Lintro

An Introduction to
LT
A
EX
Version 1.02 July 2015
Institute of Information and Communication Technology

Shahjalal University of Science and Technology
ii
Thank you!
Much of the material used in this introduction comes from

The LaTeX wikibook1 and
The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε 2 by Tobias Oetiker
1
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
2
http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
iv Thank you!
Preface
LATEX[1] is a typesetting system that is very suitable for producing scien-

tific and mathematical documents of high typographical quality. It is also
suitable for producing all sorts of other documents, from simple letters to
complete books. LATEX uses TEX[2] as its formatting engine.
This short introduction describes LATEX and should be sufficient for most
applications of LATEX. Refer to [1], [3], [6] for a complete description of the
LATEX system.
This introduction is split into 6 chapters:
Chapter 1 introduces LATEX and its installation in computer systems.
Chapter 2 presents our first document in LATEX and its compilation pro-
cess. It also discusses about the syntax of LATEX.
Chapter 3 tells you about the basic structure of LATEX documents.
Chapter 4 goes into the details of typesetting your documents. It explains

most of the essential LATEX commands and environments.
Chapter 5 explains how to typeset formula with LATEX. Many examples

demonstrate how to use one of LATEX’s main strengths.
Chapter 6 shows how to install and typeset Bangla texts in LATEX.

vi Preface
It is important to read the chapters in order—the book is not that big, after
all. Be sure to carefully read the examples, because a lot of the information
is in the examples placed throughout the book.
If you need to get hold of any LATEX related material, have a look at one of
the Comprehensive TEX Archive Network (CTAN) sites. The homepage is
at http://www.ctan.org.
If you have ideas for something to be added, removed or altered in this

document, please let me know. I am especially interested in feedback from
LATEX novices about which bits of this intro are easy to understand and
which could be explained better.
Mohammad Abdullah Al Mumin <[email protected]>
Professor
Computer Science and Engineering
Shahjalal University of Science and Technology
Table of Contents
Thank you! iii
Preface v
1 Introduction 1
1.1 What is LATEX? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Why LATEX? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.3 Installing LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3.1 What to Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3.2 Cross Platform Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.3 TEX on Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3.4 TEX on Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3.5 Online Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 Our First Document 7

2.1 First Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2 Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.1 Compilation process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.2.2 Generating the document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.3 Troubleshooting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 The LATEX syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3.1 Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3.2 Reserved Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.3.3 LATEX groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.4 LATEX commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3.5 LATEX environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.6 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS
3 Basic Document Structure 13

3.1 Global structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2 The Preamble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.1 Document classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.2 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.3 The document environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.1 Title Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.2 Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3.3 Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.3.4 Ordinary paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3.5 Table of contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4 Book structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.4.1 Page order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.5 Special pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.5.1 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.5.2 Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.6 Big Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.6.1 Project structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.6.2 Getting LATEX to process multiple files . . . . . . . . . 24
4 Typesetting Text 31
4.1 Page styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.1.1 Standard page styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2 Text Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.1 Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2.2 Fonts and Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.2.3 Text mode superscript and subscript . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.2.4 Dashes and hyphens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.2.5 Ellipsis (. . . ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3 Paragraph Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.1 Paragraph alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.3.2 Paragraph indent and break . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.4 Printing Verbatim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.5 List structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.5.1 Nested lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.6 Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.6.1 The tabular environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.6.2 Spanning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.7 Importing Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.7.1 The graphicx package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
4.7.2 Supported image formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

4.7.3 Including graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.8 Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.8.1 The figure environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.8.2 The table environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.8.3 Captions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.8.4 Lists of figures and tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.9 Labels and Cross-referencing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.10 Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5 Typesetting Mathematics 57
5.1 The amsmath package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.2 Mathematics environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.3.1 Greek letters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.3.2 Powers and indices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.3.3 Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.3.4 Fractions and Binomials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.3.5 Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3.6 Sums and integrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.3.7 Brackets, braces and delimiters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.3.8 Matrices and arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.3.9 Adding text to equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.3.10 Controlling horizontal spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.4 Single Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.5 Multiple Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.6 Equation numbering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.7 List of Mathematical Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
A Further Reading 73
Bibliography 75
Index 77
x TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Tables
3.1 Document Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 Document Class Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.3 Levels of depth for defining sections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.4 Index Key Syntax Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.1 The Predefined Page Styles of LATEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

4.2 Fonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.3 Font Sizes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.4 Absolute Point Sizes in Standard Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.5 Math Fonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.6 Key Names for graphicx Package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.7 A simple table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.8 Float Placement Specifiers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.1 The mathematics environments name and shorthands. . . . . 58

xii LIST OF TABLES
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 What is LATEX?

LATEX is a powerful typesetting system, used for producing scientific and
mathematical documents of high typographic quality. Unlike WYSIWYG1
tools such as MS Word or LibreOffice, it uses plain text files that contain for-
matting commands. Its big, open source, stable and used by many technical
publishing companies.
Donald E Knuth designed a typesetting program called TEX in 1977
especially for complex mathematical text. LATEX is a macro package that
allows authors to use TEX easily, and uses TEX as its formatting engine.
It is available for most operating systems; for example, you can use it on
low specification PCs and Macs, as well as on powerful UNIX and VMS
systems. There are many different implementations of LATEX. The word
LaTeX is pronounced lay-tech or lah-tech. In plain text, the typography is
LaTeX.
1.2 Why LATEX?

The main advantages of LATEX over normal word processors are the following:
• Professionally crafted layouts are available, which make a document

really look as if printed.
• The typesetting of mathematical formula is supported in a convenient

way.
1
What you see is what you get
2 Introduction
• Users only need to learn a few easy-to-understand commands that

specify the logical structure of a document. They almost never need
to tinker with the actual layout of the document.
• Even complex structures such as footnotes, references, table of con-

tents, and bibliographies can be generated easily.
• Free add-on packages exist for many typographical tasks not directly
supported by basic LATEX. For example, packages are available to in-
clude PostScript graphics or to typeset bibliographies conforming to
exact standards. Many of these add-on packages are described in The
LATEX Companion[3].
• LATEX encourages authors to write well-structured texts, because this

is how LATEX worksby specifying structure.
• TEX, the formatting engine of LATEX, is highly portable and free.

Therefore the system runs on almost any hardware platform available.
1.3 Installing LATEX

1.3.1 What to Install
To use LATEX on any computer system, you need several programs.
1. The TEX/LATEX program for processing your LATEX source files into
typeset PDF or DVI documents.
2. A text editor for editing your LATEX source files. Some products even
let you start the LATEX program from within the editor.
3. A PDF/DVI viewer program for previewing and printing your docu-

ments.
4. A program to handle PostScript files and images for inclusion into your
documents.
For every platforms there are several programs that fit the requirements
above. Here we just tell about the ones we know, like and have some expe-
rience with.
1.3 Installing LATEX 3
1.3.2 Cross Platform Editor

While TEX is available on many different computing platforms, LATEX editors
have long been highly platform specific.
Over the past few years I have come to like Texmaker quite a lot. Apart
from being very a useful editor with integrated pdf-preview and syntax high-
lighting, it has the advantage of running on Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux
equally well. See http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker for further infor-
mation. There is also a forked version of Texmaker called TeXstudio on
http://texstudio.sourceforge.net/. It also seems well maintained and
is also available for all three major platforms.
You will find some platform specific editor suggestions in the OS sections
below.
1.3.3 TEX on Windows

Getting TEX distribution
First, get a copy of the excellent MiKTEX distribution from http://www.

miktex.org/. It contains all the basic programs and files required to compile
LATEX documents. The coolest feature in my eyes, is that MiKTEX will
download missing LATEX packages on the fly and install them magically
while compiling a document.
A LATEX editor
If you are not happy with our crossplatform suggestion Texmaker (section
1.3.2).
TeXnicCenter uses many concepts from the programming-world to pro-
vide a nice and efficient LATEX writing environment in Windows. Get your
copy from http://www.texniccenter.org/. TeXnicCenter integrates nicely
with MiKTEX.
Recent MiKTEX distributions contain the TEXworks editor http://
texworks.org/. It supports Unicode and requires at least Windows XP.
Document Preview
For PDF you may want to look at any PDF viewer like Foxit reader, Adobe
Acrobat reader or Sumatra PDF 2 . I mention Sumatra PDF because it lets
2
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
4 Introduction
you jump from any position in the pdf document back into corresponding
position in your source document.
Working with graphics

Working with high quality graphics in LaTeX means that you have to use
Encapsulated PostScript (eps) or PDF as your picture format. The program
that helps you deal with this is called GhostScript. You can get it, to-
gether with its own front end GhostView, from http://www.cs.wisc.edu/
~ghost/.
1.3.4 TEX on Linux

If you work with Linux, chances are high that LATEX is already installed
on your system, or at least available on the installation source you used to
setup. Use your package manager to install the following packages:
• texlive the base TEX/LATEX setup.
• emacs (with AUCTEX) an editor that integrates tightly with LATEX

through the add-on AUCTEX package.
• ghostscript a PostScript preview program.
• xpdf and acrobat a PDF preview program.
• imagemagick a free program for converting bitmap images.
• gimp a free Photoshop look-a-like.
• inkscape a free illustrator/corel draw look-a-like.
If you are looking for a more windows like graphical editing environment,
check out TeXmaker 3 . Apart from being very a useful editor with integrated
pdf-preview and syntax highlighting, it has the advantage of running on
Windows, Mac and Unix/Linux equally well.
Most Linux distros insist on splitting up their TEX environments into a
large number of optional packages, so if something is missing after your first
install, go check again.
3
http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker
1.3 Installing LATEX 5
1.3.5 Online Solutions

To get started without needing to install anything, you can use a web-hosted
service featuring a full TEXdistribution and a web LATEX editor.
• LaTeX Lab 4 allows real-time simultaneous collaborative editing of text

files for anyone with a Google account (and its option to make the doc-
ument available through a URL makes local download and compilation
easily scriptable).
• Overleaf 5 is a secure, easy to use online LATEX editor with integrated

rapid preview. Start writing with one click (no signup required) and
share the link. It supports real time preview, figures, bibliographies
and custom styles.
4
http://docs.latexlab.org
5
https://www.overleaf.com
6 Introduction
Chapter 2
Our First Document
2.1 First Document

Now we can create our first document. We will produce the absolute bare
minimum that is needed in order to get some output; the well known Hello
World! approach will be suitable here.
• Open your favorite text-editor.

• Reproduce the following text in your editor. This is the LATEX source:
% hello.tex - Our first LaTeX example!

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello World!
\end{document}
• Save your file as hello.tex.
When picking a name for your file, make sure it bears a .tex extension.
2.2 Compilation
2.2.1 Compilation process
The general concept is to transform a plain text document into a publishable
format, mostly a DVI, PS or PDF file. This process is called compilation,
which is done by an executable file called a compiler. There are two exe-
cutables:
8 Our First Document
• latex executable reads a LATEX .tex file and creates a .dvi
• pdflatex executable reads a LATEX .tex file and creates a .pdf
2.2.2 Generating the document

I am assuming that you are at a graphical front-end where you can click
LATEX into compiling your input file. Please note: this description assumes
that you already have a working LATEX installation on your computer.
• Select LaTex => PDF from output profile.
• Click on build and view current file button.
There will be a pause while your document is being converted to a PDF

file. When the compiling is complete PDF viewer will open and display your
document. The PDF file is automatically saved in the same folder as the
.tex file.
Once translated this code into a PDF document, you will find the text:
Hello World!
along with the page number at the bottom, which is added automatically in
the article class.
2.2.3 Troubleshooting
If there is an error in your document and compiler cannot create the PDF,
Build Output at the bottom of the screen will stay open. If this happens:
• Read the Build Output - the last line will probably include a line
number and the command that caused the error.
• Go to the line number in your document and fix the error.
• Click on the build and view current file button again.
2.3 The LATEX syntax

The input for LATEX is a plain text file. You can create it with any text
editor. It contains the text of the document, as well as the commands that
tell LATEX how to typeset the text.
2.3 The LATEX syntax 9
2.3.1 Spaces
Whitespace characters, such as blank or tab, are treated uniformly as ”space”
by LATEX. Several consecutive ”spaces” are treated as one, ”space” opening
a line is generally ignored, and a single line break also yields ”space”.
A double line break (an empty line), however, defines the end of a para-
graph; multiple empty lines are treated the same as one empty line. The
text below is an example. On the above is the text from the input file, and
in the box below is the formatted output.
It does not matter whether you

enter one or several spaces
after a word.
An empty line starts a new paragraph.
It does not matter whether you enter one or several spaces after a word.
An empty line starts a new paragraph.
2.3.2 Reserved Characters

The following symbols are reserved characters that either have a special
meaning under LATEX or are unavailable in all the fonts. If you enter them
directly in your text, they will normally not print but rather make LATEX do
things you did not intend.
#$%ˆ& {}˜\
As you will see, these characters can be used in your documents all the
same by adding a prefix backslash:
\# \$ \% \^{} \& \_ \{ \} \~{} \textbackslash{}
#$%ˆ& {}˜\
The backslash character \ cannot be entered by adding another backslash

in front of it (\\); this sequence is used for line breaking. For introducing
a backslash in math mode, you can use \backslash instead.
2.3.3 LATEX groups

A group is basically defined by a pair of braces. The range of commands
put between braces is limited to them. The \begingroup and \endgroup
commands are equivalent to opening brace and closing brace.
Example:
{
\bf This is bold.
}
This is no longer bold.
This is bold. This is no longer bold.
For some commands it is important to restrict their range of action, and

that’s where groups come to be very useful.
2.3.4 LATEX commands

LATEX commands are case sensitive, and take one of the following two for-
mats:
• They start with a backslash \ and then have a name consisting of

letters only. Command names are terminated by a space, a number or
any other ”non-letter”.
• They consist of a backslash \ and exactly one non-letter.
LaTeX ignores whitespace after commands. If you want to get a space

after a command, you have to put either an empty parameter {} and a
blank or a special spacing command after the command name. The empty
parameter {} stops LaTeX from eating up all the white space after the
command name.
New \TeX users may miss whitespaces

after a command. % renders wrong
Experienced \TeX{} users are
\TeX perts, and know how to use
whitespaces. % renders correct
2.3 The LATEX syntax 11
New TEXusers may miss whitespaces after a command. Experienced

TEX users are TEXperts, and know how to use whitespaces.
Some commands need an argument, which has to be given between curly

braces { } after the command name. Some commands support optional pa-
rameters, which are added after the command name in square brackets [ ].
The general syntax is:
\commandname[option1,option2,...]{argument1}{argument2}...
2.3.5 LATEX environments

Environments in LATEX have a role that is quite similar to commands, but
they usually have effect on a wider part of the document. Their syntax is:
\begin{environmentname}
text to be influenced
\end{environmentname}
Between the \begin and the \end you can put other commands and
nested environments. The internal mechanism of environments defines a
group, which makes its usage safe (no influence on the other parts of the
document). In general, environments can accept arguments as well, but this
feature is not commonly used and so it will be discussed in more advanced
parts of the document.
Anything in LaTeX can be expressed in terms of commands and envi-
ronments.
2.3.6 Comments
When LATEX encounters a % character while processing an input file, it
ignores the rest of the current line, the line break, and all whitespace at the
beginning of the next line. This can be used to write notes into the input
file, which will not show up in the printed version.
This is an % stupid
% Better: instructive <----
example: Supercal%
ifragilist%
icexpialidocious
This is an example: Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Note that the % character can be used to split long input lines that do
not allow whitespace or line breaks, as with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
above.
Chapter 3
Basic Document Structure
3.1 Global structure
When LATEX processes an input file, it expects it to follow a certain structure.

Thus every input file must contain the commands
\documentclass{...}
\begin{document}
...
\end{document}
The area between \documentclass{...} and \begin{document} is called

the preamble. It normally contains commands that affect the entire doc-
ument.
After the preamble, the text of your document is enclosed between two
commands which identify the beginning and end of the actual document,
i.e., the document environment:
\begin{document}
...
\end{document}
You would put your text where the dots are.

14 Basic Document Structure
3.2 The Preamble
3.2.1 Document classes
When processing an input file, LATEX needs to know the type of document
the author wants to create. This is specified with the \documentclass com-
mand. It is recommended to put this declaration at the very beginning.
\documentclass[options]{class}
Here, class specifies the type of document to be created. Table 3.1 lists
the document classes explained in this introduction. The options parameter
customizes the behavior of the document class. The options have to be
separated by commas. The most common options for the standard document
classes are listed in Table 3.2.
Example: an input file for a LATEX document could start with the line
\documentclass[11pt,twoside,a4paper]{article}
which instructs LATEX to typeset the document as an article with a base font
size of 11 points, and to produce a layout suitable for double sided printing
on A4 paper.
Table 3.1: Document Classes.

article For articles in scientific journals, presentations, short
reports, program documentation, invitations, ...
proc A class for proceedings based on the article class.
minimal Is as small as it can get. It only sets a page size and
a base font. It is mainly used for debugging purposes.
report For longer reports containing several chapters, small
books, thesis, ...
book For real books.
slides For slides. The class uses big sans serif letters.
beamer For writing presentations.
3.2 The Preamble 15
3.2.2 Packages
While writing your document, you will probably find that there are some
areas where basic LATEX cannot solve your problem. If you want to include
graphics, colored text or source code from a file into your document, you
need to enhance the capabilities of LATEX. Such enhancements are called
packages. Some packages come with the LATEX base distribution. Others
are provided separately. Modern TEX distributions come with a large num-
ber of packages pre-installed. Packages are activated with the
\usepackage[options]{package}
command, where package is the name of the package and options is a list of
keywords that trigger special features in the package. For example, to use
the color package, which lets you typeset in colors, you would type:
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,oneside]{report}
\usepackage{color}
\begin{document}
...
\end{document}
You can include several package names in one \usepackage command

by separating the names with commas, like this:
\usepackage{package1,package2,package3}
and you can have more than one \usepackage command. Some packages
allow optional settings in square brackets. If you use these, you must give
the package its own separate \usepackage command.
Many packages can have additional formatting specifications in optional
arguments in square brackets. Read the documentation for the package con-
cerned to find out what can be done. You can pass several options together
separated by a comma:
\usepackage[option1,option2,option3]{’’package_name’’}
3.3 The document environment

3.3.1 Title Creation
At the beginning of most documents there will be information about the
document itself, such as the title and date, and also information about the
authors, such as name, address, email etc.
A simple example:
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{report}
\begin{document}
\title{How to Structure a LaTeX Document}
\author{John Doe\\ Magic Department, Richard Miles University
\and Richard Row, \LaTeX\ Academy}
\date{December 2004}
\maketitle
\end{document}
Commonly the date is excluded from the title page by using \date{}.
It defaults to \today if not in the source file. The double backslash (\\) is
the LATEX command for forced linebreak.
To form a title page, use
\maketitle
This should go after the preceding commands.
3.3.2 Abstract
As most research papers have an abstract, there are predefined commands
for telling LATEX which part of the content makes up the abstract. This
should appear in its logical order, therefore, after the title creation, but
before the main sections of the body. This command is available for the
document classes article and report, but not book.
\begin{document}
\begin{abstract}
3.3 The document environment 17
Your abstract goes here...

...
\end{abstract}
...
\end{document}
By default, LATEX will use the word ”Abstract” as a title for your ab-
stract.
3.3.3 Sections
The commands for inserting sections are fairly intuitive. Of course, certain
commands are appropriate to different document classes. For example, a
book has chapters but an article doesn’t. Here are some of the structure
commands:
\chapter{Introduction}
This chapter’s content...
\section{Structure}
This section’s content...
\subsection{Top Matter}
This subsection’s content...
\subsubsection{Article Information}
This subsubsection’s content...
Notice that you do not need to specify section numbers; LATEX will sort
that out for you. The spacing between sections, the numbering and the font
size of the titles will be set automatically by LATEX.
LATEX provides 7 levels of depth for defining sections (see table 3.3).
Each section in this table is a subsection of the one above it.
All the titles of the sections are added automatically to the Table of Con-
tents (if you decide to insert one). To get an unnumbered section heading
which does not go into the Table of Contents, follow the command name
with an asterisk before the opening curly brace:
\subsection*{Introduction}
All the divisional commands from \part* to \subparagraph* have this

”starred” version which can be used on special occasions for an unnumbered
heading.
3.3.4 Ordinary paragraphs

Paragraphs of text come after section headings. Simply type the text and
leave a blank line between paragraphs. The blank line means ”start a new
paragraph here”: it does not mean you get a blank line in the typeset output.
For formatting paragraph indents and spacing between paragraphs, refer to
the Paragraph Formatting section in 4.3.
3.3.5 Table of contents

All auto-numbered headings get entered in the Table of Contents (ToC) au-
tomatically. You don’t have to print a ToC, but if you want to, just add the
command
\tableofcontents
at the point where you want it printed (usually after the Abstract or Sum-
mary).
Entries for the ToC are recorded each time you process your document,
and reproduced the next time you process it, so you need to re-run LATEX
one extra time to ensure that all ToC page number references are correctly
calculated.
The commands \listoffigures and \listoftables work in exactly
the same way as \tableofcontents to automatically list all your tables
and figures. If you use them, they normally go after the \tableofcontents
command.
3.4 Book structure

The standard LATEX book class follows the same layout described above
with some additions. By default a book will be two-sided, i.e. left and right
margins will change according to the page number parity. Furthermore
current chapter and section will be printed in the header.
If you do not make use of chapters, it is barely useful to use the book
class. A general structure of the book class is as follows:
\begin{document}
3.4 Book structure 19
\frontmatter
\maketitle
% Introductory chapters
\chapter{Preface}
% ...
\mainmatter
\chapter{First chapter}
% ...
\appendix
\chapter{First Appendix}
\backmatter
\chapter{Last note}
\end{document}
• The frontmatter chapters will not be numbered. Page numbers will
be printed in roman numerals. Frontmatter is not supposed to have
sections, since they will be number 0.n because there is no chapter
numbering.
• The mainmatter chapters works as usual. The command resets the
page numbering. Page numbers will be printed in arabic numerals.
• The \appendix macro can be used to indicate that following sections
or chapters are to be numbered as appendices. Appendices can be
used for the article class too:
\appendix
\section{First Appendix}
Only use the \appendix macro once for all appendices.

• The backmatter behaves like the frontmatter. It has the same issue
with section numbering.
As a general rule you should avoid mixing the command order. Nonethe-
less all commands are optional, so you might consider using only a few.
Note that the special content like the Table of Contents is considered as
an unnumbered chapter.
3.4.1 Page order

This is one traditional page order for books.
Frontmatter
1. Half-title
2. Empty
3. Title page
4. Information (copyright notice, ISBN, etc.)
5. Dedication if any, else empty
6. Table of contents
7. List of figures, tables (can be in the backmatter too)
8. Preface chapter
Mainmatter
1. Main topic
Appendix
1. Some subordinate chapters
Backmatter
1. Bibliography
2. Glossary / Index
3.5 Special pages

Comprehensive papers often feature special pages at the end, like indices,
glossaries and bibliographies. Since this is a quite complex topic, we will
discuss here only some basic features.
3.5 Special pages 21
3.5.1 Bibliography
If you are writing only one or two documents and aren’t planning on writing
more on the same subject for a long time, you might not want to waste time
creating a database of references you are never going to use. In this case
you should consider using the basic and simple bibliography support that is
embedded within LATEX.
LATEX provides an environment called thebibliography that you have
to use where you want the bibliography; that usually means at the very end
of your document, just before the \end{document} command. Each entry
starts with
\bibitem[label]{marker}
The marker is then used to cite the book, article or paper within the
document.
\cite{marker}
If you do not use the label option, the entries will get enumerated auto-
matically. Here is a practical example:
LaTeX was originally written by Leslie Lamport \cite{lamport94}.
...
\begin{thebibliography}{56}
\bibitem{lamport94}
Leslie Lamport,
LaTeX: a document preparation system,
Addison Wesley, Massachusetts,
2nd edition,
1994.
\end{thebibliography}
LaTeX was originally written by Leslie Lamport [1].

...
Bibliography
[1] Leslie Lamport. LaTeX: A Document Preparation System. Ad-
dison Wesley, Massachusetts, 2nd edition, 1994.
The parameter after the \begin{thebibliography} command defines

how much space to reserve for the number of labels. In the example above,
{56} tells LATEX to expect that none of the bibliography item numbers will
be wider than the number 99.
3.5.2 Indexing
To enable the indexing feature of LATEX, the makeidx package must be loaded
in the preamble with:
\usepackage{makeidx}
and the special indexing commands must be enabled by putting the
\makeindex
command into the input file preamble.
The content of the index is specified with
\index{key@formatted_entry}
commands, where formatted entry will appear in the index and key will be
used for sorting. The formatted entry is optional. If it is missing the key
will be used. You enter the index commands at the points in the text that
you want the final index entries to point to. For example, the text
To solve various problems in physics, it can be advantageous

to express any arbitrary piecewise-smooth function as a
Fourier Series composed of multiples of sine and cosine functions.
can be re-written as
To solve various problems in physics, it can be advantageous

to express any arbitrary piecewise-smooth function as a Fourier Series
3.6 Big Projects 23
\index{Fourier Series}
composed of multiples of sine and cosine functions.
to create an entry called ’Fourier Series’ with a reference to the target page.
Multiple uses of \index with the same key on different pages will add those
target pages to the same index entry. Table 3.4 explains the syntax with
several examples.
To show the index within the document, merely use the command
\printindex
It is common to place it at the end of the document. The default index

format is two columns.
Compiling indices
When the input file is processed with LATEX, each \index command writes
an appropriate index entry, together with the current page number, to a spe-
cial file. The file has the same name as the LATEX input file, but a different
extension (.idx). This .idx file can then be processed with the makeindex
program:
makeindex filename
The makeindex program generates a sorted index with the same base
file name, but this time with the extension .ind. If now the LATEX input
file is processed again, this sorted index gets included into the document at
the point where LATEX finds \printindex.
3.6 Big Projects

This is a short step-by-step guide about how to start a document properly,
keeping a good high-level structure. This is all about organizing your files
using the modular capabilities of LATEX. This way it will be very easy to
make modifications even when the document is almost finished.
3.6.1 Project structure

Create a clear structure of the whole project this way:
1. create a directory only for the project. We’ll refer to that in the
following parts as the root directory
2. create two other directories inside the root, one for LATEX documents,
the other one for images. Since you’ll have to write their name quite
often, choose short names. A suggestion would be simply tex and img.
3. create your document (we’ll call it document.tex, but you can use the
name you prefer) and your own package (for example mystyle.sty);
this second file will help you to keep the code cleaner.
If you followed all those steps, these files should be in your root directory,
using "/" for each directory:
./document.tex
./mystyle.sty
./tex/
./img/
nothing else.
3.6.2 Getting LATEX to process multiple files

As your work grows, your LATEX file can become unwieldy and confusing,
especially if you are writing a long article with substantial, discrete sections,
or a full-length book. In such cases it is good practice to split your work
into several files. For example, if you are writing a book, it makes a lot of
sense to write each chapter in a separate .tex file. LATEX makes this very
easy thanks to two commands:
\input{filename}
and
\include{filename}
Compiling the base file

When you compile your document, page references and the like will change
according to your use of the \input and \include commands. Normally
LATEX users only run the compiler on parts of the document to check that an
3.6 Big Projects 25
individual chapter is syntactically correct and looks as the writer intended.

A full run is generally only performed for producing a full draft or the final
version. In such cases, it is invariably necessary to run LATEX twice or more
to resolve all the page numbers, references, etc. (especially if you are using
bibliographic software such as BiBTeX, too).
The simplest way to check that one or more of the various components
of your work is syntactically robust, is to comment out the command with
a percentage sign, for example:
\begin{document}
%\input{Section_1}
%\input{Section_2}
%\input{Section_3}
\input{Section_4}
%\input{Section_5}
\end{document}
This code will process your base file with the article conventions but only
the material in the file Section 4.tex will be processed. If that was, say,
the last thing you needed to check before sending off to that major journal,
you would then simply remove all the percentage signs and rerun LATEX,
repeating the compiling process as necessary to resolve all references, page
numbers and so on.
Separate compilation of child documents

A disadvantage of solely using \input and \include is that only the base
document can be compiled. However, you may decide that you work better
on individual sections of text and wish to edit and compile those separate
from the main file. There are a few packages available to address this prob-
lem.
Standalone
The standalone package provides a means for importing the preamble of
child documents into the main document, allowing for a flexible way to
include text or images in multiple documents (e.g. an article and a
presentation).
In the main document, the package must be loaded as:
\usepackage{standalone}
in the preamble. Child documents are loaded using \input or \include.

The child documents contain, for example, the following statements:
\documentclass{standalone}
% Load any packages needed for this document
\begin{document}
% Your document or picture
\end{document}
The file mystyle.sty

Instead of putting all the packages you need at the beginning of your docu-
ment as you could, the best way is to load all the packages you need inside
another dummy package called mystyle you will create just for your docu-
ment. The good point of doing this is that you will just have to add one single
\usepackage{standalone}
in your document, keeping your code much cleaner. Moreover, all the info
about your style will be within one file, so when you will start another
document you’ll just have to copy that file and include it properly, so you’ll
have exactly the same style you have used.
Creating your own style is very simple: create a file called mystyle.sty
(you could name it as you wish, but it has to end with ”.sty”). Write at the
beginning:
\ProvidesPackage{mystyle}
Then add all the packages you want with the standard command \usepackage{...}
as you would do normally, change the value of all the variables you want,
etc. It will work like the code you put here would be copied and pasted
within your document.
The main document document.tex

Then create a file called document.tex; this will be the main file, the one
you will compile, even if you shouldn’t need to edit it very often because
you will be working on other files. It should look like this:
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage{mystyle}
3.6 Big Projects 27
\begin{document}
\input{./tex/title.tex}
%\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\listoffigures
\listoftables
\input{./tex/intro.tex}
\input{./tex/main_part.tex}
\input{./tex/conclusions.tex}
\appendix
\input{./tex/myappendix.tex}
% Bibliography:
\input{./tex/mybibliography.tex}
\end{document}
Table 3.2: Document Class Options.

10pt, 11pt, 12pt Sets the size of the main font in the document. If no
option is specified, 10pt is assumed.
a4paper, letterpaper,... Defines the paper size. The default size is
letterpaper; Besides that, a5paper, b5paper,
executivepaper, and legalpaper can be specified.
fleqn Typesets displayed formulas left-aligned instead of
centered.
leqno Places the numbering of formulas on the left hand side
instead of the right.
titlepage, notitlepage Specifies whether a new page should be started after
the document title or not. The article class does not
start a new page by default, while report and book
do.
twocolumn Instructs LaTeX to typeset the document in two
columns instead of one.
twoside, oneside Specifies whether double or single sided output should
be generated. The classes article and report are
single sided and the book class is double sided by
default. Note that this option concerns the style of
the document only. The option twoside does not tell
the printer you use that it should actually make a two-
sided printout.
landscape Changes the layout of the document to print in land-
scape mode.
openright, openany Makes chapters begin either only on right hand pages
or on the next page available. This does not work
with the article class, as it does not know about
chapters. The report class by default starts chapters
on the next page available and the book class starts
them on right hand pages.
3.6 Big Projects 29
Table 3.3: Levels of depth for defining sections.

Command Level Comment
\part{’’part’’} -1 not in letters
\chapter{’’chapter’’} 0 only books and reports
\section{’’section’’} 1 not in letters
\subsection{’’subsection’’} 2 not in letters
\subsubsection{’’subsubsection’’} 3 not in letters
\paragraph{’’paragraph’’} 4 not in letters
\subparagraph{’’subparagraph’’} 5 not in letters
Table 3.4: Index Key Syntax Examples.

Example Index Entry Comment
\index{hello} hello, 1 Plain entry
\index{hello!Peter} Peter, 3 Subentry under ’hello’
\index{Sam@\textbf{Sam}} Sam, 2 Formatted entry
\index{Jenny textbf} Jenny, 3 Formatted page number
\index{ecole@\’ecole} école, 4 Handling of accents
Chapter 4
Typesetting Text
4.1 Page styles

Page styles in LATEX terms refers not to page dimensions, but to the run-
ning headers and footers of a document. These headers typically contain
document titles, chapter or section numbers/names, and page numbers.
4.1.1 Standard page styles

The possibilities of changing the headers in plain LATEX are actually quite
limited. There are two commands available:
\pagestyle{‘‘style’’}
will apply the specified style to the current and all subsequent pages, and
\thispagestyle{‘‘style’’}
will only affect the current page. The possible styles are shown in Table 4.1.
4.2 Text Formatting

4.2.1 Spacing
Line Spacing
If you want to use larger inter-line spacing in a document, you can change
its value by putting the
32 Typesetting Text
Table 4.1: The Predefined Page Styles of LATEX.

empty Both header and footer are cleared.
plain Header is clear, but the footer contains the page num-
ber in the center.
headings Footer is blank, header displays information accord-
ing to document class (e.g., section name) and page
number top right.
myheadings Page number is top right, and it is possible to control
the rest of the header.
\linespread{factor}
command into the preamble of your document. Use \linespread{1.3}
for ”one and a half” line spacing, and \linespread{1.6} for ”double” line
spacing. Normally the lines are not spread, so the default line spread factor
is 1.
The setspace package allows more fine-grained control over line spacing.
To set ”one and a half” line spacing document-wide, but not where it is
usually unnecessary (e.g. footnotes, captions):
\usepackage{setspace}
%\singlespacing
\onehalfspacing
%\doublespacing
%\setstretch{1.1}
To change line spacing within the document, the setspace package
provides the environments singlespace, onehalfspace, doublespace and
spacing:
This paragraph has \\ default \\ line spacing.
\begin{doublespace}
This paragraph has \\ double \\ line spacing.
\end{doublespace}
\begin{spacing}{2.5}
This paragraph has \\ huge gaps \\ between lines.
\end{spacing}
4.2 Text Formatting 33
Horizontal Space
LaTeX determines the spaces between words and sentences automatically.
To add horizontal space, use:
\hspace{length}
If such a space should be kept even if it falls at the end or the start of a
line, use \hspace* instead of \hspace.
This\hspace{1.5cm}is a space
of 1.5 cm.
This is a space of 1.5 cm.
Vertical Space
The space between paragraphs, sections, subsections, . . . is determined au-
tomatically by LATEX. If necessary, additional vertical space between two
paragraphs can be added with the command:
\vspace{length}
This command should normally be used between two empty lines. If the
space should be preserved at the top or at the bottom of a page, use the
starred version of the command, \vspace*, instead of \vspace.
Additional space between two lines of the same paragraph or within a
table is specified with the
\\[length]
command.
With \bigskip and \smallskip you can skip a predefined amount of
vertical space without having to worry about exact numbers.
4.2.2 Fonts and Sizes

LATEX chooses the appropriate font and font size based on the logical struc-
ture of the document (sections, footnotes, ...). In some cases, one might like
to change fonts and sizes by hand. To do this, use the commands listed in
34 Typesetting Text
Tables 4.2 and 4.3. The actual size of each font is a design issue and depends
on the document class and its options. Table 4.4 shows the absolute point
size for these commands as implemented in the standard document classes.
{\small The small and

\textbf{bold} Romans ruled}
{\Large all of great big
\textit{Italy}.}
The small and bold Romans ruled all of great big Italy.
Table 4.2: Fonts.

\textrm{...} roman \textsf{...} sans serif
\texttt{...} typewriter
\textmd{...} medium \textbf{...} bold face
\textup{...} upright \textit{...} italic
\textsl{...} slanted \textsc{...} Small Caps
\emph{...} emphasized \textnormal{...} document font
Table 4.3: Font Sizes.

\tiny tiny font \Large larger font
\scriptsize very small font
\footnotesize quite small font \LARGE very large font

\small small font
\normalsize normal font \huge huge

\large large font \Huge largest
One important feature of LATEX is that the font attributes are indepen-
dent. This means that issuing size or even font changing commands, and
still keep bold or slant attributes set earlier.
4.2 Text Formatting 35
Table 4.4: Absolute Point Sizes in Standard Classes.

size 10pt (default) 11pt option 12pt option
\tiny 5pt 6pt 6pt
\scriptsize 7pt 8pt 8pt
\footnotesize 8pt 9pt 10pt
\small 9pt 10pt 11pt
\normalsize 10pt 11pt 12pt
\large 12pt 12pt 14pt
\Large 14pt 14pt 17pt
\LARGE 17pt 17pt 20pt
\huge 20pt 20pt 25pt
\Huge 25pt 25pt 25pt
In math mode use the font changing commands to temporarily exit math
mode and enter some normal text. If you want to switch to another font for
math typesetting you need another special set of commands; refer to Table
4.5.
Table 4.5: Math Fonts.

\mathrm{...} RomanFont
\mathbf{...} BoldfaceFont
\mathsf{...} SansSerifFont
\mathtt{...} TypewriterFont
\mathit{...} ItalicFont
\mathcal{...} CALLIGRAPHICF ON T
\mathnormal{...} N ormalF ont
In connection with the font size commands, curly braces play a significant
role. They are used to build groups. Groups limit the scope of most LATEX
commands.
He likes {\LARGE large and

36 Typesetting Text
{\small small} letters}.
He likes large and small letters.

If you want to activate a size changing command for a whole paragraph
of text or even more, you might want to use the environment syntax for font
changing commands.
\begin{Large}
This is not true.
But then again, what is these
days \ldots
\end{Large}
This is not true. But then again, what is these days . . .
This will save you from counting lots of curly braces.
4.2.3 Text mode superscript and subscript

To superscript text in text-mode, you can use the \textsuperscript{}
command. This allows you to, for instance, typeset 6th as 6th :
Michelangelo was born on March 6\textsuperscript{th}, 1475.
Subscripting in text-mode is not supported by LATEX alone; however,

several packages allow the use of the \textsubscript{} command.
4.2.4 Dashes and hyphens

LATEX knows four kinds of dashes: a hyphen (-), en dash (–), em dash (—),
or a minus sign (−). You can access three of them with different numbers
of consecutive dashes. The fourth sign is actually not a dash at all, it is the
mathematical minus sign:
Hyphen: daughter-in-law, X-rated\\

En dash: pages 13--67\\
Em dash: yes---or no? \\
Minus sign: $0$, $1$ and $-1$
4.3 Paragraph Formatting 37
Hyphen: daughter-in-law, X-rated

En dash: pages 13–67
Em dash: yes—or no?
Minus sign: 0, 1 and −1
4.2.5 Ellipsis (. . . )
A sequence of three dots is known as an ellipsis, which is commonly used
to indicate omitted text. There is a special command for these dots. It is
called \ldots:
Not like this ... but like this:\\

New York, Tokyo, Budapest, \ldots
Not like this ... but like this:

New York, Tokyo, Budapest, . . .
4.3 Paragraph Formatting

4.3.1 Paragraph alignment
Paragraphs in LATEX are usually fully justified, i.e. flush with both the
left and right margins. For whatever reason, should you wish to alter the
justification of a paragraph, there are three environments at hand, and also
LATEX command equivalents.
Alignment Environment Command

Left justified flushleft \raggedright
Right justified flushright \raggedleft
Center center \centering
All text between the \begin and \end of the specified environment will
be justified appropriately. The commands listed are for use within other
environments. For example, p (paragraph) columns in tabular.
There is no way (in standard LATEX) to set full justification explicitly. It
means that if you do not enclose the previous 3 commands into a group, the
rest of the document will be affected.
38 Typesetting Text
So the right way of doing this with commands is
\raggedleft{Some text flushed right.}
Some text flushed right.
4.3.2 Paragraph indent and break

By default, the first paragraph after a heading follows the standard Anglo-
American publishers’ practice of no indentation. The size of subsequent
paragraph indents is determined by a parameter called \parindent. The
default length that this constant holds is set by the document class that you
use. It is possible to override it by using the \setlength command. This
will set paragraph indents to 1cm:
\setlength{\parindent}{1cm} % Default is 15pt.
Whitespace in LATEX can also be made flexible (what Lamport calls ”rub-
ber” lengths). This means that values such as extra vertical space inserted
before a paragraph \parskip can have a default dimension plus an amount
of expansion minus an amount of contraction. This is useful on pages in
complex documents where not every page may be an exact number of fixed-
height lines long, so some give-and-take in vertical space is useful. You
specify this in a \setlength command like this:
\setlength{\parskip}{1cm plus4mm minus3mm}
If you want to indent a paragraph that is not indented, you can use
\indent
at the beginning of the paragraph. Obviously, this will only have an effect
when \parindent is not set to zero. If you want to indent the beginning
of every section, you can use the indentfirst package: once loaded, the
beginning of any chapter/section is indented by the usual paragraph inden-
tation.
To create a non-indented paragraph, you can use
\noindent
4.4 Printing Verbatim 39
as the first command of the paragraph. This might come in handy when
you start a document with body text and not with a sectioning command.
4.4 Printing Verbatim

Text that is enclosed between \begin{verbatim} and \end{verbatim} will
be directly printed, as if typed on a typewriter, with all line breaks and
spaces, without any LATEX command being executed.
Within a paragraph, similar behavior can be accessed with
\verb+text+
The + is just an example of a delimiter character. Use any character

except letters, * or space. Many LATEX examples in this booklet are
typeset with this command.
The \verb|\ldots| command \ldots
\begin{verbatim}
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD ";
20 GOTO 10
\end{verbatim}
The \ldots command . . .
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD ";

20 GOTO 10
The verbatim environment and the \verb command may not be used
within parameters of other commands.
4.5 List structures

Lists often appear in documents, especially academic, as their purpose is
often to present information in a clear and concise fashion. List structures
in LATEX are simply environments which essentially come in three flavors:
itemize, enumerate and description.
All lists follow the basic format:
40 Typesetting Text
\begin{list_type}
\item The first item

\item The second item
\item The third etc \ldots
\end{list_type}
All three of these types of lists can have multiple paragraphs per item:
just type the additional paragraphs in the normal way, with a blank line
between each. So long as they are still contained within the enclosing en-
vironment, they will automatically be indented to follow underneath their
item.
Itemize
This environment is for your standard bulleted list of items.
\begin{itemize}
\end{itemize}
• The first item
• The second item
• The third etc . . .
Enumerate
The enumerate environment is for ordered lists, where by default, each item
is numbered sequentially.
\begin{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}
4.5 List structures 41
1. The first item
2. The second item
3. The third etc . . .
Description
The description environment is slightly different. You can specify the item
label by passing it as an optional argument (although optional, it would
look odd if you didn’t include it!). Ideal for a series of definitions, such as a
glossary.
\begin{description}
\item[First] The first item
\item[Second] The second item
\item[Third] The third etc \ldots
\end{description}
First The first item
Second The second item
Third The third etc . . .
4.5.1 Nested lists

LATEX will happily allow you to insert a list environment into an existing
one (up to a depth of four ). Simply begin the appropriate environment at
the desired point within the current list. Latex will sort out the layout and
any numbering for you.
\begin{enumerate}
\begin{enumerate}
\item Nested item 1
42 Typesetting Text
\item Nested item 2

\end{enumerate}
\end{enumerate}
1. The first item
(a) Nested item 1

(b) Nested item 2
2. The second item
3. The third etc . . .
4.6 Tables
Tables are a common feature in academic writing, often used to summarize
research results. Mastering the art of table construction in LATEX is therefore
necessary to produce quality papers and with sufficient practice one can print
beautiful tables of any kind.
Once you are comfortable with basic LATEX tables, you might have a look
at more advanced packages or the export options of your favorite spread-
sheet.
4.6.1 The tabular environment

The tabular environment can be used to typeset tables with optional hor-
izontal and vertical lines. LATEX determines the width of the columns auto-
matically.
The first line of the environment has the form:
\begin{tabular}[pos]{table spec}
The table spec argument tells LATEX the alignment to be used in each
column and the vertical lines to insert.
The number of columns does not need to be specified as it is inferred
by looking at the number of arguments provided. It is also possible to add
4.6 Tables 43
vertical lines between the columns here. The following symbols are available
to describe the table columns (some of them require that the package array
has been loaded):
l left-justified column
c centered column
r right-justified column
p{’width’} paragraph column with text vertically aligned at the
top
m{’width’} paragraph column with text vertically aligned in the
middle (requires array package)
b{’width’} paragraph column with text vertically aligned at the
bottom (requires array package)
| vertical line
|| double vertical line
By default, if the text in a column is too wide for the page, LATEX won‘t
automatically wrap it. Using p{’width’} you can define a special type of
column which will wrap-around the text as in a normal paragraph. You can
pass the width using any unit supported by LATEX, such as ‘pt’ and ‘cm’, or
command lengths, such as \textwidth.
The optional parameter pos can be used to specify the vertical position
of the table relative to the baseline of the surrounding text. You can use
the following letters:
b bottom
c center (default)
t top
In the first line you have pointed out how many columns you want,
their alignment and the vertical lines to separate them. Once in the envi-
ronment, you have to introduce the text you want, separating between cells
and introducing new lines. The commands you have to use are the following:
44 Typesetting Text
& column separator

\\ start new row (additional space may be specified after
\\ using square brackets, such as \\[6pt])
\hline horizontal line
\newline start a new line within a cell (in a paragraph column)
\cline{i-j} partial horizontal line beginning in column i and end-
ing in column j
Note, any white space inserted between these commands is purely down
to ones’ preferences. I personally add spaces between to make it easier to
read.
Basic examples
This example shows how to create a simple table in LATEX. It is a three-by-

three table, but without any lines.
\begin{tabular}{ l c r }
1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\end{tabular}
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Expanding upon that by including some vertical lines:
\begin{tabular}{ l | c || r }
1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\end{tabular}
4.6 Tables 45
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
To add horizontal lines to the very top and bottom edges of the table:
\hline
1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
And finally, to add lines between all rows, as well as centering:
\begin{center}
\hline
1 & 2 & 3 \\ \hline
4 & 5 & 6 \\ \hline
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
46 Typesetting Text
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ | l || c ||| r }
\hline
1 & 2 & 3 \\ \hline
4 & 5 & 6 \\ \hline \hline
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
\begin{tabular}{|r|l|}
\hline
7C0 & hexadecimal \\
3700 & octal \\ \cline{2-2}
11111000000 & binary \\
\hline \hline
1984 & decimal \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
7C0 hexadecimal
3700 octal
11111000000 binary
1984 decimal
4.6.2 Spanning
Rows spanning multiple columns
The command for this looks like this:
4.6 Tables 47
\multicolumn{’num_cols’}{’alignment’}{’contents’}.
num_cols is the number of subsequent columns to merge; alignment is
either l, c, r, or to have text wrapping specify a width p{5.0cm} . And
contents is simply the actual data you want to be contained within that
cell. A simple example:
\begin{tabular}{ |l|l| }
\hline
\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{Team sheet} \\
\hline
GK & Paul Robinson \\
LB & Lucus Radebe \\
DC & Michael Duberry \\
DC & Dominic Matteo \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
Team sheet
GK Paul Robinson
LB Lucus Radebe
DC Michael Duberry
DC Dominic Matteo
Columns spanning multiple rows

The first thing you need to do is add
\usepackage{multirow}
to the preamble. This then provides the command needed for spanning rows:
\multirow{’’num_rows’’}{’’width’’}{’’contents’’}.
The arguments are pretty simple to deduce (* for the width means the
content’s natural width).
...
48 Typesetting Text
...
\begin{tabular}{ |l|l|l| }
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{ |c| }{Team sheet} \\
\hline
Goalkeeper & GK & Paul Robinson \\ \hline
\multirow{4}{*}{Defenders} & LB & Lucus Radebe \\
& DC & Michael Duburry \\
& DC & Dominic Matteo \\
& RB & Didier Domi \\ \hline
\multirow{3}{*}{Midfielders} & MC & David Batty \\
& MC & Eirik Bakke \\
& MC & Jody Morris \\ \hline
Forward & FW & Jamie McMaster \\ \hline
\multirow{2}{*}{Strikers} & ST & Alan Smith \\
& ST & Mark Viduka \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
Team sheet
Goalkeeper GK Paul Robinson
LB Lucus Radebe
DC Michael Duburry
Defenders
DC Dominic Matteo
RB Didier Domi
MC David Batty
Midfielders MC Eirik Bakke
MC Jody Morris
Forward FW Jamie McMaster
ST Alan Smith
Strikers
ST Mark Viduka
The main thing to note when using \multirow is that a blank entry must
be inserted for each appropriate cell in each subsequent row to be spanned.
4.6 Tables 49
Spanning in both directions simultaneously

Here is a nontrivial example of how to use spanning in both directions si-
multaneously and have the borders of the cells drawn correctly:
\begin{tabular}{cc|c|c|c|c|l}
\cline{3-6}
& & \multicolumn{4}{ c| }{Primes} \\ \cline{3-6}
& & 2 & 3 & 5 & 7 \\ \cline{1-6}
\multicolumn{1}{ |c }{\multirow{2}{*}{Powers} } &
\multicolumn{1}{ |c| }{504} & 3 & 2 & 0 & 1 & \\ \cline{2-6}
\multicolumn{1}{ |c }{} &
\multicolumn{1}{ |c| }{540} & 2 & 3 & 1 & 0 & \\ \cline{1-6}
\multicolumn{1}{ |c }{\multirow{2}{*}{Powers} } &
\multicolumn{1}{ |c| }{gcd} & 2 & 2 & 0 & 0 & min \\ \cline{2-6}
\multicolumn{1}{ |c }{} &
\multicolumn{1}{ |c| }{lcm} & 3 & 3 & 1 & 1 & max \\ \cline{1-6}
\end{tabular}
Primes
2 3 5 7
504 3 2 0 1
Powers
540 2 3 1 0
gcd 2 2 0 0 min
Powers
lcm 3 3 1 1 max
The command \multicolumn{1}{ is just used to draw vertical borders

both on the left and on the right of the cell. Even when combined with
\multirow{2}{*}{...}, it still draws vertical borders that only span the
first row. To compensate for that, we add \multicolumn{1}{ in the follow-
ing rows spanned by the multirow. Note that we cannot just use \hline to
draw horizontal lines, since we do not want the line to be drawn over the
text that spans several rows. Instead we use the command \cline{2-6}
and opt out the first column that contains the text ”Powers”.
Here is another example exploiting the same ideas to make the familiar
and popular ”2x2” or double dichotomy:
\begin{tabular}{ r|c|c| }
50 Typesetting Text
\multicolumn{1}{r}{}
& \multicolumn{1}{c}{noninteractive}
& \multicolumn{1}{c}{interactive} \\
\cline{2-3}
massively multiple & Library & University \\
\cline{2-3}
one-to-one & Book & Tutor \\
\cline{2-3}
\end{tabular}
noninteractive interactive
massively multiple Library University
one-to-one Book Tutor
4.7 Importing Graphics

There are two possibilities to include graphics in your document. Either
create them with some special code, a topic which will not be discussed
here or import productions from third party tools, which is what we will be
discussing here.
4.7.1 The graphicx package

LATEX can’t manage pictures directly, so we will need some extra help: we
have to load the graphicx package in the preamble of our document:
\usepackage{graphicx}
4.7.2 Supported image formats

Using pdflatex will be usually much more simple for graphics inclusion as
it supports widespread formats such as PDF, PNG and JPG. The only for-
mat you can include while compiling with latex is Encapsulated PostScript
(EPS).
4.8 Floats 51
Table 4.6: Key Names for graphicx Package.

width scale graphic to the specified width
height scale graphic to the specified height
angle rotate graphic counterclockwise
scale scale graphic
4.7.3 Including graphics

After you have loaded the graphicx package in your preamble, you can in-
clude images with \includegraphics, whose syntax is the following:
\includegraphics[key1=val1, key2=val2, ..., keyn=valn]{imagename}
The argument in the curly braces is the name of the image. Write
it without the extension. This way the LATEX compiler will look for any
supported image format in that directory and will take the best one (EPS
if the output is DVI; JPEG, PNG or PDF if the output is PDF).
The optional parameter accepts a comma separated list of keys and
associated values. The keys can be used to alter the width, height and
rotation of the included graphic. Table 4.6 lists the most important keys.
The following example code may help to clarify things:
\includegraphics[scale=0.1]{./img/tulips}
It includes the graphic stored in the file tulips.png. The graphic is

scaled down to 0.1. The angle, width and height parameters can also be
specified in absolute dimensions.
4.8 Floats
Floats are containers for things in a document that cannot be broken over a
page. LATEX by default recognizes ”table” and ”figure” floats, but you can
52 Typesetting Text
define new ones of your own. Floats are there to deal with the problem of
the object that won’t fit on the present page, and to help when you really
don’t want the object here just now.
4.8.1 The figure environment

To create a figure that floats, use the figure environment.
\begin{figure}[placement specifier]
\centering
... figure contents ...
\caption{this is a figure}
\label{fig:myfirstfigure}
\end{figure}
Floats are used to allow LATEX to handle figures and add a label and
caption to the figure. The placement specifier parameter (Table 4.8) gives
the author a greater degree of control over where certain floats are placed.
Here is an example that shows the figure in section 4.7.3 becomes float:
\begin{figure}
\centering
\fbox{\includegraphics[scale=0.1]{./img/tulips}}
\caption{Tulips}
\label{fig:tulips}
\end{figure}
Figure 4.1: Tulips
4.8.2 The table environment

To tell LATEX we want to use our table as a float, we need to place a tabular
environment in a table environment, which is able to float and add a label
and caption.
4.8 Floats 53
Please understand: you do not have to use floating tables. If you want
to place your tables where they lie in your source code and you do not need
any label, do not use table at all! This is a very common misunderstanding
among newcomers.
The environment names may now seem quite confusing. Let’s sum it up:
• tabular is for the content itself (columns, lines, etc.).
• table is for the location of the table on the document, plus caption
and label support.
\begin{table}[placement specifier]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{|l|}
... your table ...
\end{tabular}
\caption{This table shows some data}
\label{tab:myfirsttable}
\end{table}
In the table, we used a label, so now we can refer to it just like any other
reference:
\ref{tab:myfirsttable}
Centering the table horizontally works like everything else, using the
\centering command just after opening the table environment, or by en-
closing it with a center environment. Here is an example that shows a table
in section 4.6.1 becomes float:
\begin{table}
\caption{A simple table}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ l c r }
1 & 2 & 3 \\
4 & 5 & 6 \\
7 & 8 & 9 \\
\end{tabular}
\label{tab:simple_table}
\end{table}
54 Typesetting Text
Table 4.7: A simple table

1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Table 4.8: Float Placement Specifiers.

h where the table is declared (here)
t at the top of the page
b at the bottom of the page
p on a dedicated page of floats
! override the default float restrictions
You can set the optional parameter placement specifier to define the
position of the floats (table, figure), where it should be placed. The
characters shown in table 4.8 are all possible placements. Using sequences
of it define your ”wishlist” to LATEX.
Default is tbp, which means that it is by default placed on the top of the
page. If that’s not possible, it’s placed at the bottom if possible, or finally
with other floating environments on an extra page.
4.8.3 Captions
It is always good practice to add a caption to any figure or table. Fortu-
nately, this is very simple in LATEX. All you need to do is use the \caption{’’text’’}
command within the float environment. LATEX will automatically keep track
of the numbering of figures and tables, so you do not need to include this
within the caption text.
4.8.4 Lists of figures and tables

Captions can be listed at the beginning of a paper or report in a ”List
of Tables” or a ”List of Figures” section by using the \listoftables or
\listoffigures commands, respectively. The caption used for each table
and figure will appear in these lists, along with the their numbers, and page
numbers that they appear on.
4.9 Labels and Cross-referencing 55
4.9 Labels and Cross-referencing

In LATEX you can easily reference almost anything that is numbered (sec-
tions, tables, figures, formulas), and LATEX will take care of numbering,
updating it whenever necessary. The commands to be used do not depend
on what you are referencing, and they are:
\label{marker}
give the object you want to reference a marker, you can see it like a name.
\ref{marker}
can reference the object you have marked before. This prints the number
that was assigned to the object.
\pageref{marker}
will print the number of the page where the object is.
For example, you could write something like:
See figure~\ref{fig:tulips} on page~\pageref{fig:tulips}.
See figure 4.1 on page 52.
LATEX will calculate the right numbering for the objects in the document;
the marker you have used to label the object will not be shown anywhere
in the document. Then LATEX will replace the string "\ref{marker}" with
the right number that was assigned to the object. When you use references,
you have to compile your document twice to see the proper output.
4.10 Footnotes
The footnote facility is easy to use. The command you need is:
\footnote{text}
Do not leave a space between the command and the word where you
wish the footnote marker to appear, otherwise LATEX will process that space
56 Typesetting Text
and will leave the output not looking as intended.
Creating a footnote is easy.\footnote{An example footnote.}
LATEX will obviously take care of typesetting the footnote at the bottom
of the page. Each footnote is numbered sequentially - a process that is
automatically done for you.
Chapter 5
Typesetting Mathematics
Typesetting mathematics is one of LATEX’s greatest strengths. It is also a

large topic due to the existence of so much mathematical notation.
5.1 The amsmath package

If your document requires only a few simple mathematical formulas, plain
LATEX has most of the tools that you will need. If you are writing a scientific
document that contains numerous complicated formulas, the amsmath pack-
age 1 introduces several new commands that are more powerful and flexible
than the ones provided by LATEX. To use the package, include:
\usepackage{amsmath}
in the preamble of the document.
5.2 Mathematics environments

The mathematics environments can be distinguished into two categories
depending on how they are presented:
• text — text formulas are displayed inline, that is, within the body of
text where it is declared, for example, I can say that a + a = 2a within
this sentence.
• displayed — displayed formulas are separate from the main text.

1
http://www.ams.org/publications/authors/tex/amslatex
58 Typesetting Mathematics
The table 5.1 summarizes the mathematics environments. Unlike most

other environments, however, there are some handy shorthands to declaring
your formulas.
Table 5.1: The mathematics environments name and shorthands.

Type Text Displayed Displayed and automatically
formulas equations numbered equations
Environment math displaymath equation
LaTeX shorthand $...$ \[...\]
TeX shorthand $...$ $$...$$
Comment equation* suppresses numbering
Suggestion: Using the $$...$$ should be avoided, as it may cause

problems, particularly with the AMS-LaTeX macros. Furthermore, should
a problem occur, the error messages may not be helpful.
The equation* and displaymath environments are functionally equiv-
alent, both suppresses numbering.
If you are typing text normally, you are said to be in text mode, but
while you are typing within one of those mathematical environments, you
are said to be in math mode, that has some differences compared to the text
mode:
1. Most spaces and line breaks do not have any significance, as all spaces
are either derived logically from the mathematical expressions, or have
to be specified with special commands such as \,, \quad or \qquad
(we’ll get back to that later, in section 5.3.10)
2. Empty lines are not allowed. Only one paragraph per formula.
3. Each letter is considered to be the name of a variable and will be typeset

as such. If you want to typeset normal text within a formula (normal
upright font and normal spacing) then you have to enter the text using
\text{...} commands.
5.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula

In this section, we describe the most important commands used in mathe-
matical typesetting.
5.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula 59
5.3.1 Greek letters

Lowercase Greek letters are entered as \alpha, \beta, \gamma, . . . , and
Uppercase letters are entered as \Gamma, \Delta, . . .
\alpha, \beta, \gamma, \Gamma, \pi, \Pi, \phi, \varphi, \Phi
α, β, γ, Γ, π, Π, φ, ϕ, Φ
5.3.2 Powers and indices

Powers and indices are equivalent to superscripts and subscripts in normal
text mode. The caret (ˆ ) character is used to raise something, and the
underscore ( ) is for lowering. If more than one expression is raised or
lowered, they should be grouped using curly braces ({ and }).
k_{n+1} = n^2 + k_n^2 - k_{n-1}
kn+1 = n2 + kn2 − kn−1
For powers with more than one digit, surround the power with {}.
n^{22}
n22
An underscore ( ) can be used with a vertical bar ( | ) to denote evalu-

ation using subscript notation in mathematics:
f(n) = n^5 + 4n^2 + 2 |_{n=17}
f (n) = n5 + 4n2 + 2|n=17

5.3.3 Operators
An operator is a function that is written as a word: e.g. trigonometric
functions (sin, cos, tan), logarithms and exponentials (log, exp). LATEX has
many of these defined as commands:
\cos (2\theta) = \cos^2 \theta - \sin^2 \theta
cos(2θ) = cos2 θ − sin2 θ

For certain operators such as limits, the subscript is placed underneath
the operator:
\lim_{x \to \infty} \exp(-x) = 0
lim exp(−x) = 0
x→∞
For the modular operator there are two commands: \bmod and \pmod:
a \bmod b
a mod b
x \equiv a \pmod b
x ≡ a (mod b)
5.3.4 Fractions and Binomials

A fraction is created using the \frac{numerator}{denominator} command.
Likewise, the binomial coefficient may be written using the \binom com-
mand:
\frac{n!}{k!(n-k)!} = \binom{n}{k}

n! n
=
k!(n − k)! k
You can embed fractions within fractions:
\frac{\frac{1}{x}+\frac{1}{y}}{y-z}
1 1
x + y
y−z
Note that when appearing inside another fraction, or in inline text ab , a
fraction is noticeably smaller than in displayed mathematics. The \tfrac
and \dfrac commands force the use of the respective styles, \textstyle and
\displaystyle. Similarly, the \tbinom and \dbinom commands typeset the
binomial coefficient.
5.3.5 Roots
The \sqrt command creates a square root surrounding an expression. It
accepts an optional argument specified in square brackets ([ and ]) to change
magnitude:
\sqrt{\frac{a}{b}}
r
a
b
\sqrt[n]{1+x+x^2+x^3+\ldots}
p
n
1 + x + x2 + x3 + . . .
5.3.6 Sums and integrals

The \sum and \int commands insert the sum and integral symbols respec-
tively, with limits specified using the caret (ˆ ) and underscore ( ). The
typical notation for sums is:
\sum_{i=1}^{10} t_i
10
X
ti
i=1
The limits for the integrals follow the same notation. It’s also important
to represent the integration variables with an upright d, which in math
mode is obtained through the \mathrm{} command, and with a small space
separating it from the integrand, which is attained with the \, command.
\int_0^\infty \mathrm{e}^{-x}\,\mathrm{d}x
Z ∞
e−x dx
0
The \substack command allows the use of \\ to write the limits over
multiple lines:
\sum_{\substack{
0<i<m \\
0<j<n
}}
P(i,j)
X
P (i, j)
0<i<m
0<j<n
If you want the limits of an integral to be specified above and below the
symbol (like the sum), use the \limits command:
\int\limits_a^b
Zb
5.3.7 Brackets, braces and delimiters

There are a variety of delimiters available for use in LaTeX:
( a ), [ b ], \{ c \}, | d |, \| e \|,
\langle f \rangle, \lfloor g \rfloor,
\lceil h \rceil, \ulcorner i \urcorner
(a), [b], {c}, |d|, kek, hf i, bgc, dhe, piq

Automatic sizing
Very often mathematical features will differ in size, in which case the delim-
iters surrounding the expression should vary accordingly. This can be done
automatically using the \left, \right, and \middle commands. Any of
the previous delimiters may be used in combination with these:
\left(\frac{x^2}{y^3}\right)
x2

y3
P\left(A=2\middle|\frac{A^2}{B}>4\right)
2
A
P A = 2
>4
B
Curly braces are defined differently by using \left\{ and \right\},
\left\{\frac{x^2}{y^3}\right\}
x2

y3
If a delimiter on only one side of an expression is required, then an

invisible delimiter on the other side may be denoted using a period (.).
\left.\frac{x^3}{3}\right|_0^1
1
x3
3 0
Manual sizing
In certain cases, the sizing produced by the \left and \right commands
may not be desirable, or you may simply want finer control over the delimiter
sizes. In this case, the \big, \Big, \bigg and \Bigg modifier commands
may be used:
( \big( \Big( \bigg( \Bigg(

(
These commands are primarily useful when dealing with nested delim-
iters.
\frac{\mathrm d}{\mathrm d x} \big( k g(x) \big)
d
kg(x)
dx
5.3.8 Matrices and arrays

A basic matrix may be created using the matrix environment: in common
with other table-like structures, entries are specified by row, with columns
separated using an ampersand (&) and a new rows separated with a double
backslash (\\)
\begin{matrix}
a & b & c \\
d & e & f \\
g & h & i
\end{matrix}
a b c
d e f
g h i
To specify alignment of columns in the table, use starred version:

\begin{matrix}
-1 & 3 \\
2 & -4
\end{matrix}
=
\begin{matrix*}[r]
-1 & 3 \\
2 & -4
\end{matrix*}
−1 3 −1 3
=
2 −4 2 −4
The alignment by default is c but it can be any column type valid in

array environment.
However matrices are usually enclosed in delimiters of some kind, and
while it is possible to use the \left and \right commands, there are var-
ious other predefined environments which automatically include delimiters.
There are six versions with different delimiters:
matrix (none), pmatrix (, bmatrix [, Bmatrix {, vmatrix | and Vmatrix
||.
When writing down arbitrary sized matrices, it is common to use hor-
izontal, vertical and diagonal triplets of dots (known as ellipses) to fill in
certain columns and rows. These can be specified using the \cdots, \vdots
and \ddots respectively:
A_{m,n} =
\begin{pmatrix}
a_{1,1} & a_{1,2} & \cdots & a_{1,n} \\
a_{2,1} & a_{2,2} & \cdots & a_{2,n} \\
\vdots & \vdots & \ddots & \vdots \\
a_{m,1} & a_{m,2} & \cdots & a_{m,n}
\end{pmatrix}
 
a1,1 a1,2 ··· a1,n
 a2,1 a2,2 ··· a2,n 
Am,n = .
 
.. .. .. 
 .. . . . 
am,1 am,2 · · · am,n
In some cases you may want to have finer control of the alignment within
each column, or want to insert lines between columns or rows. This can be
achieved using the array environment, which is essentially a math-mode
version of the tabular environment, which requires that the columns be
pre-specified:
\begin{array}{c|c}
1 & 2 \\
\hline
3 & 4
\end{array}
1 2
3 4
5.3.9 Adding text to equations

There are a number of ways that text can be added properly. The typical
way is to wrap the text with the \text{...} command.
50 \text{ apples} \times 100 \text{ apples}

= \text{lots of apples}^2
50 apples × 100 apples = lots of apples2
5.3.10 Controlling horizontal spacing

LATEX has defined two commands that can be used anywhere in documents
(not just maths) to insert some horizontal space . They are \quad and
\qquad
A \quad is a space equal to the current font size. So, if you are using an
11pt font, then the space provided by \quad will also be 11pt (horizontally,
of course.) The \qquad gives twice that amount.
LaTeX also provides some small spaces to be utilized:
\, for 3/18 quad,

\: for 4/18 quad,
\; for 5/18 quad,
5.4 Single Equation 67
\! for -3/18 quad
NB you can use more than one command in a sequence to achieve a

greater space if necessary.
\int y\, \mathrm{d}x
Z
y dx
\int y\: \mathrm{d}x
Z
y dx
\int y\quad \mathrm{d}x
Z
y dx
5.4 Single Equation

Mathematical equations within a text (text formulas) are entered between
$ and $:
Add $a$ squared and $b$ squared

to get $c$ squared. Or, using
a more mathematical approach:
$a^2 + b^2 = c^2$
Add a squared and b squared to get c squared. Or, using a more math-
ematical approach: a2 + b2 = c2
\TeX{} is pronounced as
$\tau\epsilon\chi$\\[5pt]
100~m$^{3}$ of water\\[5pt]
This comes from my $\heartsuit$
TEX is pronounced as τ χ
100 m3 of water
This comes from my ♥
If you want your larger equations to be set apart from the rest of the
paragraph, it is preferable to display them rather than to break the para-
graph apart. To do this, you enclose them between \begin{equation} and
\end{equation}.

a more mathematical approach:
\begin{equation}
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
\end{equation}
ematical approach:
a2 + b2 = c2 (5.1)
If you dont want LATEX to number the equations, use the starred version
of equation using an asterisk, equation*, or even easier, enclose the equation
in \[ and \]:

a more mathematical approach
\begin{equation*}
a^2 + b^2 = c^2
\end{equation*}
or you can type less for the

same effect:
\[ a^2 + b^2 = c^2 \]
5.4 Single Equation 69
ematical approach
a2 + b2 = c2
or you can type less for the same effect:
a2 + b2 = c2
While \[ is short and sweet, it does not allow switching between num-
bered and not numbered style as easily as equation and equation*.
Note the difference in typesetting style between text style and display
style equations:
This is text style:

$\lim_{n \to \infty}
\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k^2}
= \frac{\pi^2}{6}$.
And this is display style:

\begin{equation}
\lim_{n \to \infty}
\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k^2}
= \frac{\pi^2}{6}
\end{equation}
Pn 1 π2
This is text style: limn→∞ k=1 k2 = 6 .
And this is display style:

n
X 1 π2
lim = (5.2)
n→∞ k2 6
k=1
5.5 Multiple Equations

In the most general situation we have a sequence of several equalities that
do not fit onto one line. Here we need to work with vertical alignment in
order to keep the array of equations in a nice and readable structure.
The align environment is used for arranging equations of multiple lines.
As with matrices and tables, \\ specifies a line break, and & is used to
indicate the point at which the lines should be aligned.
\begin{align}
f(x) &= (x+a)(x+b) \\
&= x^2 + (a+b)x + ab
\end{align}
f (x) = (x + a)(x + b) (5.3)

2
= x + (a + b)x + ab (5.4)
Note that the align environment must not be nested inside an equation
(or similar) environment. Instead, align is a replacement for such environ-
ments; the contents inside an align are automatically placed in math mode.
align* suppresses numbering. To force numbering on a specific line, use
the \tag{...} command before the linebreak.
align is similar, but automatically numbers each line like the equation
environment. Individual lines may be referred to by placing a \label{...}
before the linebreak. The \nonumber or \notag command can be used to
suppress the number for a given line:
\begin{align}
f(x) &= x^4 + 7x^3 + 2x^2 \nonumber \\
&\qquad {} + 10x + 12
\end{align}
f (x) = x4 + 7x3 + 2x2

+ 10x + 12 (5.5)
5.6 Equation numbering 71
Notice that we’ve added some indenting on the second line. Also, we
need to insert the double braces ({}) before the + sign, otherwise latex
won’t create the correct spacing after the + sign. The reason for this is that
without the braces, latex interprets the + sign as a unary operator, instead
of the binary operator that it really is.
More complicated alignments are possible, with additional &’s on a single
line specifying multiple ”equation columns”, each of which is aligned. The
following example illustrates the alignment rule of align*:
\begin{align*}
f(x) &= a x^2+b x +c & g(x) &= d x^3 \\
f’(x) &= 2 a x +b & g’(x) &= 3 d x^2
\end{align*}
f (x) = ax2 + bx + c g(x) = dx3 (5.6)

0 0 2
f (x) = 2ax + b g (x) = 3dx (5.7)
5.6 Equation numbering

The equation environment automatically numbers your equation:
\begin{equation}
f(x)=(x+a)(x+b)
\end{equation}
f (x) = (x + a)(x + b) (5.8)
You can also use the \label and \ref (or \eqref from the amsmath pack-
age) commands to label and reference equations, respectively. For equation
number 1, \ref results in 1 and \eqref results in (1) :
\begin{equation} \label{eq:someequation}
5^2 - 5 = 20
\end{equation}
this references the equation \ref{eq:someequation}.
52 − 5 = 20 (5.9)
this references the equation 5.9.
\begin{equation} \label{eq:erl}
a = bq + r
\end{equation}
where \eqref{eq:erl} is true if $a$ and $b$ are integers with $b \neq c$.
a = bq + r (5.10)
where (5.10) is true if a and b are integers with b 6= c.
5.7 List of Mathematical Symbols

The list of nearly all symbols available for LATEX can be found at
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/symbols/comprehensive/symbols-letter.
pdf
Appendix A
Further Reading
LATEX Project
http://www.latex-project.org/
Official website - has links to documentation, information about installing
LATEX on your own computer, and information about where to look for help.
The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network

http://ctan.org
Central place for all kinds of material around TEX. Most of the packages are
free and can be downloaded and used immediately.
LATEX Wikibook
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/
Comprehensive and clearly written. A downloadable PDF is also available.
The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε

http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
A good tutorial for beginners.
The LaTeX Companion

Book for advanced users
Contains descriptions on hundreds of packages, along with information of
how to write your own extensions to LATEX 2ε .
74 Further Reading
Bibliography
[1] Leslie Lamport. LATEX: A Document Preparation System. Addison-

Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, second edition, 1994, ISBN 0-201-
52983-1.
[2] Donald E. Knuth. The TeXbook, Volume A of Computers and Type-

setting, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, second edition, 1984,
ISBN 0-201-13448-9.
[3] Frank Mittelbach, Michel Goossens, Johannes Braams, David Carlisle,

Chris Rowley. The LATEX Companion, (2nd Edition). Addison-Wesley,
Reading, Massachusetts, 2004, ISBN 0-201-36299-6.
[4] Michel Goossens, Sebastian Rahtz and Frank Mittelbach. The LATEX
Graphics Companion. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1997,
ISBN 0-201-85469-4.
[5] Tobias Oetiker. The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε .

http://ctan.tug.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.
pdf
[6] The LaTeX wiki book. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
[7] BanglaTEX: Bangla with X LATEX. Dr. Newton M A Hakim

E
http://www.dharapat.com/
76 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Index
.dvi, 8
.pdf, 8
.tex, 7
TEXworks, 3
commands, 10
compilation, 7
distribution, 3
eps, 4
group, 10
LaTeX, 1
latex, 8
PDF viewer, 3
pdflatex, 8
Sumatra PDF, 3
WYSIWYG, 1

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An Introduction to

Institute of Information and Communication Technology

Much of the material used in this introduction comes from

LATEX[1] is a typesetting system that is very suitable for producing scien-

This introduction is split into 6 chapters:

Chapter 1 introduces LATEX and its installation in computer systems.

Chapter 3 tells you about the basic structure of LATEX documents.

Chapter 4 goes into the details of typesetting your documents. It explains

Chapter 5 explains how to typeset formula with LATEX. Many examples

Chapter 6 shows how to install and typeset Bangla texts in LATEX.

If you have ideas for something to be added, removed or altered in this

Mohammad Abdullah Al Mumin <[email protected]>

Thank you! iii

2 Our First Document 7

3 Basic Document Structure 13

4.7.2 Supported image formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

3.1 Document Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4.1 The Predefined Page Styles of LATEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

5.1 The mathematics environments name and shorthands. . . . . 58

1.1 What is LATEX?

1.2 Why LATEX?

• Professionally crafted layouts are available, which make a document

• The typesetting of mathematical formula is supported in a convenient

• Users only need to learn a few easy-to-understand commands that

• Even complex structures such as footnotes, references, table of con-

• LATEX encourages authors to write well-structured texts, because this

• TEX, the formatting engine of LATEX, is highly portable and free.

1.3 Installing LATEX

3. A PDF/DVI viewer program for previewing and printing your docu-

1.3.2 Cross Platform Editor

1.3.3 TEX on Windows

First, get a copy of the excellent MiKTEX distribution from http://www.

Working with graphics

1.3.4 TEX on Linux

• texlive the base TEX/LATEX setup.

• emacs (with AUCTEX) an editor that integrates tightly with LATEX

• ghostscript a PostScript preview program.

• xpdf and acrobat a PDF preview program.

• imagemagick a free program for converting bitmap images.

• gimp a free Photoshop look-a-like.

• inkscape a free illustrator/corel draw look-a-like.

1.3.5 Online Solutions

• LaTeX Lab 4 allows real-time simultaneous collaborative editing of text

• Overleaf 5 is a secure, easy to use online LATEX editor with integrated

Our First Document

2.1 First Document

• Open your favorite text-editor.

% hello.tex - Our first LaTeX example!

• Save your file as hello.tex.

• latex executable reads a LATEX .tex file and creates a .dvi

• pdflatex executable reads a LATEX .tex file and creates a .pdf

2.2.2 Generating the document

• Select LaTex => PDF from output profile.

• Click on build and view current file button.

There will be a pause while your document is being converted to a PDF

• Go to the line number in your document and fix the error.

• Click on the build and view current file button again.

2.3 The LATEX syntax

It does not matter whether you