobortisfacilisis sem. Nullam nec
mi et
neque pharetra sollicitudin. Praesent imperdietmi
nec ante.
Donec ullamcorper, felis non sodales...
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Unnumbered Section}
\section*{Unnumbered Section}

adipiscing elit.
neque pharetra
\section{Second Section}

adipiscing elit.
neque pharetra
\end{document}
25 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59
Sections, subsections and chapters are automatically included in

the table of contents. To manually add entries, for example when
you want an unnumbered section, use the command
\addcontentsline as shown in the example.
You can download your finished PDF from the left hand menu as
above by clicking PDF. There is also the quicker option of clicking
the Download PDF button on your PDF viewer as shown below.
26 of 26 19-03-2020, 22:59

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Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes about:reader?url=https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Learn_LaTeX_i...

Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

In this guide, we hope to give you your first introduction to LaTeX.

LaTeX (pronounced LAY-tek or LAH-tek) is a tool used to create

packages allow users to do even more with LaTeX, such as add

One of the most important reasons people use LaTeX is that it

Open an example in Overleaf

If you are using a dedicated LaTeX editor such as TeXmaker or

In the previous example the text was entered after the

\begin{document} command. Everything in your .tex file

Below a detailed description of each line:

\thanks{funded by the Overleaf team}

\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper, twoside]

We have now added a title, author and date to our

Open an example in Overleaf

We have now added a title, author and date to our

% This line here is a comment. It will not be

Open an example in Overleaf

We will now look at some simple text formatting commands.

Bold: Bold text in LaTeX is written with the \textbf{...}

Italics: Italicised text in LaTeX is written with the \textit{...}

Underline: Underlined text in LaTeX is written with the

An example of each of these in action is shown below:

Some of the \textbf{greatest}

Another very useful command is the \emph{...} command. What

Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

\textit{Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

\textbf{Some of the greatest \emph{discoveries}

Moreover, some packages, e.g. Beamer, change the behaviour of

Open an example in Overleaf

We will now look at how to add images to a LaTeX document. On

Below is a example on how to include a picture.

There's a picture of a galaxy above

Open an example in Overleaf

The command \graphicspath{ {images/} } tells LaTeX that

The \includegraphics{universe} command is the one that

actually included the image in the document. Here universe is the

Note: The file extension is allowed to be included, but it's a good

Captions, labels and references

Images can be captioned, labelled and referenced by means of the

As you can see in the figure \ref{fig:mesh1}, the

Open an example in Overleaf

There are three important commands in the example:

\caption{a nice plot}: As you may expect this command

\label{fig:mesh1}: If you need to refer the image within your

\ref{fig:mesh1}: This code will be substituted by the number

When placing images in a LaTeX document, we should always put

Note: If you are using captions and references on your own

Unordered lists are produced by the itemize environment. Each

Open an example in Overleaf

Ordered list have the same syntax inside a different environment.

As with unordered lists, each entry must be preceded by the control

labelling the item. The enumerate labels consists of sequential

Open an example in Overleaf

One of the main advantages of LaTeX is the ease at which

In physics, the mass-energy equivalence is stated

To put your equations in inline mode use one of these delimiters: \(

The displayed mode has two versions: numbered and unnumbered.