The Art of LATEX

Helin Gai
Duke University

Coleen’s Workgroup
ii

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 Contents

1 The Grand History of TEX 1

1.1 How did LATEX come into existence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 I saw many people arguing over the pros and cons of LATEX versus
Microsoft Word. What is your attitude? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 How hard is LATEX? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 How to study LATEX? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2 LATEX Singing on Your Computer 5

2.1 What’s the easiest way to install LATEX on Microsoft Windows? . . . . . 5
2.2 What if I own a glorious Mac? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3 How about us Linux users? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

3 Getting Started 7
3.1 The Basics: Control Sequence and Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.2 Your first masterpiece with LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3 Typesetting Chinese in LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3.4 A Short Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.5 Dividing your text into parts, chapters, and sections . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.6 Options of standard document classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4 Playing with Text 17

4.1 International characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.2 Punctuation—what makes life/reading easier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.1 Dash—your first lesson with punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.2 Quotation marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
4.2.3 Comma and Period . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.2.4 Ellipsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4.3 Changing typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
4.4 Controlling the size of your text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5 Is what you type what you get? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5.1 Special characters that make TEX scream . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.5.2 Ligatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
4.6 Manual kerning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5 Working with Paragraphs 25

5.1 Manual line and page breaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
5.2 Moving your text horizontally . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
5.3 Shaping a paragraph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

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iv CONTENTS

5.4 Reflowing the text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

5.5 Hyphenation and Justification technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

6 Elements of Your Document 35

6.1 Cross References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.2 Listing items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.3 Columns—story in the world of wide documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.4 Notes, notes, and notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.4.1 When footnotes rule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.4.2 Notes at the end of a chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.4.3 Notes dancing in the margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.5 Programming codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.6 Making boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.7 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.8 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

7 LATEX with Designers 43

7.1 Balancing the elements that live on a page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7.2 Dressing the headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
7.3 The flight of the navigator—headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
7.4 A not so short short introduction to markers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
7.5 The design of this book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
7.5.1 Shaping the page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7.5.2 Designing headings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
7.5.3 Designing running headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

8 When TEX Dates Math 51

8.1 Extremely simple formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
8.2 Super
b scripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
8.2.1 The tensor Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8.2.2 The vector Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
√ . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
8.3 Roots
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Fractions
8.4 Binomials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
8.5 Sum and integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
8.6 Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
8.7 Delimiters—never big enough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
8.7.1 Larggggge Delimiters—The yhmath Package . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.8 Changing typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
8.9 Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.10 Punctuation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.11 More about Displayed Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
8.12 Breaking an Inline Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.13 Breaking a Displayed Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.14 Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
8.14.1 The delarray Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.14.2 Partitioned matrices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.14.3 Case structures with the cases package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
8.15 Dress your letters! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
8.15.1 More Accents: The accents Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
8.15.2 “ı” in Different Fonts—The dotlessi package . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
8.15.3 The undertilde Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

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 CONTENTS v

8.16 Constructing New Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

8.17 Extensible arrows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
8.17.1 Extensible arrows with the extarrows package . . . . . . . . . . . 82
8.17.2 The harpoon Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
8.18 Framed Math . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
8.19 Aligning Your Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
8.20 Footnotes in Math Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
8.21 Equation Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
8.21.1 Prime Equation Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8.21.2 Equation Numbers on Both Sides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8.21.3 Equation numbers with the subeqnarray package . . . . . . . . . 87
8.22 A List of Options of the amsmath Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
8.23 Commutative Diagrams—The amscd Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
8.24 Coloring Your Math—The color Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.25 Packages Smarter Than Me . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.25.1 The polynom package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
8.25.2 The longdiv package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.26 The mathlig Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.27 Miscellaneous . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.27.1 Canceling out—The cancel Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.27.2 The units and nicefrac Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
8.27.3 Math in Titles—The maybemath Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
8.27.4 The nccmath Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
8.28 Two Powerful Packages Mentioned Merely in Passing . . . . . . . . . . . 93

9 Tables and Graphics 95

9.1 External graphics are a lot of fun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
9.2 Structuring a table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
9.3 Tables that travel a long way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
9.4 Floating tables and figures around . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
9.5 Customizing your captions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

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vi CONTENTS

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 1
The Grand History of TEX

This purpose of this chapter is twofold: to give you a general overview of the history of
TEX/LATEX, and to help you figure out whether or not you actually need it. My personal
attitude toward the comparison of TEX and Microsoft Word is also discussed in detail.
Overall, it’s a long and potentially tedious chapter. Feel free to skip this chapter—no harm
will come, except it might take longer for you to start appreciating the beauty of TEX.

1.1 How did LATEX come into existence?

The journey begins with Donald Ervin Knuth and his TEX. Knuth (born January 10,
1938) is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Figure 1.1: Knuth (pro-
Programming at Stanford University. He was the 1974 Turing Award winner and more nounced /knu:θ/) is the
or less defined the field “Computer Science” as it is today. father of TEX. [My special
thanks to Zhichu Chen for
In 1977, Knuth devoted most of his time writing The Art of Computer Programming.
helping me troubleshoot
After he got the proofs of the second volume on March 30, he felt greatly discouraged the code for creating this
and wrote in his diary: marginal figure.]
Galley proofs for vol. 2 finally arrive, they look awful (typographically) . . . I decide
I have to solve the problem myself.
And so he did. On May 5, he started his major design on TEX—a typesetting system
that he could use to create beautiful books.
TEX is pronounced /tεx/.
Knuth planned to finish the project in 1978, but it eventually took him more than
a decade—it was not until 1989 that the language of TEX was frozen. Knuth invented
what he called “literate programming,” a way of producing compilable source code and
high quality cross-linked documentation (typeset in TEX) from the same original file.
The language used is called WEB and produces programs in Pascal.
The current and the next
Since version 3, TEX has used an idiosyncratic version numbering system, where
paragraphs use material
updates have been indicated by adding an extra digit at the end of the decimal, so from Wikipedia.
that the version number asymptotically approaches π. The current version of TEX is
3.141592; it was last updated in December 2002. Knuth has stated that the “absolutely
final change (to be made after [his] death)” will be to change the version number to π,
at which point all remaining bugs will become features.
LATEX is pronounced
Although TEX is powerful, many people find it too powerful to master, especially
/leitεx/ or /la:tεx/.
when it comes to layout design. Based on the idea that authors should be able to
concentrate on writing within the logical structure of their document, rather than
spending their time on the details of formatting, Leslie Lamport implemented LATEX.
With LATEX, you are not supposed to be concerned about the style—everything
should be pre-defined and fully at your call. You enter your text and LATEX takes care
of the formatting. In this sense, LATEX is much easier to use than TEX. As a matter of
fact, you can literally learn to compose a paper including a table of contents and an
index within an hour or so.

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 2 The Grand History of TEX

The first popular release, LATEX 2.09, appeared in early 1980s and Lamport claims
that it “represents a balance between functionality and ease of use.” After a few years’
development, many new functionalities were added, along with which the problem of
incompatibility arose. In hopes of bringing this situation to an end, the LATEX3 Project
was started by a group led by Frank Mittelbach. This is a long term project, and the
first big step forward is the 1994 release, LATEX 2ε , which is the focus of this book.
In Duke University, LATEX
is required of all students Today, LATEX is used by most scientists, and many presses and academic societies
in Pratt School of require or prefer submission using LATEX.
Engineering.
1.2 I saw many people arguing over the pros and cons of LATEX
versus Microsoft Word. What is your attitude?

For me, LATEX and Word are two vastly different things, both of which do their own
jobs within their own domains.
TEX, as Knuth proposed, is “a new typesetting system intended for the creation of
beautiful books—and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics.” It is used
by authors to write their manuscript, and many publishers use it in composition. When
the major consideration is typographic quality, TEX should be chosen over Word. There
are quite a few advantages:
ligature: Compare “fi”
with “fi,” the latter
• TEX uses a very sophisticated scheme for setting type. It understands concepts
evidently looks
unprofessional.
that Word has so far ignored, e.g., ligature, kerning, and so forth.

kerning: Try “wolf” with • TEX formats the entire paragraph at a time, while Word formats the text on a
the quotation marks in line-by-line basis. It is not rare for Word to produce a very tight line followed by a
Word with Times New loose one. But this hardly ever happens in TEX, because TEX always looks back
Roman—how pathetic can and forth to determine the best breakpoints possible.
it be? To be fair, this is
the font’s fault, but to • TEX has one of the most advanced hyphenation schemes. It could hyphenate
tune it in Word is tedious. about 90% of permissible hyphen points in a dictionary. What’s more, professional
typesetting requires that no more than three hyphens should appear consecutively
In my opinion, only Adobe at the end of lines, which is a breeze to accomplish in TEX. But you have to pray
Indesign has a that your soul is pure when using Word.
hyphenation algorithm
that is comparable.
• TEX produces the most beautiful math equations in the world. A classic demo is
shown in figure 1.2.

! "
f (p) =
t>1
f (t) dπ(t) ! f ( p) = " t >1
f ( t ) d# ( t )
p prime p prime

Figure 1.2: The equation on the left is produced with TEX, while the one on the right comes out
of Microsoft Office 2003.

In short, Word is not suitable for professional typesetting—it is merely a word

processor. I use it extensively for file exchange. Sometimes, I would even paste an entire
TEX source file into a Word document, so that my friend can mark on it with the
“Tracking” feature (figure 1.3). When I get the document back, it’s very easy for me to
see what changes are made and I can make my decision about whether or not to accept
these changes.

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 1.3 How hard is LATEX? 3

Figure 1.3: The Tracking feature in Microsoft Word is handy when a document is reviewed by
other people.

1.3 How hard is LATEX?

LATEX is perceived to be much easier than Word in many countries. Most authors don’t
know much detail about TEX, and yet submit papers written in LATEX with ease. The
reason is that most publishers in, say the U.S., have prepared easy-to-use class files
and templates for authors. Therefore, authors are not concerned about the style of
their documents—all they are responsible for is to put text into the pre-estabished
“framework.” In fact, the editors will get very upset if you try to change the style.
CTEX has grown into a
The situation is quite different in China. Most authors in our country have far full-fledged TEX society.
exceeded the responsibility of an author—they have to create style files so as to typeset Its official website is
their paper according to the specifications, and this is a task involving much expertise. www.ctex.org.
The CTEX Society has done a great job creating templates and class files in hopes of
easing authors’ work, but there’s much more that needs to be done. This manual is
another effort in facilitating you in your endeavor.

1.4 How to study LATEX?

Many people agree that the best way to study LATEX is simply to use it. So the best
way to make full use of this book is to try out the examples and do the exercises. This
helps you understand and memorize the commands better.
An article telling my
To get started, read chapters 2 and 3, and work on the examples. You’ll understand personal story of getting
most of the basic concepts in LATEX. When you’ve completed these two chapters, you started with LATEX can be
accessed at http://bbs
à .ctex.org/forums/
index.php?showtopic=
12955.
 4 The Grand History of TEX

do not need to read the remaining of the book chapter by chapter. Rather, start using
LATEX—refer to the related chapter when you’re doing specific things in LATEX. You
shouldn’t expect to master LATEX in a day or two—your patience will pay off (as Master
Yoda might say).
Actually, you probably
If you have a question and can’t find an answer in this book, you can post it in the
never ever have to master
LATEX. forum of the Chinese TEX Society (bbs.ctex.org), and you could expect to receive an
answer within 24 hours. But do a search first! The forum has been running for over four
years and the questions that people asked previously have created a huge knowledgebase.
Most of the time, your question has already been answered and it’s always a nice thing
to save others their precious time.

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 2
LATEX Singing on Your Computer

2.1 What’s the easiest way to install LATEX on Microsoft Win-

dows?
The easiest way to set up LATEX on Windows is to use the CTEX Suite. The CTEX Suite
is based on MiKTEX, with various useful applications bundled. It provides complete
support for CCT and CJK, two leading Chinese processing system. The advantage of
the CTEX Suite is that it is foolproof—keep clicking “Next,” and everything will be
properly set up, including the difficult Chinese configuration. The current CTEX Suite
includes MiKTEX, WinEdt, GSview, Ghostscript, etc.
The CTEX Suite is
developed by Lingyun Wu.
1. Go to http://www.ctex.org/CTeXDownload and download the latest CTEX Suite.
There are currently four choices available: the Full version, the Basic version, the
Full Update version, and the Basic update version.
I recommend the Basic version over Full. MiKTEX 2.4 and later supports “installa-
tion on-the-fly,” so when you use a package that isn’t installed yet, MiKTEX will
automatically download and install it.
The download might take a while. Be patient and God bless your Internet connection.
When it’s downloaded, double-click and follow the instruction on the screen.

2. On the same page, download CTEX-Fonts, and install it.

3. Register WinEdt if you’re annoyed by the pop-up windows appearing like a bomb.

4. Congratulations. You’re all set!

If you want more flexibility, you could also try the standalone MiKTEX. TEXLive
developed by the TUG is also a nice choice.

2.2 What if I own a glorious Mac?

The easiest way to install TEX on a Mac is to use MacTEX.

1. Go to http://www.tug.org/ftp/tex/mactex/ and download the latest MacTEX.

As of March 2006, MacTEX has been released as a universal binary and runs
natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.
MacTEX will install TEX, XeTEX, Ghostscript, ConTEXt, MusixTEX, ImageMagick,
TeXShop, BibDesk, Excalibur, i-Installer, etc.

2. The tricky part is to set up Chinese—it is a hard task because “GBKfont,” the
famous application for creating Chinese fonts, has not yet been ported to Mac OS
X. As of this writing, the easiest way to install Chinese fonts on a Mac is to copy

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6 LATEX Singing on Your Computer

everything in the localtexmf folder of CTEX Suite to /usr/local/teTeX/share/

texmf.local.
Then go to texmf.local/pdftex/config, make a copy of psfonts.map and re-
name it to pdftex.map. In Terminal, type “sudo mktexlsr,” and this should
work.
(Some people have reported that the map file in certain versions of the CTEX
Suite doesn’t work. If you followed the instruction I give here and didn’t solve the
problem, please send an email to me [email protected] and I’ll send you a map file
that proves to work.)
Other installation options include i-installer, Fink, TEXLive, etc., which give you more
flexibility.

2.3 How about us Linux users?

The best TEX distribution on Linux is teTEX. The following installation procedure is
documented and maintained by lapackapi of the CTEX Society, and it works pretty well
on Fedora Core.
1. Go to http://www.tug.org/tetex/ and download teTEX. Install it according to
the instruction coming along with the distribution. If you are using Fedora Core,
you could easily install it from your system installation disk.
2. Install tetex-afm and fontforge:
yum install tetex-afm fontforge
3. Download CCT and CJK:
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/Linux/cct-0.6180-3a.i386.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/Linux/cct-fonts-1.2-0.i386.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/CJK/CJK-GBKfonts-0.3-15.i386.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/CJK/ctex-0.7-1.i386.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/CJK/CJK-4.6.0-0.src.rpm
wget ftp://ftp.cc.ac.cn/pub/cct/CJK/dvipdfmx-20050307-3zlb.src.rpm
4. Compile the last two packages:
rpmbuild --rebuild *.src.rpm
A few rpm packages will be created in /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/. We can
now safely remove the source packages:
rm *.src.rpm
5. Copy the rpm packages to the current working directory:
cp /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/* .
6. Install the packages:
rpm -ivh *.rpm
7. Install Chinese fonts. Get the font files ready. Suppose you have a font file called
songti.ttf, then simply enter
gbkfont-inst songti.ttf song

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 3
Getting Started

3.1 The Basics: Control Sequence and Environment

One advantage/disadvantage of TEX is that it is not wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-

you-get), but wytiwyg (what-you-think-is-what-you-get). The general procedure is:

1. Create a file with the extension .tex using any text editor, e.g., Notepad on
Windows, or TextEditor on Mac OS X; but WinEdt and TeXShop are widely used
for this purpose.

2. Enter your text along with commands to let LATEX know how to deal with your
manuscript.

3. Compile it with LATEX to obtain the final result.

We get started by introducing two fundamental concepts: control sequence and

environment.
“\” is called the escape
A control sequence is a kind of command that starts with a backslash (\). There
character.
are two kinds of control sequences. A control word consists of a backslash followed by
one or more letters. For example, the control word ‘\tableofcontents’ instructs LATEX
to automatically prepare, format, and output the table of contents. There are a few
more notes about control words:

• TEX is case sensitive, so \pi, \Pi, \pI, and \PI are four different commands.

• A space must be placed after a control sequence if it’s followed by a letter. For
example, the control word \TeX produces the logo “TEX.” If you want to enter the
word “TEXpert,” the answer is not to enter \TeXpert, because TEX will think it’s
processing a command that is composed of seven letters. The correct way is to
enter ‘\TeX pert’—the space terminates the command \TeX and will not actually
produce a space.
Interestingly, \TeX3 does produce TEX3—that’s because 3 is a digit, not a letter.

• Control sequences can be followed by declarations. There are two kinds of declara-
tions: optional and required.
One example is \section[Duke]{Duke University}. This command tells LATEX
that we’re going to start a new section and the section heading is “Duke University.”
But in the table of contents, we want the heading to be displayed as “Duke.” In
this example, [Duke] is optional, and can be simply omitted; {Duke University}
is required, you must put something between the braces. In short, we put optional
stuff between brackets and required declarations between braces.

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 8 Getting Started

The second kind of control sequence is a control symbol, consisting of a backslash

followed by a single nonletter. In this case, you don’t need a space to tell TEX where
it ends. (Why does this make sense?) For example, \, produces a “thin space” (e.g.,
1\,cm produces ‘1 cm’).
Example 3.1 What are the control sequences in ‘\’m \exercise3.1\\!’ ?
Answer There are three control sequences. \’ is a control symbol; \exercise is a
control word; and \\ is another control symbol.
Example 3.2 \LaTeX can be used to produce the logo “LATEX.” What do you think
the result of ‘\LaTeX is great’ be?
Answer The result would be ‘LATEXis great’.
Example 3.3 The command \input1 will input a file named 1.tex. What do you
think \input123 will do?
Answer The command \input123 will input a file named 1.tex and then outputs the
digits ‘23’. If you want to input a file named 123.tex, you should enter \input{123}.
Example 3.4 Suppose you know that the control sequence \includegraphics can
be used to put an external figure into your TEX output. How do you think you could
include a figure lee.jpg with a width of 3 cm?
Answer We can imagine that \includegraphics definitely require a file name after it,
so the file name should be a required argument. Meanwhile, since LATEX is super-smart,
we have reason to believe that if we do not specify a width, LATEX can process that
automatically; therefore, the width should be optional. So we guess that we should be
entering \includegraphics[width=3cm]{lee.jpg}.
Another important concept I’m to introduce is environment. An environment takes
the form of the following:

\begin{environment_name}
The content ...
\end{environment_name}

Example 3.5 How do you center a paragraph of text?

Answer Here’s how:

\begin{center}
This line should be centered.
\end{center}

3.2 Your first masterpiece with LATEX

OK, let’s get down to typeset our first glorious document. By the end of this section,
you would have produced what is shown in figure 3.1.
Launch WinEdt or TeXShop. Then enter the following into the file:
The first section in this
example is from The
Complete Manual of 1 \documentclass{article}
Typography, and the 2 \usepackage{amsmath}
second is from The 3 \begin{document}
TEXbook.
4 \title{My First \LaTeX\ Exercise}
5 \author{Helin Gai}
6 \maketitle

,
 3.2 Your first masterpiece with LATEX 9

My First LATEX Exercise

Helin Gai
May 5, 2006

Contents
1 Fonts 1

2 LATEX 1

1 The Changing Definition of Font

In the days of handset type, a font 1 comprised one or more drawers full of type
blocks in a single size. With the advent of the Monotype and Linotype machines,
a font then became a set of molds (or matrices) from which type could be cast
as it was needed, on the fly.
All of this type was destined for a specific kind of printing press, the let-
terpress. On a letterpress the printed impression is created by inking a raised
surface (which can be a photographic image as well as type) whose image is
transferred under pressure to the paper. Recessed areas—those below type-
high—receive no ink, do not come into contact with the paper, and so create
the “blank” areas of the page.

2 The Glorious LATEX

The first paragraph of a new section is not indented. TEX recognizes the end of
a paragraph when it comes to a blank line in your manuscript file.
Subsequent paragraphs are indented.2 (See?) The computer breaks a para-
graph’s text into lines in an interesting way–and hyphenates words automatically
when necessary.

“If there hadn’t been room for this material on the present page, it
would have been inserted on the next one.”

1A term that comes from an early French word meaning “molding” or “casting.”
2 Oh, try to avoid footnotes!

Figure 3.1: The final result of your first masterpiece created with LATEX.

à
 10 Getting Started

8 \tableofcontents
9

10 \section[Fonts]{The Changing Definition of Font}

11

12 In the days of handset type, a \emph{font}\footnote{A term that

13 comes from an early French word meaning ‘‘molding’’ or
14 ‘‘casting.’’} comprised one or more drawers full of type blocks
15 in a single size. With the advent of the Monotype and Linotype
16 machines, a font then became a set of molds (or \emph{matrices})
17 from which type could be cast as it was needed, on the fly.
18

19 All of this type was destined for a specific kind of printing

20 press, the \emph{letterpress}. On a letterpress the printed
21 impression is created by inking a raised surface (which can be
22 a photographic image as well as type) whose image is transferred
23 under pressure to the paper. Recessed areas---those below
24 \emph{type-high}---receive no ink, do not come into contact with
25 the paper, and so create the ‘‘blank’’ areas of the page.
26

27 \end{document}

Save the file and name it example-1.tex. Press the button in WinEdt, or the
button in TeXShop. A file example-1.pdf will be created and you can see the
result in that file.
Now let’s make sense of what you’ve just entered.
A class file is an actual
Line 1: The control sequence \documentclass will appear in every single one of of
physical file with the
extension .cls. your LATEX file. It loads the correct “class file,” a file that has defined all the formatting
commands that you can use. In our case, we used the article class file, because all
that we are writing is a short article. The idea of “class file” is very smart and powerful.
Suppose that you decide to submit your paper to AMS (American Mathematical
Society), all you have to do is to change article to amsart, and your paper will be
reformatted according to the specifications required by AMS. (Why don’t you go ahead
and give it a try?) Other widely used class files include book and report.
A style file is also a
Line 2: Every once in a while, you’ll want some features that are not built into
physical file with the
extension .sty. LATEX itself. But most of the features that you want have been implemented by people
all over the world. They create what we call packages (style files) so that we can use
those features. In our example, we loaded the amsmath package, which is provided by
AMS and has many enhanced features for math typesetting.
The part before \begin{document} is called the preamble.
Line 3: \begin{document} tells LATEX that you’re officially ready to start your
document.
Lines 4–6 create the title part. You enter the title of your article with the \title
command, the \author command for author; everything is straightforward. Then
\maketitle outputs this part.
You’ve probably noticed that LATEX automatically added the date. This is controlled,
as you might have guessed, by the \date command. Try enter \date{March 35, 2020}
and see what happens. Enter \date{} if you don’t want the date to be displayed.
You might also have realized that I put \ after the command \LaTeX. As I’ve
mentioned before, the space after \LaTeX will be considered as the end of the command.
So we use a control space instead to output the space.

,
 3.3 Typesetting Chinese in LATEX 11

Line 8: \tableofcontents prepares the table of contents, as I’ve mentioned before.

Line 10: \section starts a new section, numbers it, and formats it. The section
title is “The Changing Definition of Font,” but we want it to be shown as “Font” in the
table of contents. (Remember what optional and required declarations are respectively?)
Line 12: We start our text on this line. Note that pressing the “enter” (or “return”)
key once to go to the next line is the same as pressing the space bar; i.e., one return =
one space. So you can end a line anywhere you want.
The \emph command tells LATEX to emphasize the part of the text (in italic by
default). \footnote creates a footnote and numbers it automatically.
Line 13: Note that “ is produced with ‘‘ (pressing the key on the left of ‘1’ twice),
and ” is produced with ’’.
Line 17: Remember what a ligature is? I used “fi” as an example in chapter 1. On
line 17, we meet the “fl” ligature. You don’t have to worry about it—TEX takes care of
it automatically.
Line 19: Two returns starts a new paragraph!
Line 23: --- is converted into —, what we call an em dash. (What do you think
the result of -- is?)
Now try to enter the remaining of the document yourself.

3.3 Typesetting Chinese in LATEX

As I’ve mentioned before, there are two major Chinese typesetting system: CCT and
CJK, each of which has its own advantages. CCT is developed by Linbo Zhang, a
Chinese scholar, and has paid much attention to Chinese typographic conventions.
CJK lacks these typographic consideration but is more flexible and provides better
compatibility with LATEX.
A comprehensive solution, the ctex package, is developed by Lingyun Wu, President
of the CTEX Society. It uses CJK as its default formatting engine (although you could
easily specify that it uses CCT instead), and also provides commands specially designed
for typesetting Chinese (e.g., declaring Chinese fonts, setting up Chinese-style heading,
and so forth).
We’re going to typeset what is shown in figure 3.2 with the ctex package.

1 \documentclass{article}
2 \usepackage{ctex}
3 \usepackage{amsmath}
4 \begin{document}
5 \title{·¥©öS}
6 \author{ä>}
7 \maketitle
8

9 \tableofcontents
10

11 \section{\€£}
12 ¥©m˜ ‚ Ѭž”"¤±§,\3d?‹ ˜‚§L˜¬§
13 ‚´Ø¬w«Ñ5"\Œ±^\ ù\ /ª5r1\ј‚"=©¥m
14 ˜‚´Ø¬¯K§5¿Ñ\˜Z‡˜‚Ú˜‡˜‚§ª(J´
15 ˜"'XµThis is a sample~)JÚ~This is a
16 sample~´vk«O"ùk:”·- ¡˜‚¬¯K˜"¤±§
17 \TeX perts~¥m@‡˜‚´¬ž”",§XJ\˜½‡@‡˜‚§
18 Œ±Ñ\~\TeX\ perts"

à
12 Getting Started

·¥©öS
ä>

2006 c 6  3 F

8¹
1 \€£ 1

2 Ÿo´ TEXº 1

1 \€£
¥©m˜‚Ѭž”"¤±§,\3d?‹ ˜‚§L˜¬§‚´
جw«Ñ5"\Œ±^ ù /ª5r1\ј‚"=©¥m˜‚´
ج¯K§5¿Ñ\˜Z‡˜‚Ú˜‡˜‚§ª(J´˜"'
XµThis is a sample )JÚ This is a sample ´vk«O"ùk:”·
- ¡˜‚¬¯K˜"¤±§TEXperts ¥m@‡˜‚´¬ž”"
,§XJ\˜½‡@‡˜‚§Œ±Ñ\ TEX perts"
y3ëYUüg£§Òm© #˜ã"CTeX ¬gĐ\3c¡˜Ñü
‡Çiål"

2 Ÿo´ TEXº
TEX ´˜«`D>fü‡XÚ"§Jø ˜@õUrŒ¿ ›©(¹
ü‡Šó§§õˆ 900 õ^-§¿ TEX k÷õU§^rŒ±Øä/½Âg
C·^#·-5*Ð TEX XÚõU"Nõ<|^TEX Jø÷½ÂõUé
TEX ?1 gmu§Ù¥'Ͷk{IêÆƬíš~·ÜuêÆ
[¦^ AMS-TEX ±9·Üu˜„©Ù!w!Ö7 LATEX XÚ"

Figure 3.2: Typesetting Chinese in LATEX

,
 3.4 A Short Summary 13

19

20 y3ëYUüg£§Òm© #˜ã"CTeX~¬gĐ\3c¡˜Ñü
21 ‡Çiål"

Again, here’s some explanation:

Line 2: To load ctex, simply use the \usepackage control sequence. Note how the
style of section titles are different.
Lines 12–18 explain some weird phenomena you would come across in typesetting
Chinese. For example, spaces between Chinese characters will disappear. You would
also notice that I use a ~ (tilde) to connect Chinese and English—you don’t have to,
but for the purpose of perfect composition, I recommend that you start cultivating this
great habit.
Try to typeset section 2 yourself.

3.4 A Short Summary

A lot of information has been presented in this chapter. And below is the most basic but
important “template” you should remember. Make sure you understand every single
command in the template.

\documentclass{article/book/report}
\usepackage{ctex} % if you want to typeset Chinese
\usepackage{package_name}
\begin{document}
\title{Title}
\author{Author_name}
\date{Date}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents

\section[Short_title]{Long_title}

--- produces an em dash. ‘‘ produces the left quote.

’’ produces the right quote.
\end{document}

3.5 Dividing your text into parts, chapters, and sections

Headers help your reader find his or her way through your work. As you’ve already
seen, the article class provides \section to fulfill this purpose. But there are more
commands provided by article:

\section{...}
\subsection{...}
\subsubsection{...}
\paragraph{...}
\subparagraph{...}

You should definitely try them out.

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 14 Getting Started

If you want to split your document in parts without influencing the section
numbering you can use:

\part{...}

But if you try the following code (because you’re an eager beaver),

\documentclass{book}
\begin{document}
\section{A new section}
\end{document}

you’ll experience something you wouldn’t expect—the section number is “0.1.” The
reason is that the Level-A heading in the book class is chapter, not section. (Have you
heard of the saying “Divide your article into sections, but your book into chapters”?)
So the following code fixes the problem:

\begin{document}
\chapter{A new chapter}
\section{The first section of the chapter}
\end{document}

The \chapter command is also provided in report.

Note that these commands could be followed by an optional argument, as is
explained before. For example, a chapter title “Duke is one of the best universities in
the United States of America” is a bit too long to be placed in the table of contents,
and you decide that it be replaced with “Duke is one of the best universities in the U.S.”
in the TOC. What you should enter is the following:

\chapter[Duke is one of the best universities in the U.S.]

{Duke is one of the best universities in the United
States of America}

3.6 Options of standard document classes

I’ve already mentioned that a control sequence might be followed with an optional
argument, enclosed in brackets. \documentclass is just another one of the kind.
Table 3.1 lists all available options for the standard article, report, and book
classes.
The table should be studied carefully and the best way to study it is to try
everything out.
This table is abstracted
from The Not So Short
Introduction to LATEX 2ε ,
with some modification.

,
 3.6 Options of standard document classes 15

Table 3.1: Options of standard document classes

Command Meaning
10pt, 11pt, 12pt Sets the size of the main font in the document.
If none is specified, 10 pt is assumed. Note that
when you change the option from 10pt to 12pt,
the sizes of section headings are adjusted auto-
matically.
a4paper, letterpaper, . . . Defines the paper size. The default size is
letterpaper. Besides that, a5paper, b5paper,
executivepaper, and legalpaper can be speci-
fied.
fleqn By default, all the displayed math formulas are
centered. If you specify fleqn, they will left-align.
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; i.e., whether the
content before \maketitle should be placed on
a separate page or not. The article class does
not start a new page by default, while report
and book do.
onecolumn, twocolumn Instructs LATEX to typeset the document in one
column or two columns.
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
landscape mode.
openright, openany Starts a new chapter on the right hand page or
on the next page. 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.

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16 Getting Started

,
 4
Playing with Text

This chapter focuses on how you enter text and set type. Topics covered include: how to
enter the characters not readily available on your keyboard, how to change the typeface of
your text, etc.

4.1 International characters

Every once in a while, you’ll bump into a word like cafè. If you’re using Mac OS X, this
won’t present any difficulty for you. The keyboard shortcut Option + e creates a tilde,
Interestingly, if you press
and when you press the key e again, it will be placed under the tilde:
Option + e + i, the dot of
“i” will disappear: [.
W W

If you’re using other operation system, you could use TEX’s built-in command to
do the similar thing. Table 4.1 lists all the commands for producing accents and other
international symbols.

Table 4.1: Accents and special characters

Sample Command Sample Command Sample Command Sample Command
ò \‘o ó \’o ô \^o õ \~o
ō \=o ȯ \.o ö \"o
ŏ \u o ǒ \v o ő \H o o. \d o
o \b o o o \t oo o̧ \c o
¯
œ \oe Œ \OE æ \ae Æ \AE
å \aa Å \AA
ø \o Ø \O l \l L \L
ı \i  \j ¡ !‘ ¿ ?‘

The dotless ı and  are useful if you want to put accents over the letters i and j.
Occasionally, they are also used when the baselines are very close (to achieve special
typographic effect)—this is a special occasion when typography overrides logic.

\huge\baselineskip=8pt\lineskip=-2pt
\textbf{Buy\\
Buy
\hspace*{10.5pt}R\i ght} Rıght

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 18 Playing with Text

4.2 Punctuation—what makes life/reading easier

4.2.1 Dash—your first lesson with punctuation

If you can use dashes correctly, you’ve mastered more than half about TEX’s treatment
of punctuation. There are four kinds of dashes built into TEX:

• Hyphens (obtained from -) are used a lot for compound words, e.g., daughter-in-law.
It’s also used extensively for separating characters, e.g., 1-800-621-2376.
There’s actually a second
kind of hyphen (a fifth • En dashes (obtained from --) are widely used instead of “to,” and for prefixing a
kind of dash), called a soft
compound word; e.g., pages 10–20, London–Paris train, post–World War II.
hyphen, which is discussed
in section about
• Em dashes (obtained from ---) are used for punctuating a sentence—they are
hyphenation.
what we often call simply dashes.

• Minus signs (obtained from $-$) are used in math formulas a lot, e.g., −1.
You will learn that all
“inline” math equations
are placed between dollar
In some Asian countries, number ranges are indicated with a tilde (∼) instead
signs. of an en dash. This is created with the command $\sim$. For example, $-1\sim 2$
produces “−1 ∼ 2.” The advantage is that you can use negative signs with it without
causing any confusion—the notation “−1–−2” is weird and unattractive. However, if ∼
is not a tradition in your country, that is, if you’re supposed to use en dash for number
ranges, you should consider using the word “to,” e.g., “−1 to −2.”
In some European countries, an en dash is used in place of an em dash – like what
you just saw. When an en dash is used in this way, you should place a space both before
and after it. However, no spaces are required around an em dash.
Em dashes are sometimes used instead of quotation marks to set off dialogue. In
this case, you should place a space after the dash:

--- Will Colin attend your wedding?\\ — Will Colin attend your wedding?
--- Of course. — Of course.

4.2.2 Quotation marks

As is mentioned before, we use two ‘ (grave accent) for opening quotation marks and ’
(vertical quote) for closing quotation marks. For single quotes, you use just one of each.

‘‘Please press the ‘x’ key.’’ “Please press the ‘x’ key.”

Quotes within quotes can be very tricky. For example, a single quote followed by
a double quote, you can’t simply type ’’’ because LATEX will interpret it as a double
quote followed by a single quote, resulting in ”’. But ’ ’’ is unacceptable either—the
space is too big for this purpose. To solve this issue, we introduce thin spaces, which
can be obtained with either \, or \thinspace:

’\,’’ ’”

,
 4.2 Punctuation—what makes life/reading easier 19

4.2.3 Comma and Period

TEX was designed a long time ago, and occasionally it does follow some old typographic
tradition. Take a look at the following result:

Colin, come downstairs. Lee’s here. Colin, come downstairs. Lee’s here.

What you could observe is that the space after the period is slightly bigger than
the one after the comma. TEX does this because traditional typography requires a
larger space to indicate the end of a sentence. Following along the same logic, TEX
puts more space after an exclamation point (!), and a question mark (?). However, this
tradition is obsolete as this extra space is disturbing. So you should almost always
execute \frenchspacing just before the beginning of every document, instructing TEX
to treat commas and periods in the same way, like this:

\frenchspacing
Colin, come downstairs. Lee’s here.
Colin, come downstairs. Lee’s here.

TEXnicality
If you decide to follow along the old tradition (like the part you’re currently reading
does), there are a few technical details that you should pay attention to.
• “Mr. Lee” should be entered as Mr.\ Lee (or better yet, Mr.~Lee).
• A period following a capital letter does not produce the extra space. So if a
sentence ends with “U.S.,” you’ll have to tell LATEX that the period actually
indicates the end of a sentence by prefixing it with \@, i.e., U.S\@.
• Quotes and parentheses can be “transcended,” i.e., if a period appears just
before a right quote or right parenthesis, the space after the right quote and the
right parenthesis is also bigger than you would imagine. Take care to treat these
special conditions.

4.2.4 Ellipsis
Ellipsis should be used with great care. There are a few different conventions as to how
to use ellipses, but the most widely adopted method is the three-or-four-dot method.
Here’s how The Chicago Manual of Style says about it:
Three dots indicate an omission within a quoted sentence. Four mark the omission
of one or more sentences. When three are used, space occurs both before the first
dot and after the final dot. When four are used, the first dot is a true period—
that is, there is no space between it and the preceding word. What precedes and,
normally, what follows the four dots should be grammatically complete sentences
as quoted, even if part of either sentence has been omitted.
So how to produce an ellipsis? The answer is not to type three periods—the result
of ... is “...” The dots are too close to be pleasant for our eyes. LATEX provides a
command for producing ellipsis, \ldots (low dots), which gives “. . .” But this is not

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 20 Playing with Text

the end of the story, unfortunately. If you enter H \ldots H, what you get is “H . . . H,”
i.e., the space is “eaten” by TEX. The solution seems to be H \ldots\ H, in which
we use a control space, but the result became “H . . . H.” Look closely! The space on
the right hand side is slightly bigger than the one on the left. The reason is that the
definition of \ldots includes a thin space after the third dots when it is used in text
mode—this is handy if you want to put a comma after it, \ldots, gives the correct
“. . . ,”. The solution, which you probably couldn’t understand, is to use $\ldots$, so
H $\ldots$ H gives the “H . . . H,” which is perfect.
Another question to explore is how to get four dots. The logical way to do so seems
to be . $\ldots$, which gives “. . . . ” But typographic convention dictates even spaces
between the dots, so the solution seems to be use a thin space: .\,$\ldots$ which
gives “. . . .” But the best solution is to use the illogical ‘\ldots.’. (The reason is that
LATEX treats the space after a period differently from a normal word space, as is talked
about in “TEXnicality” in section 4.2.3.)
Here’s a concrete example for your reference:

The spirit of our American radicalism is

destructive and aimless\ldots. On the The spirit of our American radicalism is de-
other side, the conservative party structive and aimless. . . . On the other side,
$\ldots$ is timid, and merely the conservative party . . . is timid, and merely
defensive\ldots. It does not build, nor defensive. . . . It does not build, nor write, nor
write, nor cherish the arts, nor foster cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor estab-
religion, nor establish schools. lish schools.

4.3 Changing typefaces

The default typefaces used by TEX includes Computer Modern Roman, Computer
Modern Bold Face, Computer Modern Italics, Computer Modern Slanted, etc. The
commands for changing the typefaces are shown in table 4.2.
The two words “font” and
“typeface” are commonly
misused. “A typeface is a Table 4.2: Changing typefaces in LATEX
collection of characters
that are designed to work Command Sample Command Sample
together like the parts of a \textrm{roman} roman \textit{italic} italic
coordinated outfit. . . . A \textbf{bold face} bold face \textsl{slanted} slanted
font . . . is a physical thing, \texttt{typewriter} typewriter \textsc{Small Caps} Small Caps
the description of a
\textsf{sans serif} sans serif
typeface. . . .” You can ask
questions like “What font
was used to set that Notice that there are two kinds of oblique typefaces listed in the table. Slanted
typeface?” But you can’t typeface could be considered skewed roman, while italic type is designed in a different
say, “What font is that?” style. This will be clear if you see letters that are in an unslanted italic typeface.
You could easily combine these commands to obtain more typefaces (but try not
to abuse this power):

\textbf{\textit{bold italic}}\\ bold italic

\textit{\texttt{italic typewriter}} italic typewriter

The tricky part is to decide the typeface of the punctuation. One commonly asked
question is “Should the comma after an italic word be italic?” There is no consensus,

,
 4.4 Controlling the size of your text 21

but I again conform to The Chicago Manual of Style, which states: “All punctuation
marks should appear in the same font—roman or italic—as the main or surrounding
text, except for punctuation that belongs to a title or an exclamation in a different
font.”
Smith played the title role in
\textit{Hamlet}, \textit{Macbeth}, and Smith played the title role in Hamlet, Mac-
\textit{King Lear}; after his final beth, and King Lear ; after his final perfor-
performance, he announced his retirement. mance, he announced his retirement.
She is the author of Who Next?
She is the author of \textit{Who Next?}
Note: In what follows . . .
\textbf{Note}: In what follows \dots

4.4 Controlling the size of your text

We’ve already known that we can change the size of the main text by supplying the
optional arguments of \documentclass. Most submission require a 12-point font, we
can simply write something like \documentclass[12pt]{article} to achieve the effect.
You’ll realize that the section title is now bigger as well. The three pre-defined choices
are 10pt, 11pt, and 12pt.
But you could also change the size of your text within your main text. Table 4.3
tells you how. Note that these size changing commands are relative, e.g., tiny becomes
bigger as you change the main text from 10 pt to 12 pt. Table 4.4 tells you the absolute
size produced by these commands as your main font varies.

Table 4.3: Changing the size of the text in LATEX

Command Sample Command Sample
\tiny tiny \scriptsize scriptsize
\footnotesize footnotesize \small small
\normalsize normalsize \large large
\Large larger \LARGE even larger
\huge huge \Huge largest
The next question to ask is how you obtain a line of text that is exactly 15 pt big?
The answer is to use the \fontsize{size}{skip}. The {size} argument is the size of
the text, while the {skip} argument specifies the baseline skip adopted. Notice that
after the font size is chosen, you have to execute the font by using the \selectfont
command.
\fontsize{15}{17}\selectfont
Happy Birthday! Happy Birthday!

4.5 Is what you type what you get?

4.5.1 Special characters that make TEX scream
There are a few characters that require your special attention:

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 22 Playing with Text

Table 4.4: Absolute point sizes in standard classes

Commands 10pt option 11pt option 12pt option
\tiny 5 pt 6 pt 6 pt
\scriptsize 7 pt 8 pt 8 pt
\footnotesize 8 pt 9 pt 10 pt
\small 9 pt 10 pt 11 pt
\normalsize 10 pt 11 pt 12 pt
\large 12 pt 12 pt 14 pt
\Large 14 pt 14 pt 17 pt
\LARGE 17 pt 17 pt 20 pt
\huge 20 pt 20 pt 25 pt
\Huge 25 pt 25 pt 25 pt

# $ % ^ & _ { } ~ \

These characters are reserved by TEX to do unique things. To obtain them, prefix
them with a backslash:

\# \$ \% \^{} \& \_ \{ \} \~{} #$%ˆ& {}˜

Some clarification:
• \^ and \~ are special—they’re used for placing accents on letters, e.g., \^{a}
produces â, \~{e} produces ẽ. That’;s what the braces are about. They instruct
ând t̃o put the accent on nothing.
• \\ won’t work because it’s actually used to start a new line. To produce a backslash,
enter $\backslash$.
4.5.2 Ligatures
Ligatures are standard to every professional typesetting system, e.g., TEX/LATEX, Adobe
Indesign, QuarkXpress, etc. Even Apple’s standard text editor, TextEdit, has built-in
support for ligatures, but the most renowned Microsoft Office doesn’t have this feature.
Let’s take a look at some standard ligature in LATEX’s computer modern font:

\textrm{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\textbf{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\textit{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\textsl{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\textsf{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\textsc{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl}\\ fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl
\texttt{fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl} fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl

Evidently, Computer Modern Small Caps and Computer Modern Typewriter do

not have any ligatures at all. As a matter of fact, \texttt{---} produces ---, not an
em dash.
Some typographers think that ligatures should be turned off in headings. This
sometimes doesn’t produce the best result, so you should eyeball the result and make

,
 4.6 Manual kerning 23

an informed decision. But the way to disable ligatures in LATEX is simply to divide the
letters up:

fi, f{}i, {f}i, f{i} fi, fi, fi, fi

4.6 Manual kerning

“In setting type, it’s often the little things that count.” Kerning adjusts the spaces
between specific letter pairs to make the text look smooth and even. TEX automatically
kerns letter pairs according to the metric information that comes along with the font.
For example, letters A and V are automatically placed closer to show up as “AV.”
Without kerning, what you get is “AV,” which is horrible.
But in the domain of typography, it is the optical aspect that really counts. The
phrase “post–World War II” looks unpleasant—according to the metric files, TEX placed
the correct amount of space before and after the en dash, but optically it still looks
wrong. So we human have to interfere. Here’s how:

post--\kern-0.5pt World War II post–World War II

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24 Playing with Text

,
 5
Working with Paragraphs

Hyphenation and justification—H&J, for short—is the process a computer program uses
to fit type into lines. TEX, as I’ve mentioned a couple of times, has one of the best H&J
engines in the world by formating one paragraph at a time. This chapter helps you deal with
paragraphs in TEX more effectively. We get started with basic controls over line breaks and
such, and later get into the details of TEX’s typesetting engine.

5.1 Manual line and page breaks

TEX, by default, automatically divides your paragraph into lines of the same length,
using its sophisticated hyphenation and justification (H&J) scheme. But every once
in a while, you’ll want to start a new line without starting a new paragraph. You’ve
actually seen a few examples—you can do so with \\.

Sometimes, {\large I}\\ Sometimes, I

just want to break the line. just want to break the line.

The command \newline produces the same effect. In addition, \\* creates a line
break but also prohibits a page break after the forced line break.
There’s also the \linebreak[n] command. The optional argument n satisfies n ∈ Z
and n ∈ [0, 4], and denotes the level you encourage a line break here. So if breaking a
line at the point you specified would produce something hideous, but meanwhile you
specified that n = 1, this command might be possibly ignored. However, \linebreak[4]
would almost always produce a line break. Also notice that the result of \linebreak
differs from that of \newline:

Sometimes, {\large I}\linebreak Sometimes, I

just want to break the line at just want to break the line at certain
certain points to make \TeX\ unhappy. points to make TEX unhappy.

That is, \linebreak will justify the text. This command is quite useful when
you are fine tuning your text and have to manually interfere with the text flow. One
application is when you are setting a URL. As you’ll see later in this book, you could
use the \url{...} command provided by the URL package to typeset URLs, and these
URLs will be broken into lines if necessary. However, the way this package works is
to break after periods, while The Chicago Manual of Style requires breaking before a
period. This is the time you’ll have to interfere with LATEX. For example,

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 26 Working with Paragraphs

You could visit the site You could visit the site www.admissions
www.admissions\linebreak[0].duke.edu .duke.edu for more information about apply-
for more information about applying to Duke. ing to Duke.

Similarly, LATEX provides \newpage and \pagebreak[n] to create manual page

breaks. \newpage terminates the line, fills the remaining of the page with blank space,
and then goes onto the next page; \pagebreak justify the page so that the blank space
is scattered into the text flow where additional vertical spaces is allowed (typically
between paragraphs, before and after a heading, etc.).

5.2 Moving your text horizontally

The environments flushleft and flushright generate paragraphs that are either left-
or right-aligned. The center environment generates centered text. If you do not issue
\\ to specify line breaks, LATEX will automatically determine line breaks.

\begin{flushleft}
This text is\\ left-aligned. This text is
\LaTeX\ is not trying to make left-aligned. LATEX is not trying to make each
each line the same length. line the same length.
\end{flushleft}

\begin{flushright}
This text is right-\\aligned. This text is right-
\LaTeX\ is not trying to make aligned. LATEX is not trying to make each
each line the samelength. line the samelength.
\end{flushright}

\begin{center}
At the centre
At the centre\\of the earth
of the earth
\end{center}

5.3 Shaping a paragraph

Indentation is what controls the shape of a paragraph. And there are a couple of different
indents.
The most well-known indents are the first-line indents, which flag the beginnings
of new paragraphs. We’ve already known a great deal about first-line indents in LATEX:
1) The first paragraph after a section heading will not be indented; if you do want to
indent it, the indentfirst package will help; 2) Starting from the second paragraph, LATEX
will automatically inserts a first-line indents.
Paragraph indents are often measured in ems, and in LATEX the size is controlled
by \parindent, so \setlength{\parindent}{2em} (or simply \partindent=2em) sets
the depth of the indent to be 2 em. If for mysterious reasons you want to cancel the
indent of a specific paragraph, simply prefix it with \noindent.
There is no rule as to how big the first-line indent should be, but generally speaking,
wider measures will profit from deeper indents. In this book, the section number plus

,
 5.3 Shaping a paragraph 27

the white space before the section heading is exactly 20 points, so I set the paragraph
indents to be that size in order to create a sense of balance.
The second kind is the hanging indent, which starts after at least one preceding
line has been set “normal.” To achieve this effect, you need to combine two control
sequences:

• \hangindent specifies the depth of the indentation;

• \hangafter specifies the number of normal lines.

The following example demonstrates what you could achieve:

\hangindent=3em \hangafter=2
Duke University is a very young school. Our
Duke University is a very young school. Our
history can be traced to as early as 1839, when
history can be traced to as early as 1839,
Brown’s school house was established.
when Brown’s school house was established.
But it was not until 1924 that Duke
But it was not until 1924 that Duke came
came into existence.
into existence.

The third kind is the running indent, which affect a series of line, at the right or
left margin, or even both. Interestingly, we could use the commands above to achieve
this effect, except that \hangindent should be set negative:

\hangindent=-3em \hangafter=2
Duke University is a very young school. Our
Duke University is a very young school. Our
history could be traced to as early as 1839,
history could be traced to as early as 1839,
when Brown’s school house was estab-
when Brown’s school house was established.
lished. But it was not until 1924 that
But it was not until 1924 that Duke came
Duke came into existence.
into existence.

An interesting question to ask is whether or not the \hangafter could be negative.

The answer is positive:

\hangindent=-3em \hangafter=-2
Duke University is a very young school.
Duke University is a very young school. Our
Our history could be traced to as early
history could be traced to as early as 1839,
as 1839, when Brown’s school house was es-
when Brown’s school house was established.
tablished. But it was not until 1924 that Duke
But it was not until 1924 that Duke came
came into existence.
into existence.

As you can see \hangindent and \hangafter are very powerful, so let’s summarize
their usage a little bit: If \hangindent=x, \hangafter=n, the width of the measure is
h; then if n ≥ 0, hanging indents will occur on lines n + 1, n + 2, . . . of the paragraph,
but if n < 0, it will occur on lines 1, 2, . . . , |n|. The indented lines will be of width
h − |x|; if x ≥ 0, the lines will be indented at the left margin, otherwise at the right.
But most of the time, you probably don’t need this much power. The most
important running indents turn out to be used in quotations. And LATEX provides two
environments for this purpose: The quote environment doesn’t indent the first line
while the quotation environment does.

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 28 Working with Paragraphs

\parindent=2em
In discussing the reasons for political
disturbances Aristotle observes that In discussing the reasons for political distur-
\begin{quote} bances Aristotle observes that
revolutions also break out when opposite
revolutions also break out when opposite
parties $\ldots$ are equally balanced\dots.
parties . . . are equally balanced. . . .
\end{quote}
In discussing the reasons for political dis-
In discussing the reasons for political
turbances Aristotle observes that
disturbances Aristotle observes that
\begin{quotation} revolutions also break out when op-
revolutions also break out when opposite posite parties . . . are equally balanced. . . .
parties $\ldots$ are equally balanced\dots.
\end{quotation}

If you actually try them out, you’ll see that the final result you obtain is different
from what is shown above—both the left and the right margins are indented. And
most of the time, you wouldn’t like the default indentation value set by these two
environments. Changing the style of these environments involves more expertise, and
will be introduced in section 1.
Lastly, I’d like to introduce a command that gives you the ultimate power to control
every single line of your paragraph: \parshape. Here’s how The TEXbook describes
it:
In general, ‘\parshape=n i1 l1 i2 l2 . . . in ln ’ specifies a paragraph whose first n
lines will have lengths l1 , l2 , . . . , ln , respectively, and they will be indented from
the left margin by the respective amounts i1 , i2 , . . . , in . If the paragraph has fewer
than n lines, the additional specifications will be ignored; if it has more than n
lines, the specifications for line n will be repeated ad infinitum. You can cancel the
effect of a previously specified \parshape by saying ‘\parshape=0’.
Below is a pretty sophisticated example. You could simply ignore the part that I
use to insert the figure and focus on how I use \parshape to control the shape of the
paragraph to leave room for the figure. You’ll understand what I am doing here later in
your life.

\parshape=5
0cm 4cm 0cm 4cm
0cm 4cm 0cm 4cm 0cm \linewidth
Lee is my superfriend. He
\leavevmode\smash{\rlap{\hspace*{4.4cm}%
goes to Fudan Univer-
\lower1.2cm\hbox{%
sity and majors in Soft-
\includegraphics[width=20mm]
ware Engineering. He’s
{ColinLee.jpg}}}}%
very smart and loves playing World of War-
Lee is my superfriend. He goes to Fudan
craft very much.
University and majors in Software
Engineering. He’s very smart and loves
playing World of Warcraft very much.

The shapepar is a pretty By using \parshape, you could literally make your paragraph any shape you want.
cool package. Read But if you want your paragraph to be shaped a heart, there’s a package, shapepar, that
ftp://ftp.duke.edu/ could ease your work. The package provides a few predefined shapes that you could call
pub/tex-archive/
up by using \diamondpar, \squarepar, and \heartpar.
macros/latex/contrib/
shapepar/shapepar.pdf
for more information.
,
 5.4 Reflowing the text 29

A running indent
draws the mar- gin of the type
\heartpar{A running indent draws the in from the right or left edge of the
margin of the type in from the right or text frame by a specified distance.
left edge of the text frame by a specified Typically page layout programs re-
distance. Typically page layout programs fer to these as simply left and right
refer to these as simply left and right indents. Because it is construed
indents. Because it is construed as a as a paragraph attribute, any
paragraph attribute, any left or right left or right indent will
indent will affect all lines in a paragraph.} affect all lines in a
paragraph.
♥

5.4 Reflowing the text

TEX is well-programmed, but by no means can it replace the eyes of a good typographer.
Sometimes (although experience tells that this doesn’t happen a lot when setting type
in TEX), you’ll observe some discrepancy showing up in the automatic flowed text that
TEX cannot observe with its built-in mechanism. There are a few occasions on which
you will need to reflow the text:
• When very loose or tight lines exist. These are actually rare because of TEX’s
engine is designed to avoid these. But if verbatim or URLs are in the text flow,
they could cause trouble.
• The same word appear consecutively at the end of lines.
• “River” is another typographic “misbehavior” (figure 5.1). It occurs when word
spaces stack one above the other in successive lines.
• When text is not justified but ragged, the ragged margins might end up in distracting
shapes (e.g., a triangle).
• A very short word ending a paragraph is on an individual line and the paragraph
indent is bigger than the word.
There are many ways to reflow the text. The first way to do so is to use the
\linebreak command (section 5.1).
The example below contains a very loose line caused by a URL:

The website of the \ctex\ Society is The website of the CTEX Society is
www.ctex.org. www.ctex.org.

We could reflow the text by specifying a “potential” breakpoint with the \linebreak[0]
command:

The website of the \ctex\ Society is The website of the CTEX Society is www
www\linebreak[0].ctex.org. .ctex.org.

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 30 Working with Paragraphs

O
f all the great rivers of the world, none is as intriguing
as the Pearl. short by world standards, it epitomizes the
old expression that good things come in small pack-
ages. Though the Pearl measures less than 50 miles in total
length from its modest source as a cool mountain spring to the
screaming cascades and steaming estuary of its downstream
reaches, over those miles, the river has in one place or another
everything you could possibly ask for. You can roam among
lush temperate rain forests, turgid white water canyons, con-
templative meanders among aisles of staid aspens (with trout
leaping to slurp all the afternoon insects from its calm sur-
face), and forbidding swamp land as formidable as any that
Humphrey Bogart muddled through in The African Queen.    

Figure 5.1: This is an example of “river” from The Complete Manual of Typography. It is more
dramatic when blurred. “There’s no avoiding them, only fixing them.”

Notice that if a linebreak at the point specified will cause dramatic ugliness,
\linebreak[0] will be ignored. The optional argument 0 works pretty well in this case,
but it takes practice to get to know the exact value that you should use.

The website of the Chinese \TeX\ Society The website of the Chinese TEX Society is
is www\linebreak[0].ctex.org. www.ctex.org.

Now let’s take a look at another example: a very short word ends a paragraph and
is set on an individual line:

\parindent=25pt
The most amazing feature of \TeX\ is that it The most amazing feature of TEX is that it
typesets your document awfully fast and typesets your document awfully fast and al-
always tries to find the best breakpoints ways tries to find the best breakpoints ever.
ever. However, sometimes, it does make mis-
takes.
However, sometimes, it does make mistakes.

This is specially bad if the paragraph indent is huge (as is shown in the previous
example), which causes much visual discomfort. There’s a simple command to deal with
this problem: \looseness. If the optimum breakpoints that TEX obtained according
to the normal procedure end up with n lines, and if \looseness=l, then TEX will try
to reflow the text so as the make the final number of lines as close a possible to n + l
without exceeding the current tolerance. Notes: 1) l could be a negative integer so that

,
 5.5 Hyphenation and Justification technology 31

TEX will try to reduce the number of lines; 2) TEX only “tries” to make the number of
lines as close to n + l as possible—by no means does it mean it will actually succeed.
Naturally, we could “try” to eliminate widows and orphans in the same way.

\parindent=25pt \looseness=-1
The most amazing feature of \TeX\ is that it The most amazing feature of TEX is that
typesets your document awfully fast and it typesets your document awfully fast and
always tries to find the best breakpoints always tries to find the best breakpoints ever.
ever. However, sometimes, it does make
mistakes.
However, sometimes, it does make mistakes.

A third way is to change the value of \tolerance, which specifies how bad a
paragraph could be. (Section 5.5 gives more detail on this question.)

Book printing differs significantly from

Book printing differs significantly from ordi-
ordinary typing with respect to dashes,
nary typing with respect to dashes, hyphens,
hyphens, and minus signs. In good math
and minus signs. In good math books, these
books, these symbols are all different;
symbols are all different; in fact there usually
in fact there usually are at least four
are at least four different symbols.
different symbols.

This paragraph is actually just fine, but maybe you think the word spaces are a
big too close and want to enlarge them to your favor. Of course, you could execute
\looseness=1 to make the paragraph one line longer. But for experiment purposes,
let’s do something more dramatic—by reducing the value of \tolerance.

\tolerance=60
Book printing differs significantly from Book printing differs significantly from ordi-
ordinary typing with respect to dashes, nary typing with respect to dashes, hyphens,
hyphens, and minus signs. In good math and minus signs. In good math books, these
books, these symbols are all different; symbols are all different; in fact there usually
in fact there usually are at least four are at least four different symbols.
different symbols.

5.5 Hyphenation and Justification technology

Now let’s take a look at the detail of the H&J technology underlying TEX. We’ll get
started with hyphenation. Hyphenation is quite a difficult problem for a computer.
Knuth, in his The TEXbook, gives some excellent examples to demonstrate this point:
[T]he word ‘record’ is supposed to be broken as ‘rec-ord’ when it is a noun, but
‘re-cord’ when it is a verb. The word ‘hyphenation’ itself is somewhat exceptional;
if ‘hy-phen-a-tion’ is compared to similar words like ‘con-cat-e-na-tion’, it’s not
immediately clear why the ‘n’ should be attached to the ‘e’ in one case but not
the other. Examples like ‘dem-on-stra-tion’ vs. ‘de-mon-stra-tive’ show that the
alteration of two letters can actually affect hyphens that are nine positions away.
The current solution that is adopted by TEX is developed by Frank M. Liang.
There are a few advantages to these algorithm: 1) It could find about 90% of permissible

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32 Working with Paragraphs

hyphen points in a large dictionary, which is good enough. 2) When different sources
have different ways to hyphenate a word, TEX generally follows Webster’s, which is
the golden standard in the publishing industry. But still, the truth is that TEX does
make mistakes and cannot hyphenate every word. If the word “galaxy” needs to be
hyphenated and TEX fails to do so, you could interfere by adding discretionary breaks
(i.e., soft hyphens) manually. There are a few ways to do so. If the word galaxy appears
only once in the document, you could add these breaks with \-, e.g., gal\-axy. Another
useful command works as follows:

\discretionary{pre-break}{post-break}{no-break}

So you should enter ga\discretionary{l-}{a}{la}xy. If the word appears a lot

in your document, write \hyphenation{gal-axy} at the beginning of your document,
and TEX will work hard on this word every time.
Now let’s turn to justification. To understand the H&J technology in TEX, we first
go through a couple of basic concepts.

• Glue: LATEX treats every character as a box and glue is used to link the boxes
together. It’s not hard to understand what a glue is. A word space, for instance,
is a glue—it separates two word and shows up on the screen and printout as a
white space, and one fascinating feature of a word space is its ability to stretch
and shrink. But word spaces are not the only kind of glue in TEX, the space before
a heading, for example, is also a glue (at least by default).
Suppose the widths of Boxes A and B are 5 points and 6 points respectively, and
the glue between them has a natural width of 3 points, a stretchability of 3 points,
and a shrinkability of 2 points. If Boxes A and B need to be fit on a line of 14
points, that’s great, the natural width of the glue will be adopted. If the line is 16
points, then the glue will stretch by 2 points so that 5 + 6 + 3 + 2 = 16 points.
• Badness: Although word spaces are glue and can shrink and stretch, we do not
want them to shrink or stretch too much. And we first devise a way to measure
the typographic quality of the glue. The badness is defined as an integer that is
approximately 100 times the cube of the ratio by which the glue inside the line
must stretch or shrink to make the line of the required measure. If the badness
calculated exceeds 10 000, then the value 10 000 is used. For instance, if the line
has a total shrinkability of 10 points, but the glue actually shrinks by 9 points, the
badness is then 100 × (9/10)3 = 72.9 ≈ 73 (since we take the integer).
A line whose badness is 13 or more is considered “bad.” If its glue shrinks, it is
considered tight; if its glue stretches, it is loose. If the badness is 100 or more and
the line stretches, is is very loose. If the badness is 12 or less, then the line is
regarded as decent. Two adjacent lines are said to be visually incompatible if their
classifications are not adjacent.
• Penalty: A penalty represents the undesirability (“ ‘aesthetic cost’ ”) of breaking
at a certain place. For example, if the line has to break at a discretionary hyphen
(i.e., a soft hyphen), a value of 50 (as will be explained soon) will be used. In other
words, hyphenation is not that desirable in TEX’s eye[s?].

Now let’s take a look at how TEX formats a paragraph.

TEX starts by breaking a paragraph into lines without hyphenating any word. This
process succeeds if none of the resulting lines has a badness exceeding the value of
\pretolerance (100 by default). If that fails, TEX hyphenates every word and makes

,
 5.5 Hyphenation and Justification technology 33

a second attempt by using \tolerance (200 by default). Here’s a trick, if you make
\pretolerance=10000, the first pass will almost always pass, therefore hyphenations
will not be tried. But this generally results in very bad typographic quality and should
be used with great care.
So TEX will now calculate the so-called demerits for every line, by using the formula
below: 
(l + b)2 + p2 , if 0 ≤ p ≤ 10 000;
d = (l + b)2 − p2 , if −10 000 < p < 0;
(l + b)2 , if p ≤ −10 000;


where l is the current value of \linepenalty (10 by default), b is the badness of the
line, and p is the penalty associated with the breakpoint.
What TEX does is simply to minimize the total demerits of an entire paragraph. In
addition, there’s a bit of more detail. If two consecutive lines are visually incompatible,
the current value of \adjdemerits is added to d (10 000 by default); if two consec-
utive lines end with a soft hyphen, the \doublehyphendemerits are added (10 000
by default); and if the second-last line of the entire paragraph is hyphenated, the
\finalhyphendemerits are added (5000 by default).

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34 Working with Paragraphs

,
 6
Elements of Your Document

6.1 Cross References

You, probably like me, like such statements as “Please refer to section bla.” But here
comes the “problem”—all the section numbers are automatically generated by LATEX so
you don’t know what it is until you actually see the “final” result. (Well, how’s it final
without the “bla”?) LATEX provides a powerful cross-referencing mechanism to solve
this problem.
Put the command \label{bla} after the sectioning command, where bla can
be any text, ranging from the name of the section to the name of a cat. Then
Please refer to \ref{bla} gives you the correct output (the bla here should match
the bla in the \label definition).
You can use this mechanism with almost any number that is automatically generated
by LATEX. One thing to notice, do not give the same argument to two or more \label
commands—you’ll get LATEX confused.

6.2 Listing items

Admit it—you love making lists! Everywhere you go, you make lists: a mental lists of
the things you’re going to do between breakfast and lunch, a list of the pros and cons of
reading this book instead of playing basketball, and so on. Luckily, it’s no hard thing to
create a list in LATEX, with the enumerate, itemize, and description environments.
Here’s a demo:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Every item starts with \verb"\item":
\label{list}
1. Every item starts with \item:
\begin{itemize}
\item You can nest listings; • You can nest listings;
\item[-] You can easily change the symbol.
- You can easily change the symbol.
\end{itemize}
\item Oh, you do achieve more: 2. Oh, you do achieve more:
\begin{description}
\item[Colin] The author of the book; Colin The author of the book;
\item[Lee] Colin’s super friend. Lee Colin’s super friend.
\end{description}
\end{enumerate} Refer to Item 1 in the list.

Refer to Item~\ref{list} in the list.

Note how you can easily nest these environments, and oh, a special bonus is that
you can also use cross referencing commands as is shown above.

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 36 Elements of Your Document

Table 6.1: Commands controlling a list environment

Levels in the List
Items First Level Second Level Third Level Fourth Level
Commands for controlling the enumerate environment
Counter enumi enumii enumiii enumiv
Representation \theenumi \theenumii \theenumiii \theenumiv
Default Definition \arabic{enumi} \alph{enumii} \roman{enumiii} \Alph{enumiv}
Label Field \lebelenumi \labelenumii \labelenumiii \labelenumiv
Default Form \theenumi. (\theenumii) \theenumiii. \theenumiv.
Numbering Example 1., 2. (a), (b) i., ii., A., B.
Commands for controlling the reference representation of enumerate
Prefix \p@enumi \p@enumii \p@enumiii \p@enumiv
Default Definition {} \theenumi \theenumi(\theenumii) \p@enumiii\theenumiii
Reference Example 1, 2 1a, 2b 1(a)i, 2(b)ii 1(a)iA, 2(b)iiB
Commands for controlling the itemize environment
Command \labelitemi \labelitemii \labelitemiii \labelitemiv
Default Definition \textbullet \normalfont\bfseries\textendash \textasteriskcentered \textperiodcentered
Representation • – ∗ ·

The enumerate and itemize environment supports up to four levels of nesting.

Table 6.1 shows the default numbering the referencing scheme of the four levels, and
what commands are used to control them.
This table is abstracted
You can control the appearance of your list environment with the information
from The LATEX
Companion. provided in the table. For example,

\renewcommand\labelenumi{\S\theenumi.}
\begin{enumerate} §1. Hello!
\item Hello!
\item I’m a Mac! §2. I’m a Mac!
\end{enumerate}
One of the most popular list style is the circled numbering style (¬, ­, . . .) The
definition of the \theenumi command is tricky and you probably don’t want to get into
the detail. But the gist is the use of \protect to help such commands as \setcounter to
survive the label-generating process. You need to first load the calc and pifont packages,
then the following code will do the job:

\newcounter{local}
\renewcommand\theenumi
{\protect\setcounter{local}%
{171+\the\value{enumi}}
\protect\ding{\value{local}}} ¬ Hello!
\renewcommand\labelenumi{\theenumi}
­ I’m a MacBook Pro!
\begin{enumerate}
\item Hello!
\item I’m a MacBook Pro!
\end{enumerate}

6.3 Columns—story in the world of wide documents

Column is a powerful weapon prepared for wide documents, e.g., newspapers. The
Elements of Typographic Style states,

,
 6.3 Columns—story in the world of wide documents 37

Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line

for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line
(counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal. For multiple-column
work, a better average is 40 to 50 characters.
This should guide you to determine what measure to use and whether or not to divide
your documents into columns.
You could simply use the twocolumn option of the standard document class. But
a better solution is to use the multicol package, especially if you want more than two
columns.
\begin{multicols}{3}\raggedright
Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely Anything satisfactory serifed text
regarded as a satisfactory length of line from 45 to 75 length of line face in a text
for a single-column page set in a serifed characters is for a single- size.
text face in a text size. widely column page
\end{multicols} regarded as a set in a

The two major parameters that you might want to set are \columnseprule, which
controls the width of the rule (default to 0.0 pt), and \columnsep, controlling the
distance between columns (default to 10.0 pt). Here’s an example,

\setlength\columnseprule{0.5pt}
\setlength\columnsep{5pt}
\begin{multicols}{2} Anything from 45 to a single-column page
Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely 75 characters is widely set in a serifed text
regarded as a satisfactory length of line regarded as a satisfac- face in a text size.
for a single-column page set in a serifed tory length of line for
text face in a text size.
\end{multicols}

By default, the multicol package produces balanced columns. If you wish to place
more text in the left columns, you can increase the value of the counter unbalance,
which determines the number of additional lines in the columns in comparison to the
number that the balancing routine has calculated.

\begin{multicols}{2}
\setcounter{unbalance}{1} Anything from 45 column page set in a
Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely to 75 characters is serifed text face in a
regarded as a satisfactory length of line widely regarded as text size.
for a single-column page set in a serifed a satisfactory length
text face in a text size. of line for a single-
\end{multicols}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\setcounter{unbalance}{2} Anything from 45 serifed text face in a
Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely to 75 characters is text size.
regarded as a satisfactory length of line widely regarded as
for a single-column page set in a serifed a satisfactory length
text face in a text size. of line for a single-
\end{multicols} column page set in a

à
 38 Elements of Your Document

6.4 Notes, notes, and notes

6.4.1 When footnotes rule . . .

Before we get start with this topic, I’d like to have the honor to quote Jill Knuth,
Donald’s daughter, “Don’t use footnotes in your books, Don.” It’s true that sometimes
footnotes can be distractive, but this section assumes that they are a good thing.
To generate a footnote, simply use the command \footnote{...}. For example,
\footnote{Footnotes came ...} produces the footnote at the bottom of the page.1
There are many things you can do to change the default appearance of footnotes:

• The \thefootnote command controls the numbering style of footnotes. For exam-
ple, if you want to use symbols instead of numbers, simply type
\renewcommand\thefootnote{\fnsymbol{footnote}}.

• The \footnoterule changes the appearance of the rule. For example, if you want
to use dashed lines, use
\renewcommand\footnoterule
{\vspace*{-2pt}\dotfill\hfill\hfill\hfill\vspace{2pt}}.

• The distance between footnotes are affected with the length of \footnotesep.

• The distance between the main text and the start of the footnotes is defined by
\skip\footins.
On most occasions, it is
not a good idea to reset
footnote numbers on • The article class numbers all footnotes throughout the entire document, while the
every new page, especially book and report classes resets the footnotes every time a new chapter is started. If
you’re cross referencing you want footnote numbers to be reset on every new page, try
them. Even if you’re not, \usepackage[perpage]{footnote}.
the reader might be. It’s
always nice to bear the • If you want all footnotes to show up only in the right column in a two-column
reader in mine when document, you could use the ftnright package.
writing and designing. . . .
Two lower level command for controlling the footnote mark that I think worth
mentioning are \@makefnmark and \@makefntext. The default definitions are:

\renewcommand\@makefnmark
{\mbox{\textsuperscript{\normalfont\@thefnmark}}}
\renewcommand\@makefntext[1]
{\noindent\makebox[1.8em][r]{\@makefnmark}#1}

The book you’re reading uses a customized style, which is actually pretty popular
in the publishing industry. It is defined with the following modification to the original
definition:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@makefntext[1]{\noindent\@thefnmark\kern1em#1}
\makeatother

,
 6.5 Programming codes 39

6.4.2 Notes at the end of a chapter

Endnotes are getting more and more popular nowadays, because they don’t affect the
page layout as dramatically as footnotes. What you need is the endnotes package. Now
ple might even
substitute \endnote{...} for \footnote{...}, and \theendnotes will now print out
t they don’t
layout at all! the endnotes at the designated place. Note that you can use multiple \theendnotes in
a single document; e.g., you can use one at the end of every chapter.

\renewcommand\notesname{End NOTES}
In a world of endnotes,(I) we can’t resist the
\renewcommand\theendnote{\Roman{endnote}}
temptation.(II)
\renewcommand\makeenmark
{\textsuperscript{(\theenmark)\enspace}}
In a world of endnotes,% End NOTES
\endnote{Endnotes are popular.}
we can’t resist the temptation.% (I) Endnotes are popular.
\endnote{Unless you have to.} (II) Unless you have to.
\theendnotes

6.4.3 Notes dancing in the margin

This book makes extensive use of marginal notes to accommodate tons of interesting, ad-
ditional information that doesn’t quite fit into the main text. These marginal notes can be
generated with the \marginpar{...} command. For example, \marginpar{Colin rules!} Colin rules!
generates what you see in the right margin.
By default, text goes to the right margin for one-sided documents, to the outside
margin for the two-sided, and to the nearest margin for two-column formatting. The
placement can be reversed with \reversemarginpar.
Sometimes, you may want a marginal note to vary depending upon which margin
it’s in. For example, to make an arrow pointing to the text, you need a left-pointing
arrow in the right margin and a right-pointing one in the left margin. Here’s how:

\margipar[$\Rightarrow$]{$\Leftarrow$}

6.5 Programming codes

When you reach this section, you must have been using LATEX for at least 39 minutes
(assuming you spend one minute reading each page), you should very much appreciate
the capability and beauty of LATEX, and you might be considering writing something to
your friends about LATEX with LATEX. Here comes the problem, how can you tell them
the way to produce the LATEX logo? In LATEX, you use commands related to verbatim
to obtain such output:

\verb"Hello, \TeX!"
Hello, \TeX! and Hello, \TeX!
and \verb*"Hello, \TeX!"

As you might have guessed, the star (*) version makes the spaces (more) visible.
You could also use the verbatim environment to create typed texts that are more than
one line long.
1 Footnotes should came after, not before, any punctuation.

à
 40 END NOTES

An interesting package that you might want to try out is alltt, which implements
the alltt environment—it is like verbatim except that backslashes (\) and braces ({
and }) retain their usual meanings.

\begin{alltt}
\TeX\ \emph{is cool}. TEX is cool.

\begin{math}a+b\end{math} a+b
\end{alltt}

A more comprehensive solution for typesetting program codes is provided by the

listings package. Here’s a simple example to show you what it can do:

\lstset{numberstyle=\tiny,
numbers=left}
\begin{lstlisting}[language=Pascal] 1 f o r i :=1 to maxint do
for i:=1 to maxint do 2 begin
begin 3 WrItE( ’ This i s s t u p i d ’ ) ;
WrItE(’This is stupid’); 4 end .
end.
\end{lstlisting}

The detail of the package is beyond the scope of the book. But you can find
its documentation at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/
listings/listings-1.3.pdf. Have fun with it!

6.6 Making boxes

\mbox{text} \fbox{text}
\makebox[width][pos]{text} \framebox[width][pos]{text}
\raisebox{lift}[height][depth]{contents}

\setlength\fboxrule{2pt}
\setlength\fboxsep{2mm}
\framebox[5cm][r]{Some words}. Some words . Test Hello!
Test \raisebox{2pt}{Hello!}

\parbox[pos]{width}{text}

\begin{minipage}[pos]{width}
...
\end{minipage}

,
 6.7 Index 41

\begin{minipage}[b]{12mm}
A A A A A A A A A A A A A
\end{minipage}\quad A A A
\begin{minipage}[c]{12mm} B B B
A A A
B B B B B B B B B B B B B
A C C C
\end{minipage}\quad B B B
C C C
\begin{minipage}[t]{12mm} B
C C C
C C C C C C C C C C C
\end{minipage}

\rule[lift]{width}{height}

Hello. \rule[4pt]{2cm}{1mm} Hello.

6.7 Index
page vi:
\index{animal}
page 5:\index{animal}
page 6:\index{animal}
page 7:\index{animal}
page 11:
\index{animalism|see{animal}}
page 17:
\index{animal@\emph{animal}}
\index{mammal|textbf}
page 26: \index{animal!mammal!cat}
page 32: \index{animal!insect}

animal, vi, 5–7

insect, 32
mammal
cat, 26
animal, 17
animalism, see animal

mammal, 17

6.8 Bibliography

à
42 END NOTES

,
 7
LATEX with Designers

This chapter focuses on how to design with LATEX. It deals with page layout, and the design
of headers and headings. Although LATEX has its built-in mechanism for working on these
things, I will approach them with external packages for simplicity as well as power. The
design of this book is also briefed in this chapter as well. When reading this chapter, bear
in mind that the author of the book is not a professional full-time typographer and that
typography composes probably only about 1/5 of his current life.

7.1 Balancing the elements that live on a page

As is stated in the introduction to this chapter, we’ll not use LATEX’ own built-in
mechanism for designing a page but the geometry package instead, because it provides
a much better and easier-to-use interface.
Here is a quote from
Shaping a page is a definite art that I haven’t quote mastered. Robert Bringhurst’s Robert Bringhurst that I
The Elements of Typographic Style provides much insight into the topic, ranging from really want to share, “A
the history of different sizes of paper to the musical notation of them. My job is to book is a flexible mirror of
tell you how to create what you want to create. Your first task should be to decide the mind and the body. Its
the size of the paper. Of course, you could simply provide an optional argument to overall size and
the \documentclass command, but using the geometry package works better most of proportions, the color and
the time. The predefined paper size include a0paper to a6paper, b0paper to b6paper, texture of the paper, the
letterpaper, exectivepaper, and legalpaper. To specify the paper size that you sound it makes as the
wanna use, simply say: pages turn, and the smell
of the paper, adhesive and
ink, all blend with with
\usepackage[letterpaper]{geometry} the size and form and
placement of the type to
Sometimes, you may want to use a paper size that is not predefined. Here’s how: reveal a little about the
world in which it was
\usepackage[paperwidth=<dimen>, paperheight=<dimen>]{geometry} made.”

or

\usepackage[papersize={width,height}]{geometry}

Going on, I’d like to introduce an easy way to place the text block. For instance,
in most institutions, professors require that papers be written on the lettersize paper
(8.5 in × 11 in) and that all margins be 1 inch wide. With this information, we can
calculate that the measure (width of the text body) and the text height should be
8.5 − 2 = 6.5 in and 11 − 2 = 9 in, respectively. Simply enter the following:

\usepackage[letterpaper,body={6.5in,9in}]{geometry}

à
44 LATEX with Designers

paper
6top head headheight
? headsep
total body total body

paperheight
height body textheight

left 
- - right
(inner) (outer)
width textwidth
6bottom foot footskip
?
paperwidth
Figure 1: Dimension names used in the geometry package. width=textwidth and
Figure 7.1: height=textheight
Dimension names used byin
default.
the geometry top and bottom are margins. If margins on
package.
left, right,
verso pages are swapped by twoside option, margins specified by left and right options
are used for the inside and outside margins respectively. inner and outer are aliases of left
LATEX willandautomatically get everything else properly set up.
right respectively.
However, if you want more control over the layout, refer to figure 7.1. Most of the
parameters (a)
youdefault
might want to change is shown.(b) few missing and
A includehead ones are listed here:
includefoot
paper paper
footnotesep changes the dimension \skip\footins, separation between the bottom
of text body andhead oftop
the top 6 footnote text. 6top
?
marginparwidth6changes the width of the marginal ntoes.
head
? total body

marginparsep textheight
changes the distance between body and
6 margin notes.
textheight
You might have to play with these parameters many times and prepare a few
different sample pages
bodybefore you find the satisfactorybody
layout. But there’s a pretty
useful package, layouts, which can help you visualize your layout parameter settings.
For example, figure 7.2, which is a thumbnail of the layout of this book is generates
with the following code: ?
? foot
\newcommand\showpage{% 6
foot bottom 6bottom
\setlayoutscale{0.25} ? ?
\setlabelfont{\tiny}
%\printheadingsfalse
Figure 2: includehead and includefoot include the head and foot respectively into total body. (a)
%\printparametersfalse
height = textheight (default). (b) height = textheight + headheight + headsep +
\currentpage\pagedesign}
footskip if includehead and includefoot. If the top and bottom margins are fixed,
\showpage
includehead and includefoot make textheight shorter than default.

In Equation (3), width:=textwidth

7.2 Dressing the headings by default, but marginparsep and marginparwidth are included
in width if includemp option is set true. In Equation (4), height:=textheight by default. If
includehead is setskip
We will again to true, headheight
LATEX’s and headsep
built-in mechanism arestraight
and go considered as study
to the a part of
ofthe
height in the the
titlesec
vertical completion
package. There calculation. In the same
are two control way, includefoot
sequences includes
to be introduced. The footskip. Note that
first one affects the options
ignore* just layout
general excludeofthea corresponding
heading: spaces from textheight, but do not change those lengths them-
selves. Figure 2 shows how these options work. Each of the seven dimensions in the right-hand side of
Equations (3) and (4) corresponds to the ordinary LATEX control sequence with the same name.
\titleformat{cmd}[shape]{format}
Figure 3 illustrates various layouts with different layout modes. The dimensions for a header and a
{label}{sep}{before-code}[after-code]
footer can be controlled by nohead or nofoot mode, which sets each length to 0pt directly. On the other
hand,,options ignore* do not change the corresponding native dimensions.

3.2 Auto-Completion Scheme

Suppose that the paper size is pre-defined in Equation (1) or (2), if two dimensions out of the three dimen-
sions in the right-hand side of each equation are specified, the rest of the dimensions can be determined by
the specified ones. However, when none or only one of the three dimensions is specified, the rest of the
 7.2 Dressing the headings 45

The circle is at 1 inch from the top and left of the page. Dashed lines represent (\hoffset + 1
inch) and (\voffset + 1 inch) from the top and left of the page.

b Header

Body

Margin

Note

Footer

Lengths are to the nearest pt.

page height = 795pt page width = 614pt
\hoffset = 0pt \voffset = 0pt
\evensidemargin = 87pt \topmargin = -20pt
\headheight = 12pt \headsep = 15pt
\textheight = 614pt \textwidth = 376pt
\footskip = 29pt \marginparsep = 18pt
\marginparpush = 5pt \columnsep = 10pt
\columnseprule = 0.0pt

Figure 7.2: The layout of the book you’re currently reading.

Yeah, there are many arguments, and it will take a while before you get full grasp of its
capability. (Believe me, it’s very powerful!) Anyway, all the arguments are explained in
table 7.1.
For example,

\titleformat{\section}[runin]{\normalfont\scshape}
{\S\,\oldstylenums{\thesection}.}{0.5em}{}.\quad]

generates a title like this:

§. The Title. The heading is separated from the section text by a dot and a space
of one quad.
(This format is used a lot in legal documents.)
The second command deals with spacing issues related to headings:

\titlespacing*{cmd}{left-sep}{before-sep}{after-sep}[right-sep]

You don’t have to use the starred version. The star would suppress the paragraph
indentation for the paragraph following the heading. This command is much easier than
\titleformat, and a paragraph of explanation will be more than enough:

à
46 LATEX with Designers

Table 7.1: The arguments of the titleformat command

Argument Explanation
cmd cmd is the command name of the heading. If you are modifying the
section heading, then you should enter \titleformat{\section}...
shape The shape argument, which is optional, defines the general layout of the
heading. There are nine predefined shapes:
hang, the default, produces a hanging label (like \section in standard
classes);
display puts label and heading text on separate lines (think about the
standard \chapter);
runin generates a run-in heading; i.e., there won’t be a line break after
the heading (like \paragraph);
frame is like display but the heading will be framed;
leftmargin simply puts the heading into the left margin;
rightmargin places the heading in the right margin (duh);
block is the general-purpose shape, which simply typesets the heading
as a single text block;
drop wraps the first paragraph around the heading, using a fixed width
for the heading;
wrap is like drop, but uses the width of the widest heading line.
format This argument applies formatting command to the whole title, both
the label and the heading text; e.g., if you say {\normalfont\scshape},
then the heading will be typeset in the small cap typeface in the main
text size.
label This command only specifies the format of the label. For example,
{SECTION \thesection.} will produce something like “SECTION n,”
where n is the current section number.
sep This parameter determines the distance between the label and title text.
before-code The code entered here will be executed immediately preceding the heading
text. Its last command can take one argument, which will pick up the
heading text. For example, you can say \large\bfseries\filcenter to
make the heading printed out in a bold typeface and centered. Of course,
there are \filleft and \filright to do similar tasks.
after-code Similar to before-code, this is executed after formatting the heading text.

The left-sep argument specifies the increase of the left margin for headings with
the block, display, hang, or frame shape. With leftmargin, rightmargin, or drop
it specifies the width of the heading title, with wrap it specifies the maximum width for
the title, and with runin it specifies the indentation before the title. before-sep specifies
the vertical space added above the heading. after-sep is the distance between the title
and the following paragraph. It could be vertical or horizontal depending on the shape.
And finally, right-sep is the optional length specifying an increase of the right margin.

7.3 The flight of the navigator—headers

If headings have given you much headache, I suggest that you take a nap before reading
on. Headers could be comparatively easier to deal with by using fancyhdr.
To illustrate its usage, I’ll use two examples. Here comes example number 1, which
demonstrates what you could do with a single-sided document. To create what is shown

,
 7.3 The flight of the navigator—headers 47

LEFT 1 RIGHT
...................................................

Foot Foot on the right

on the left

Figure 7.3: Headers in a single-sided document.

in figure 7.3, the following code is used:

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\lhead{LEFT} \chead{\thepage} \rhead{RIGHT}
\lfoot{Foot\\ on the left}
\cfoot{}
\rfoot{Foot on the right}
\renewcommand\headrule{\dotfill}
\renewcommand\footrulewidth{0.5pt}

This is be pretty straightforward. You have to tell LATEX the kind of page style
you want to use is fancy provided by the fancyhdr package. You define the headers and
footers with \nhead and \nfoot, where n could be l (left), c (centered), and r (right).
You could customize the lines by modifying \headrule, \footrulewidth, etc.
Let’s now go straight to the second example, shown in figure 7.4.
The code used to generate the example is here:

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead[RO,LE]{TITLE}
\fancyhead[LO]{\it\rightmark}
\fancyhead[RE]{\leftmark}
\fancyhead[C]{\thepage}
\fancyfoot[C]{}
\renewcommand\headrule{\hrule height2pt width\headwidth
\vspace{1pt}
\hrule height1pt width\headwidth \vspace{-4pt}}

Again, you have to specify that you’ll be using the fancy page style. All the
headers are defined with \fancyhead and \fancyfoot. (Actually you could first execute
\fancyhf{} to reset everything). You use a combination of L (left), R (right), C (centered),
O (odd-numbered pages), and E (even-numbered pages) to specify which parameter you
want to modify. The two commands \leftmark and \rightmark will be explained in
detail in section 7.4.
For example, to produce a running heading that spans marginal notes, load the
calc package, then write

\fancyheadoffset[RO,LE]{\marginparsep+\marginparwidth}

à
48 LATEX with Designers

1 TITLE 1.1. SECTION 2 TITLE

text. This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece

of sample text. This is a piece of sample text. This
1 Chapter is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of sample
text. This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece
1.1 Section of sample text. This is a piece of sample text. This
is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of sample
This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of
text. This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece
sample text. This is a piece of sample text. This
of sample text. This is a piece of sample text. This
is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of sample
is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of sample
text. This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece
text. This is a piece of sample text. This is a piece
of sample text. This is a piece of sample text. This
of sample text. This is a piece of sample text.
is a piece of sample text. This is a piece of sample

Figure 7.4: Headers in a double-sided document.

7.4 A not so short short introduction to markers

Introducing two commands to generate marks:

\markboth{main_mark}{sub_mark}
\markright{sub_mark}

The first command generates a pair of markers, while changes only the sub-mark one,
inheriting the main-mark text from a previous \markboth. For instance, you can set
chapter headings as the main-marks and section headings as sub-marks.
When LATEX starts outputting pages, two other markers get involved in the picture;
namely, \leftmark contains the main-mark, and the \rightmark command contains
the current sub-mark.
These markers can be automatically generated from the corresponding heading
commands. This scheme works as follows: all standard heading commands internally
invoke a command \namemark, where name is the name of the heading command (e.g.,
\chaptermark, \sectionmark). For instance, in the book class these commands are
defined (approximately) as follows:

\renewcommand\chaptermark[1]
{\markboth{\chaptername\ \thechapter.#1}{}}
\renewcommand\sectionmark[1]{\markright{\thesection. #1}}

You’ll see some examples or markers at work in section 7.5

7.5 The design of this book

Knowledge is best learned in practical life. In this section, I’ll discuss how the book
you’re reading is designed, with the commands introduced in this and the preceding
chapters.
First of all, I decided that this book would be distributed over the Internet;
therefore, the only choices I have are the letter-size paper and the A4 paper. Since I’m
able to print files free of charge in the computer labs at Duke, where my education and
letter size paper are available, 8.5 × 11 inch because my apparent choice. Now let’s get
down to the design process.

,
 7.5 The design of this book 49

7.5.1 Shaping the page

Letter size paper is intrinsically wide, and I personally love making notes in the margin
and the bottom of the page, so I decided to give generous space to these areas. I chose
top space = inner margin space = 1.1 inches; I decided that the outer margin will be
twice as big as the inner margin space, which is 2.2 inches; and I made the bottom
space to be 1.4 inches. Now the text block has the dimension 5.2 inches × 8.5 inches.
I then decided that the running headers will be 15 points away from the text at the
The dimension of the text
top. Although the generous margin at the bottom is deliberate, I found it too blank
block is chosen with the
to be pleasing to the eye. So I decided to put some decoration symbols at the foot, golden mean in mind;
which are 0.4 inches away from the text. (I could have put the page numbers here, but 8.5/5.2 ≈ 1.63, which is
I decided to put them at the topic, sticking out in the margin to illustrate some other fairly close to the golden
commands.) I made the marginal notes to be 1.4 inches wide and 0.25 inches away from mean, 1.618.
the right margin of the text. Now everything is well planned. To get these specifications
into LATEX, I put

\usepackage[letterpaper,inner=1.1in,outer=2.2in,bottom=1.4in,
top=1.1in,headsep=15pt,headheight=12pt,marginparwidth=1.4in,
marginparsep=0.25in,footskip=0.4in]{geometry}

into the style file.

7.5.2 Designing headings

I decided that there will be three levels of headings, A-heads being chapters, B-heads
being sections, and C-heads being subsections.
I chose the bold sans serif typeface for chapter headings, used the Oxford style,
and decided that all the nouns, verbs and other substantive be capitalized. Since I’m
using very lively expressions (even sentences) in my section headings, I decided that
only the first letters be capitalized. But I also chose small caps as the typeface for better
visual effects. The same logic went with subsection headings. Here’s how I implemented
everything with the titlesec package:

\usepackage{titlesec}
\usepackage{color}
\definecolor{darkblue}{rgb}{0,0.08,0.45}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
{\normalfont\huge\sffamily\bfseries\filcenter}
{\vspace*{-2cm}
\leavevmode\leaders\vrule height7pt width3pt depth0pt%
\hfill\kern8pt\thechapter\kern8pt%
\leaders\vrule height7pt width3pt depth0pt\hfill}{3pt}
{\vspace*{-5pt}\hrule\vspace{6pt}}
[\vspace{1pt}\hrule\vspace{1cm}]

\newcommand\Bheadfont{\fontsize{11pt}{\baselineskip}\selectfont}
\titleformat{\section}[hang]
{\normalfont\sc\color{blue}\Bheadfont}
{\thesection\hskip0.618em}{0em}{}
\titlespacing*{\section}
{0pt}{15pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}{9pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}

\titleformat{\subsection}[hang]

à
50 LATEX with Designers

{\normalfont\sc\color{darkblue}}
{\thesubsection\hskip0.618em}{0em}{}
\titlespacing*{\subsection}
{0pt}{8pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}{8pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}

\titleformat{\subsubsection}[hang]{\normalfont\it}{}{0.618em}{}
\titlespacing*{\subsubsection}
{0pt}{8pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}{4pt plus 2pt minus 2pt}
7.5.3 Designing running headers
I decided to make the page numbers stick out into the margin so that the wide margin
looks less dramatic. I decided to use the chapter title (with no chapter numbers) on even-
numbered pages and section headings (with section numbers) on odd-numbered pages. I
also decided to put two small symbols at the bottom of the page to balance the generous
margin. You’ll see how I used the commands \chaptermark and \sectionmark.

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{}}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markright{\thesection\ #1}}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[RO]
{\itshape\rightmark\mbox{\rlap{\hskip0.6cm\normalfont\bfseries\thepage}}}
\fancyhead[LE]
{\mbox{\llap{\bfseries\thepage\hskip0.6cm}}\normalfont\itshape\leftmark}
\fancyfoot[LE]{\ding{44}}
\fancyfoot[RO]{\ding{224}}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhead{}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
}

,
 8
When TEX Dates Math

When TEX dates math, math feels happy. The story of mathematics in LATEX is long and You might be surprised to
know that this chapter is
interesting (at least for me), and no doubt that the length of the chapter is pretty amazing.
It has much information about how to typeset your math properly. actually an abstraction
from my The LATEX
Mathematics Companion.
8.1 Extremely simple formulas If you are interested in
more typographic detail,
The simplest formulas are put between special math brackets, the dollar sign $ (“Because you could read the full
mathematics is supposedly expensive,” said Knuth). Here are some examples: version at http://bbs
.ctex.org/forums/
index.php?showtopic=
$-a+2b=3c-4d(5e+6f)$\\ −a + 2b = 3c − 4d(5e + 6f29603.
)
$(x+y)/(x-y)$\\ (x + y)/(x − y)
$\{a,b,c,d,e\}$ {a, b, c, d, e}

Note how TEX automatically sets all variables in an italic typeface while all
numerals are upright, which is a math tradition.
Also, if you look closely, you’ll realize that there is some extra space surrounding the
+ and − sign, but none around the / sign. That’s because TEX regards such expressions
as “1 / 2” to be incorrect. Spacing in equations can be rather challenging, but TEX has
a pretty good mechanism to cope with it automatically. So most of the time, you don’t
need to bother about that. As a matter of fact, TEX even prevents you from doing
stupid things by ignoring any spaces that you put between $’s. For example,

$(x + y)/(x - z)$ (x + y)/(x − z)

However, if you really need a blank space in your formula, you can type ‘\ ’. For
example, the output of ‘$2\ a$’ is ‘2 a’, which doesn’t make much sense (a little sense
though).
OK, now that you know how to get ‘a + b = c’, what about ‘α + β 6= γ’ ? Well,
you’ll find that most symbols can be obtained simply by putting their names after ‘\’.
For example, ‘α’ can be obtained by typing ‘\alpha’, ‘β’ by ‘\beta’, etc. Others might
need to be memorized, but normally they are not that hard to remember. For example,
‘6=’ is obtained by typing ‘\neq’, which is short for “not equal to.” The symbol ‘∈’
which means “is included in” can be obtained from ‘\in’.
An amazing document, “The Comprehensive LATEX Symbol List,” can be download
at http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/symbols/comprehensive/symbols-letter.
pdf. You can find virtually all the symbols you need to write anything—both good and
horrifying mathematics.

à
 52 When TEX Dates Math

So far, we’ve been talking about inline equations (also called in-text equations).
What if you want to center an equation on an individual line (the so-called displayed
equation)? There are a few LATEX environments that can assist you:

\begin{equation}
\delta\times\varepsilon=\theta
\end{equation} δ×ε=θ (8.1)
\begin{equation*}
\varphi-\rho\neq\kappa ϕ − ρ 6= κ
\end{equation*}

The equation environment not only centers the equation and puts it on an
individual line, it also numbers the equation automatically. The equation* environment
is a variant of equation. It does pretty much the same thing except that it doesn’t
number the equation.
In addition to equation*, you may also try out the displaymath environment.
You can even type a simple \[...\]. Some people might tell you to use $$...$$. Well,
don’t (unless you’re using plain TEX, not LATEX)! It probably gives the same result as
you want now, but later it might cause you much headache as it is not compatible with
some LATEX commands.

8.2 Super
b scripts

Super
b scripts prevail in mathematics. In computers and calculators, we frequently use ‘^’
to indicate a superscript, and ‘_’ to indicate a subscript. The same method is adopted
in LATEX:

$z^2$, $b_n$,\\ z 2 , bn ,
$x^2y^2$, $x ^2y ^2$\\ x2 y 2 , x2 y 2
$x_12$, $x^12$ x1 2, x1 2

Notice that ‘^’ and ‘_’ apply only to the next single character. If you want more
than one characters to get super
b scripted, you need to group them with braces:

$x^{2y}$, $y_{3z}$\\ x2y , y3z

2
$x^{x^2}$, $y_{y_2}$, $y_{x^2}$ xx , yy2 , yx2

Notice that it is illegal to type ‘x^y^z’ and ‘x_y_z’. Even human beings cannot
tell the exact meaning of these notations—obviously, ${x^y}^z$ (xy z ) and $x^{y^z}$
z
(xy ) are different. You have to tell TEX which one you want. As a matter of fact, the
former is quite inappropriate, if not totally wrong. You should use (xy )z , which reduces
ambiguity.
Sometimes, you might need to type something like ‘2 F3 ’, in which the subscript ‘2’
follows nothing. You can just type ‘$_2F_3$’. However, the best way would be to insert
an empty group: ‘${}_2F_3$’. (Do you know why?)
But how do we get superscripts and subscripts simultaneously, like super b scripts?
Well, you may enter the subscript and superscript in any order you want:

,
 8.2 Super
b scripts 53

$x^{31415}_{92}+\pi$,
x31415
92 + π, x31415
92 +π
$x_{92}^{31415}+\pi$\\
F22 , F 22
$F_2^2$, $F{}_2^2$

One more problem about this topic: primes. To get a prime, simply enter ‘’’:

$y_1’+y’’_2$ y10 + y200

8.2.1 The tensor Package

We’ve already known that Ri jkl can be obtained from $R_i{}^j{}_{\!kl}$. This is
rather hard to enter! The tensor package provides an easier solution. Here’s how:

$R\indices{_i^j_{\!kl}}$ Rijkl

You can even do some very complex things with this package:

a c a c
$\tensor[^a_b^c_d]{M}{^a_b^c_d}$ b dM b d

The two commands mentioned above also have “starred” forms, which can collapse
the spacing. This can be quite useful! For example,

14
$\tensor*[^{14}_6]{\text{C}}{}$ 6C

8.2.2 The vector Package

Since we are talking about tensor, we might as well cover vectors here. The vector
package provides some commands to ease the typesetting of vectors. Keep in mind that
the designer of the package might not necessarily abide by the rules I proposed. Anyway,
let me demonstrate some useful commands:

p = (q1 , . . . , qn )
\begin{gather*}  
q1
\uvec{p}=\left(\irvec{q}\right)\\
q̂ =  ... 
 
\uuvec{q}=\left(\!\!\icvec{q}\!\!\right)\\
\buvec{r}=\{\rvec{r}{1}{6}\}\\ qn
\bvec{s}=\left[ r̂ = {r1 , r2 , r3 , r4 , r5 , r6 }
\!\!\cvec{s}{0}{2}\!\!\right]  
s0
\end{gather*}
s =  s1 
s2

à
 54 When TEX Dates Math
√
8.3 Roots
Roots are produced by ‘\sqrt[...]{...}’:

√ √ √
$\sqrt2$, $\sqrt2y$, $\sqrt{2y}$\\ √ 2, 2y, 2y
3 √
$\sqrt[3]{2}$, $\sqrt[n+1]{x+y}$ 2, n+1 x + y

√
β
Some people might find the standard k unacceptable. You can tune the position
of the index with the amsmath package.

$\sqrt[\leftroot{2}\uproot{4}\beta]{k}$, √
β √
β

$\sqrt[\leftroot{1}\uproot{3}\beta]{k}$ k, k

√ √ √
Some obsessive ones might even find x + y + z unacceptable. (I’m not among
them.) Two commands should be of help: (1) The command \mathstrut produces an
invisible box whose width is zero and whose height and depth are the height and depth
of a parenthesis ‘(’. (2) The command \smash{...} typesets its contents but ignores
both their height and depth. The amsmath package provides an optional argument, used
as follows: \smash[t]{...} ignores the height of the box’s contents, but retains the
depth, while \smash[b]{...} ignores the depth and keeps the height. Compare:

√ √ √
$\sqrt{x}+\sqrt{y}+\sqrt{z}$\\ x+ y+ z
√ p √
$\sqrt{x}+\sqrt{\mathstrut y}+\sqrt{z}$\\
√x + √ y + √ z
$\sqrt{x}+\sqrt{\smash[b]{y}}+\sqrt{z}$ x+ y+ z

Fractions


8.4 Binomials

Let’s now turn to something more challenging—fractions. A fraction is obtained by

typing

\frac{numerator}{denominator}

What is challenging about this? Well, if you try typing a fraction in inline mode and in
display mode, you’ll find that the results are different:

$\frac{1}{2}$, 1
\begin{equation*} 2,
1
\frac{1}{2}
\end{equation*} 2

a+b
LATEX does this for a good reason: an inline ruins the line spacing, as you
c+d
can see here; a displayed
a+b
c+d
is equally unacceptable. However, you can change LATEX’s behavior by using a few
commands provided by the amsmath package: (1) \dfrac always typesets a fraction as
if it is being typeset in the display mode; (2) \tfrac always typesets a fraction as if it
is being typeset in the inline mode. For example:

,
 Fractions


8.4 Binomials 55

This is an inline formula: $\dfrac{1}{2}$.

But avoid it! Replace it with 1
This is an inline formula: . But avoid it! Re-
$\frac{1}{2}$ or $1/2$. 2
1
place it with 2 or 1/2.
Instead of \begin{equation*} Instead of
\dfrac{1}{2}(a+b), 1
(a + b),
\end{equation*} 2
you can try \begin{equation*} you can try
1
\tfrac{1}{2}(a+b). 2 (a + b).
\end{equation*}

Although amsmath makes it fairly easy to achieve whatever you want in your
manuscript, you should try not to abuse it. A general principle is that a math formula
should not affect the line spacing if at all possible. So most inline fractions should
actually be set in the slashed form (e.g., a/b) except for numerical fractions (e.g.,
1
4 ); therefore, the command \dfrac should never be used in an inline equation. Also,
fractions in subformulas (like sub- and superscripts) should also be set in the slashed
form.
The amsmath package also provides a command for typesetting continued fractions,
\cfrac. It can also be following by an optional [r] or [l] to specify the position of the
numerator:

\begin{equation*}
a_0+\cfrac{b_1}{ b1
a0 +
a_1+\cfrac[l]{b_2}{ b2
a_2+\cfrac[r]{b_3}{ a1 +
b3
a_3+\cdots}}} a2 +
a3 + · · ·
\end{equation*}

You may also use the alternative form:

\[a_0+\frac{b_1}{a_1+}
b 1 b 2 b3
\frac{b_2}{a_2+} a0 + ···
\frac{b_3}{a_3+}\cdots\] a1 + a2 + a3 +

Binomial coefficients, like fractions, ought to be treated very carefully. The most
basic command for producing a binomial coefficient is ‘\binom{...}{...}’:

In inline mode: k2 .


In inline mode: $\binom{k}{2}$.\\
In display mode: In display mode:
\begin{equation*} \binom{k}{2}  
k
\end{equation*}
2

I recommend that you use this command all the time. But if you do want to do
some crazy things, you can also use the commands \dbinom and \tbinom provided by
the amsmath package (Think a million times before you do so!!!):

à
 56 When TEX Dates Math

 
In inline mode: $\dbinom{k}{2}$, k
which is horrible.\\ In inline mode: , which is horrible.
2
In display mode: In display mode:
\begin{equation*} \tbinom{k}{2}.
k


\end{equation*} 2 .

It might be helpful to introduce the concept of “styles.” In math mode, there are
four styles:

display For normal symbols in a displayed formula.

text For normal symbols in an in-text formula.

script For subscripts and superscripts.

scriptscript For further levels of sub- and superscripting, such as subscripts of super-
scripts.

Take a look at the following examples:

Compare the small superscript in $a^{x}$

with the large one in $a^{\textstyle x}$. Compare the small superscript in ax with the
large one in ax .
Instead of using \verb"\dfrac", you can Instead of using \dfrac, you can do it this
do it this way: $\displaystyle\frac{1}{2}$. 1
way: .
2
And instead of using \verb"\tfrac", you And instead of using \tfrac, you can try this:
can try this:\begin{equation*}
1
2.
\textstyle\frac{1}{2}.
\end{equation*}

TEXnicality
In case you want to use displayed fractions in inline mode (sigh), I’d also like to
introduce two more commands that would be helpful.
First take a look at the following output:
1
This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test.
2
This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test.
The numerator and denominator almost touch the text above and below. But
after adding the following two lines:
\lineskiplimit=3pt
\lineskip=4pt

things are much better:

1
This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test.
2
This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test. This is a test.

,
 8.5 Sum and integration 57

8.5 Sum and integration

Sum and integration are different in inline and display modes:

Inline: $\sum_{n=1}^k$, $\prod_{n=1}^k$, Pk Qk Rb

Inline: n=1 , n=1 , a
$\int_a^b$\\ Display:
Display: \begin{equation*}
\sum_{n=1}^k,\qquad \prod_{n=1}^k, k
X k
Y Z b
\qquad\int_a^b. , , .
\end{equation*} n=1 n=1 a

This is actually pretty nice output. However, you might sometimes want to change
the position of the “limits.” Here’s how:

\begin{equation*} ZZ ZZ
\iint_A,\qquad \iint\limits_A ,
A
\end{equation*} A

There are a few more commands for producing different integral signs:

\begin{equation*} ZZZ Z Z I
\iiint\limits_V, , ··· ,
\idotsint\limits_V, \oint_V V
V V
\end{equation*}
Rb
There is a special symbol representing the Cauchy principal value of a f (x) dx.
It is not built into LATEX, and is so far not provided by any packages available on the
Internet. But here’s how you can construct it:

\def\Xint#1{\mathchoice
{\XXint\displaystyle\textstyle{#1}}%
{\XXint\textstyle\scriptstyle{#1}}%
{\XXint\scriptstyle
\scriptscriptstyle{#1}}%
{\XXint\scriptscriptstyle Z b
\scriptscriptstyle{#1}}% − f (x) dx
\!\int} a
\def\XXint#1#2#3{{
\setbox0=\hbox{$#1{#2#3}{\int}$}
\vcenter{\hbox{$#2#3$}}\kern-.5\wd0}}
\def\dashint{\Xint-}
\[\dashint_a^bf(x)\,\rd x\]

Sometimes, you might have to produce limits of more than one line. The amsmath
package provides the command ‘\substack’ which is helpful:

X
\[\sum_{\substack{0\leq i\leq m\\ P (i, j)
0<j<n}} P(i,j)\] 0≤i≤m
0<j<n

à
 58 When TEX Dates Math

You could stop reading here. But if you want to do more crazy things, continue.
You can try the “style commands” introduced in section 8.4 to change the behavior
of TEX:

Inline: $\displaystyle\sum_{n=1}^k$,
k Z b
$\displaystyle\int_a^b$. X
Inline: , . Don’t do these!
Don’t do these!\\ a
n=1
Display: \begin{equation*} Display:
\textstyle\sum_{n=1}^k,\int_a^b. Pk Rb
n=1 , a .
\end{equation*}

The opposite of \limits is \nolimits (you need a really good reason to use it):

k
P Rb
Inline: $\sum\limits_{n=1}^k$, Inline: ,
$\int\limits_a^b$\\ n=1 a
Display:
Display: \begin{equation*}
Zb
\sum\nolimits_{n=1}^k,\int\limits_a^b Xk
\end{equation*} ,
n=1
a

8.6 Functions
Functions like sin and cos needs special treatment. For one thing, they should be typeset
in an upright typeface. In addition, they should be followed by a thin space provided
that what follows is not a parenthesis. Again, LATEX can handle the rules above most of
the time. For example,

$5\sin(a+b)$, $8\cos 2A$ 5 sin(a + b), 8 cos 2A

All the predefined functions are given in table 8.1.

Let’s do some more experiments:

Inline: $\lim_{n\to0}((\sin^2x)/x^2)=1$\\ Inline: limn→0 ((sin2 x)/x2 ) = 1

Display: \begin{equation*} Display:
\lim_{n\to0}\frac{\sin^2x}{x^2}=1 sin2 x
\end{equation*} lim =1
n→0 x2

The behavior of the “limits”

R can
P be changed (I’m not saying that you should), in
the same way we deal with and :

Inline: $\lim\limits_{n\to0}
Inline: lim ((sin2 2x)/x2 ) = 1
((\sin^22x)/x^2)=1$\\ n→0
Display: \begin{equation*} Display:
\lim\nolimits_{n\to0}\frac{\sin^2x}{x^2}=1 sin2 x
limn→0 =1
\end{equation*} x2

There are two more functions that are useful:

,
 8.7 Delimiters—never big enough 59

Table 8.1: Predefined operators and functions

Function Command Function Command Function Command
arccos \arccos arcsin \arcsin arctan \arctan
arg \arg cos \cos cosh \cosh
cot \cot coth \coth csc \csc
deg \deg det \det dim \dim
exp \exp gcd \gcd hom \hom
inf \inf inj lim \injlim ker \ker
lg \lg lim \lim lim inf \liminf
lim sup \limsup ln \ln log \log
max \max min \min Pr \Pr
proj lim \projlim sec \sec sin \sin
sinh \sinh sup \sup tan \tan
tanh \tanh lim \varinjlim lim \varliminf
−→
lim \varlimsup lim \varprojlim
←−

$1234567\bmod89=48$,\\ 1234567 mod 89 = 48,

$y\pmod{a+b}$ y (mod a + b)

Occasionally, you’ll come across functions that are not predefined, e.g., if you type
\arccot, you’ll get an error message.
The command \DeclareMathOperator{cmd}{text} provided by the amsmath
package defines cmd to produce text in the appropriate font for “textual operators.” If
the new function being named is an operator that should, when used in displays, “take
limits” (so that any subscripts and superscripts are placed above and below), then use
the starred form \DeclareMathOperator*. For example, after defining:
\DeclareMathOperator{\arccot}{arccot}
\DeclareMathOperator\meas{meas}
\DeclareMathOperator*\esssup{ess\,sup}
you can type these commands to get amazing results:

\[\arccot x, \quad \meas_1, arccot x, meas1 , ess sup

\quad \esssup_{x\in A}\] x∈A

8.7 Delimiters—never big enough

Sometimes, parentheses are not big enough to “enclose” things, in which cases you
should use the commands ‘\left(’ and ‘\right)’ to precede the delimiters. For example:

\[
a ci
\left(\frac{a}{b}\right)
+
+\left(\frac{c}{d}\right] b d
\]

à
 60 When TEX Dates Math

Table 8.2: Delimiters

Input Delimiter Input Delimiter
( ( ) )
[ or \lbrack [ ] ]
\{ or \lbrace { \} or \rbrace }
\lfloor b \rfloor c
\lceil d \rceil e
\langle h \rangle i
/ / \backslash \
| or \vert | \| or \Vert k
\uparrow ↑ \Uparrow ⇑
\downarrow ↓ \Downarrow ⇓
\updownarrow l \Updownarrow m

Table 8.2 gives all the delimiters that are recognized by TEX.
If you type ‘.’ after \left or \right, instead of specifying one of the basic
delimiters, you get the so-called null delimiter (which is blank):

\begin{equation*} a
\left(\frac{a}{b}\right.
\end{equation*} b

This is actually very helpful, as we will see later.

Another use of the commands \left and \right:

$\left|-x\right|=\left|+x\right|$. |−x| = |+x|.

If you leave out the \left and \right, what you get is | − x| = | + x|. The reason
is that TEX does not really understand mathematics. It thinks that you are subtracting
‘x’ from ‘|’ and adding ‘x’ to ‘|’, resulting in the extra spaces.
However, the mechanism of \left and \right does not always work as well as
you hope:

\begin{equation*}
\left(a+(a+b)\right) (a + (a + b))
\end{equation*}

Well, try this:

\begin{equation*}


\bigl(a+(a+b)\bigr) a + (a + b)
\end{equation*}

The \big delimiters are just enough bigger than ordinary ones so that the difference
can be perceived, yet small enough to be used in the text of a paragraph. Here are all
of them, in the ordinary size and in the \big size:

()[]{}bcdehi/\|k ↑⇑↓⇓lm

   x~wx~
wyy

,
 8.7 Delimiters—never big enough 61

You can also type \Bigl or \Bigr to get larger symbols suitable for displays:
hinojklmDE./ x~wx~
www
wyy

There are \biggl and \biggr versions that are 50% taller than their \big coun-
terparts:
 x~wx~
www
www
wyy

Finally, there are \Biggl and \Biggr versions, 2.5 times as tall as the \bigl and
\bigr delimiters:
!"#()$%&'*+,- x~wx~
www
www
www
wyy

Any ‘\...l’ delimiter is an opening, and any ‘\...r’ is a closing. There are also
‘\...m’ for use in the middle of formulas.

\begin{equation*}
\left\{\,x\in\mathbb{R}\biggm|   
5 a+1 c+1
0<\left|x\right|<\frac{5}{3}\,\right\}, x ∈ R 0 < |x| < ,
\quad\frac{a+1}{b}\bigg/\frac{c+1}{d} 3 b d
\end{equation*}

The ‘\,’ in the first example is for fine tuning. They add the so-called thin spaces.
Also note that in the second example, we use \bigg, not \biggm. That’s because
there’s no need to put extra space around ‘/’. Compare:

\begin{equation} 
\frac{a+1}{b}\biggm/\frac{c+1}{d} a+1 c+1
(8.2)
\end{equation} b d

BTW, there’s a pretty nice package called braket which can greatly reduce your
effort in typesetting sets:

\begin{equation*}  
\Set{x\in\mathbb{R}| 5
x ∈ R 0 < |x| <
0<\left|x\right|<\frac{5}{3}}\\ 3
\end{equation*}

Sometimes, \left and \right choose a larger delimiter than you want. You can
tune them:
\begin{equation*} !
n n
X 
\left(\sum_{k=1}^n A_k \right)\quad X
Ak Ak
\biggl(\sum_{k=1}^n A_{k}\biggr)
k=1 k=1
\end{equation*}

However, most of the time, \left and \right are the clear choice. The values of
them are: (1) They are “automatic”—that’s why they produce problems sometimes;
and (2) They can produce arbitrarily large delimiters—much bigger than \biggggg!

à
 62 When TEX Dates Math

8.7.1 Larggggge Delimiters—The yhmath Package

An old saying goes, “Even TEX becomes dumb sometimes.” (Well, maybe not that old.)
And rightly so! Here is the default output of a series of root signs:
vv
uuv
uuuvv
uuuuuv
uuuuuuv
uuuuuuuv vs
uuuuuuuu u r
uuuuuuuu
√
uuuuuuuu u q
uuuuttttt x
uttt
t

What’s the word that comes up to your mind when you see the output? “Ugly,” I
suppose. This is what happens here: Only a few root signs were defined in TEX. When
they are used out, TEX will “construct” new root signs—that’s how the vertical ones
come into being. However, if you load the yhmath package, the output would be very

v
different and better:
u
uÑÐÏ
u
u ÎÍÌ
u
u sÊÉq
u
u È√
t x

An important feature of the yhmath package is that it provides a set of large

v
delimiters. That is to say, virtually all large delimiters will be different from the original
uÑÐÏ
u
output of TEX. (I hardly ever use this package because although it does provide really
u ÎÍÌ
neat root signs, the parentheses are way beyond my sense of aesthetic.)
u
u sÊÉq
u
Anyway, here are a few other features of the package. It also offers some wide accents.
u È√
\widetilde{ABCDEFG} would become ABCDEF
u
You might remember that there is a limit to TEX’s commands such as \widetilde, e.g.,
t
^ G, which is awful. But after loading x
the yhmath package, the output becomes:

å
ABCDEF G

Yet, I still insist that (ABCDEF G)∼ is a better solution. Hopefully you would agree
with me.
The yhmath package also provides the amatrix environment which is used the
same as amsmath’s pmatrix, but instead of parenthesis, angles are used. For example,
you can easily construct the following:
 
a1 a2
a3 a4
I listed here some important features of yhmath which I think are most likely to be
used. But it has other functions. Please refer to http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/
entries/yhmath.html.

8.8 Changing typefaces

A great difference between At the very beginning of this chapter, I mentioned that all variables should be set in
mathematicians and italic type, and that all numerals should be set in an upright font. LATEX is capable of
physicists is that the latter
tend to use upright fonts a
lot more frequently. But in ,
some countries, including
China and the UK, the
difference is not that
dramatic.
 8.8 Changing typefaces 63

doing this automatically. But it cannot recognize a vector automatically. So you do

have to learn some font-switching commands.
Many physicists set mathematical constants in an upright font, e.g., i2 = −1. Here’s
how:

$\mathrm{i}^2=-1$ i2 = −1

Although we write ~a, vectors in printed documents are set in boldface. Some people
like upright bold, some prefer italic bold. Both are acceptable, and here’s how to produce
them:

$\mathbf{a}$, $\bm{a}$. a, a.

(To use the command \bm, you have to load the bm package first.)
As you’ve seen in section 8.7, sets of numbers are set in what we call the Blackboard
font, e.g., R denotes the set of real numbers. Let’s take a look how to produce this:

Load the \pcg{amsfonts} package!\\

Load the amsfonts package!
$\mathbb{R}$: the set of real numbers.\\
R: the set of real numbers.
$\mathbb{N}$: the set of natural
N: the set of natural numbers.
numbers.

Table 8.3 gives different font switching commands in math mode.

Note that the default italic and the italic produced by \mathit are different:

$different \neq \mathit{different}$. dif f erent 6= different.

If you use the upright ‘d’, ‘e’, and ‘i’ a lot, you should define them in your
manuscript:
\newcommand\rd{\mathrm{d}}
\newcommand\re{\mathrm{e}}
\newcommand\ri{\mathrm{i}}
Now, you can get the upright ‘d’, ‘e’, and ‘i’ by simply typing ‘\rd’, ‘\re’, and
‘\ri’:

$\rd x$, $\ri^2=-1$, $\re=2.718\,28\ldots$ dx, i2 = −1, e = 2.718 28 . . .

Now think of this problem: how do you get

Pr−j = 0 if r − j is odd.

You might be thinking of doing this, which doesn’t work well:

\[P_{r-j}=0 \mathrm{if} r-j

\mathrm{is odd}.\] Pr−j = 0ifr − jisodd.

à
 64 When TEX Dates Math

Table 8.3: Math fonts

Command Example
default ABCDEF GHIJKLM N OP QRST U V W XY Z
abcdef ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathit ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathrm ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathbf ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathsf ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathtt ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\bma ABCDEF GHIJ KLM N OP QRST U V W XY Z
abcdef ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathfrakb ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
\mathcal ABCDEFGHIJ KLMN OPQRST UVWX YZ
\mathbbc ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
a
Needs package bm.
b
Needs package amsfonts.
c
Needs package amsfonts.

That’s because blank spaces are ignored in math mode. Now try this:

\[P_{r-j}=0\ \mathrm{if}\ r-j\

\mathrm{is\ odd}.\] Pr−j = 0 if r − j is odd.

However, the amsmath package provides a \text command which is really helpful:

\[P_{r-j}=0\text{ if
$r-j$ is odd.}\] Pr−j = 0 if r − j is odd.

One question remains: how do we get an upright lowercase greek letter? For
instance, some publishers mandates that all constants be typeset in an upright greek;
this obviously includes “pi.” Unfortunately, TEX doesn’t have built-in upright lowercase
Greek letters. But I’ve discovered a few approaches that you might want to try:
• Load the package upgreek. Then you can access upright lowercase Greek letters by
typing \up..., e.g., \uppi. This is probably the easiest way on earth, but the bad
news is that the letters produced in this method don’t look that good (for me).
• Load the package txfonts. Then you can access lowercase Greek letters by typing
\...up, e.g., \piup. But the txfonts packages affects the typeface of the whole
documents. An alternative is not to load the package and put the following codes
in your preamble:

\DeclareSymbolFont{lettersA}{U}{txmia}{m}{it}

,
 8.8 Changing typefaces 65

\DeclareMathSymbol{\piup}{\mathord}{lettersA}{25}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\muup}{\mathord}{lettersA}{22}
\DeclareMathSymbol{\deltaup}{\mathord}{lettersA}{14}
......

• You can also use the PostScript symbols. Try the following codes:

\usepackage{ifthen}
\makeatletter
\newcommand{\allmodesymb}[2]{\relax\ifmmode{\mathchoice
{\mbox{\fontsize{\tf@size}{\tf@size}#1{#2}}}
{\mbox{\fontsize{\tf@size}{\tf@size}#1{#2}}}
{\mbox{\fontsize{\sf@size}{\sf@size}#1{#2}}}
{\mbox{\fontsize{\ssf@size}{\ssf@size}#1{#2}}}}
\else
\mbox{#1{#2}}\fi}
\makeatother
\newcommand{\greeksym}[1]{\usefont{U}{psy}{m}{n}#1}
\newcommand{\ualpha}{\allmodesymb{\greeksym}{a}}
\newcommand{\udelta}{\allmodesymb{\greeksym}{d}}
\newcommand{\upi}{\allmodesymb{\greeksym}{p}}
......

• The lowercase Greek letters provided by GreekTEX is rather good. But there are
(at least) two problems: (1) It might cause compatibility issues; (2) If you put the
letters in subscripts or superscripts, their size remain the same as in text style.
Anyway, here are the codes:

\input{greektex}
\newcommand\uppi{\text{\gr p}}
\newcommand\upd{\text{\gr d}}
......

TEXnicality
Some publishers require that defined operator be typeset in an upright font; e.g.,
the ‘d’ in dx. Well, the ‘d’ operator shouldn’t present any difficult for you, but the
default partial operator produced by \partial is italic, like this ‘∂’. We can define
the upright version ourselves:
\font\ursymbol=psyr at 10pt % You also use other font sizes.
\def\urpartial{\mbox{\ursymbol\char"B6}}
Now the code ‘\frac{\urpartial f}{\urpartial x}’ gives the following out-
put:
∂f
,
∂x
which is perfect!

à
 66 When TEX Dates Math

Table 8.4: Spaces in math mode

Positive Space Example Negative Space Example
$ab$ ab
$a b$ ab
$a\ b$ ab
$a\,b$ (a\thinspace b) ab a\!b ab
$a\:b$ (a\medspace b) ab a\negmedspace b ab
$a\;b$ (a\thickspace b) ab a\negthickspace b ab
$a\quad b$ a b
$a\text{---}b$ a—b
$a\qquad b$ a b
$a\hspace{0.5cm}b$ a b $a\hspace{-0.5cm}b$ b a
$a\phantom{xx}b$ a b
$axxb$ axxb

8.9 Spacing
We’ve seen the command ‘\,’ which produces a thin space a couple of times. Here’s
another application:

123\,456\,\text{cm} 123 456 cm

But this is by no means the end of the story. LATEX provides quite a few commands
for producing horizontal spaces, as are listed in table 8.4.
A few words about the command \phantom in the table. By using the \phantom
command, you can reserve space for characters that do not show up in the final output:

\begin{equation*}
{}^{12}_{\phantom{1}6}\textrm{C}
\qquad \textrm{versus} \qquad 12 12
6C versus 6 C
{}^{12}_{6}\textrm{C}
\end{equation*}

TEXnicality
Most of the time, TEX can producing the desired spacing. But there are a few
occasions that require your attention:

• A thin space should be added before back subscripts, e.g., a 0 x1 bh is obtained

from $a\,{}_0x_1bh$.
• A thin space should be added before and after ds, dp, dx, and similar combina-
tions of d and another symbol following, e.g.,
Z ZZZ
f (x) dx dr dθ dr

• A thin space should be added between a number and a unit, e.g., 1 m = 100 cm.

,
 8.9 Spacing 67

• A thick space should be used before a mathematical condition in text, e.g.,

tn (n = 1, 2, . . .)
• An em quad should be used between a symbolic statement and a verbal expression
in displayed expressions:

En (t) → e−t as t → ∞.

• An em quad should be used around conjunctions:

x(a + b) or y(a − b)

• A two-em quad should be used between two separate formulas in the same line
of a display
x2 + y 2 = a, x + y = b.
However, it is generally accepted that symbols in different formulas must be
separated by words, e.g., instead of saying “consider Sq , q < p,” write “consider
Sq , where q < p.”
• A two-em quad should be used between a symbolic statement and a condition
on the statement.

xn − y n − z n = A (n = 0, 1, . . . , p)

The TEXbook provides the following fine-tuning examples:

√
$\sqrt{2}\,x$\\ √2 x
$\sqrt{\,\lg x}$\\ lg x√

$O\bigl(1/\sqrt{n}\,\bigr)$\\ O 1/ n
$[\,0,1)$\\ [ 0, 1)
$\lg n\,(\lg\lg n)^2$\\ lg n (lg lg n)2
$x^2\!/2$\\ x2/2
$n/\!\lg n$\\ n/lg n
$\Gamma_{\!2}+\Delta^{\!2}$\\ Γ2 + ∆2
j
$R_i{}^j{}_{\!kl}$\\ R
R xi Rkly
$\int_0^x\!\int_0^y\rd F(u,v)$\\ 0 0
dF (u, v)

$(2n)!/\bigl(n!\,(n+1)!\bigr)$ (2n)!/ n! (n + 1)!

There are also a few commands controlling the vertical space in and around displays.
The vertical spaces before and after each display environment are controlled by the
following rubber lengths, where the values in parentheses are those for \normalsize
with the (default) 10pt option in the standard LATEX classes:
• \abovedisplayskip, \belowdisplayskip
The normal vertical space added above and below a mathematical display (default
10pt plus 2pt minus 5pt).
• \abovedisplayshortskip, \belowdisplayshortskip
The (usually smaller) vertical space added above and below a “short display” (0pt

à
 68 When TEX Dates Math

plus 3pt and 6pt plus 3pt minus 3pt, respectively). A short display is one that
starts to the right of where the preceding text line ends.

Here’s an example demonstrating the use of these commands:

\small
\abovedisplayshortskip=5pt
\belowdisplayshortskip=5pt
\abovedisplayskip=15pt Before
Z
\belowdisplayskip=15pt sin x
f (x) = dx (8.3)
\noindent x
Before \begin{equation} The line doesn’t end before the formula.
f(x) = \int\frac{\sin x}{x}dx
Z
\end{equation} sin x
f (x) = dx (8.4)
\noindent The line doesn’t x
end before the formula.
\begin{equation} And the next line starts as usual with some
f(x) = \int\frac{\sin x}{x}dx text. . . .
\end{equation}
\noindent And the next line starts as
usual with some text\dots.

8.10 Punctuation

In math mode, commas and semicolons are treated as punctuation marks, so TEX puts
some extra spaces after them. For example,

$f(x,y;z)$ f (x, y; z)

This is a good mechanism, but it can cause problems. In the U.S., numbers are
grouped by using commas, e.g., ‘123,456’. If you type $123,456$, what you get is
‘123, 456’. But I prefer to group numbers with a thin space, e.g., 123 456, as you’ve seen
before.
Interestingly, a period is not treated as a punctuation mark, so $123.456$ does
produce the correct ‘123.456’.
Colon is also treated as a special punctuation in TEX—representing “ratio,” e.g.,
‘3 : 4’. But it’s wrong to type something like f : A → B. Instead, try the following:

$f\mathpunct{:}A\to B$ f: A → B

As a matter of act, if you are using standard LATEX (without loading the amsmath
package), you can type $f\colon A\to B$. However, the amsmath package makes
unfortunate major changes to the spacing produced by the command \colon.
Now, let’s talk about something more general. When a formula is followed by a
period, comma, semicolon, question mark, exclamation point, etc., put the punctuation
after the $, when the formula is in the text; but put the punctuation before the end of
a display math environment. For example,

,
 8.10 Punctuation 69

If x < 0, we have shown that

If $x<0$, we have shown that
\begin{equation*} y=f(x). \end{equation*} y = f (x).

Similarly, don’t ever type anything like

for $x=a,b$, or $c$. for x = a, b, or c.

It should be

for $x=a$, $b$, or $c$. for x = a, b, or c.

(Better yet, use a tie: ‘or~$c$’.) The reason is that TEX will typeset expression ‘$x=a,b$’
as a single formula, so it will put a “thin space” between the comma and the b. This
space will not be the same as the space that TEX puts after the comma following the b,
since spaces between words are always bigger than thin spaces.
Another reason for not typing $x=a,b$ is that it inhibits breaking lines in a
paragraph: TEX will never break at the space between the comma and the b because
breaks after commas in formulas are usually wrong. For example, in the equation, we
certainly don’t want to break something like P (1, 2).
We’ve talked much about ellipsis in texts. Now let’s get into the math mode. Since
we realize that \ldots does not produce a thin space after it when used in math mode,
it might cause some problems. Look at the following examples:

$a_1,a_2,a_3,\ldots$.\\ a1 , a2 , a3 , . . ..
$a_1,a_2,a_3,\ldots.$ a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . .

The first one is logical, but the output is “awesome.” The second one looks OK,
but the space after the period would be distorted since it is not really considered an
ending-a-sentence period. The correct way is to type this:

$a_1,a_2,a_3,\ldots\,$. a1 , a2 , a3 , . . . .

But the best way is actually ‘$a_1$, $a_2$, $a_3$,~\ldots.’.

The position of ellipsis is also an art. It is generally correct to produce formulas
like

$x_1+\cdots+x_n$ and $(x_1,\ldots,x_n)$, x1 + · · · + xn and (x1 , . . . , xn ),

but wrong to produce formulas like

$x_1+\ldots+x_n$ and $(x_1,\cdots,x_n)$. x1 + . . . + xn and (x1 , · · · , xn ).

à
 70 When TEX Dates Math

If you’ve loaded the amsmath package, try the following:

$x_1+\dots+x_n$ and $(x_1,\dots,x_n)$. x1 + · · · + xn and (x1 , . . . , xn ).

The amsmath package decides the position of the ellipsis according to what kind of
symbol follows \dots. If the next symbol is a plus sign, the dots will be centered; if it
is a comma, they will be on the baseline. If the dots fall at the end of a mathematical
formulas, the next object will be something like \end or $, etc., which does not give any
information about how to place the dots. In such a case, you must help by using \dotsc
for “dots with commas,” \dotsb for “dots with binary operator/relation symbols,”
\dotsm for “multiplication dots,” \dotsi for “dots with integrals,” or even \dotso for
“none of the above.” For example,

A series $H_1, H_2, \dotsc\,$, a sum A series H1 , H2 , . . . , a sum H1 + H2 + · · · ,

$H_1+H_2+\dotsb\,$, an orthogonal product an orthogonal product H1 × H2 × · · · , and an
$H_1\times H_2\times\dotsm\,$, and an infinite integral:
infinite integral: \[\int_{H_1}\! Z Z
\int_{H_2}\dotsi\; · · · −Γ dΘ.
{-\Gamma}\,\rd\Theta.\] H1 H2

I also adapt the following examples from The TEXbook to illustrate the proper use
of ellipses:

$x_1+\dots+x_n$\\ x1 + · · · + xn
$x_1=\dots=x_n$\\ x1 = · · · = xn
$A_1\times\dots\times A_n$\\ A1 × · · · × An
$f(x_1,\dots,x_n)$\\ f (x1 , . . . , xn )
$x_1x_2\dots x_n$\\ x1 x2 . . . xn
$(1-x)(1-x^2)\dots(1-x^n)$\\ (1 − x)(1 − x2 ) . . . (1 − xn )
$n(n-1)\dots(1)$\\ n(n − 1) . . . (1)
$x_1\cdot x_2\cdot\ldots\cdot x_n$ x1 · x2 · . . . · xn

Caution: the example on the last line is not a typo! But it does look odd, so try to
avoid it.

8.11 More about Displayed Equations

You might want to put two equations on two individual lines, but
\begin{equation*}
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2\\
\sin^2\eta+\cos^2\eta=1
\end{equation*}

is not valid, as no line breaks are allowed in an equation* environment. What about

\begin{equation*}
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2
\end{equation*} (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2
\begin{equation*}
\sin^2\eta+\cos^2\eta=1 sin2 η + cos2 η = 1
\end{equation*}

,
 8.11 More about Displayed Equations 71

You’ll find that there’s too much space between the two equations.
OK, here comes the solution: you can try the gather or gather* environment:

\begin{gather}
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2\\ (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2 (8.5)
\sin^2\eta+\cos^2\eta=1 2 2
sin η + cos η = 1 (8.6)
\end{gather}

If you do not want the equation number, just use the starred form. What if you
want to number the first equation but not the second one?

\begin{gather}
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2\\ (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2 (8.7)
\sin^2\eta+\cos^2\eta=1\notag 2 2
sin η + cos η = 1
\end{gather}

The gather environment is perfect for putting two or more equations on individual
lines, centered. But sometimes, we want to “align” them at a relation symbol. We can
use the align or align* environment.

\begin{align}
x^2+y^2 &= z^2\\ x2 + y 2 = z 2 (8.8)
x^3+y^3 &< z^3+\cdots 3 3 3
x + y < z + ··· (8.9)
\end{align}

Again, if you do not want the equation numbers, use the starred form.
Another challenge, what if we want to “group” these equations and “center” the
equation number vertically? The answer is to use the ...ed variant of the environments
above.

\begin{equation}
\begin{gathered}
(a+b)^2=a^2+2ab+b^2\\ (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2
\sin^2\eta+\cos^2\eta=1 (8.10)
sin2 η + cos2 η = 1
\end{gathered}
\end{equation}

Another example:

\begin{equation*}
\begin{aligned}
x^2+y^2 &= z^2\\ x2 + y 2 = z 2
x^3+y^3 &< z^3+\cdots x3 + y 3 < z 3 + · · ·
\end{aligned}
\end{equation*}

(What happened to the equation number?)

And another one!

à
 72 When TEX Dates Math

\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
x^2+y^2 &= z^2\\ x2 + y 2 = z 2
x^3+y^3 &< z^3+\cdots (8.11)
x3 + y 3 < z 3 + · · ·
\end{split}
\end{equation}

Remember how I talked about the “null delimiter”? Let’s take a look at its
application:

\begin{equation*}
\left.
\begin{aligned} )
\bm{B}’&=-c\nabla\times\bm{E}\\ B 0 = −c∇ × E
Maxwell’s
\bm{E}’&=c\nabla\times\bm{B}-4\pi\bm{J} E 0 = c∇ × B − 4πJ
\end{aligned}\right\}
\text{Maxwell’s}
\end{equation*}

One more command to introduce: \intertext.

\begin{align}
A_1&=N_0(\lambda;\Omega’)- A1 = N0 (λ; Ω0 ) − φ(λ; Ω0 ) (8.12)
\phi(\lambda;\Omega’)\\
A_2&=\phi(\lambda;\Omega’) A2 = φ(λ; Ω0 )φ(λ; Ω) (8.13)
\phi(\lambda;\Omega)
\intertext{and finally} A_3&= and finally
\mathcal{N}(\lambda;\omega) A3 = N (λ; ω) (8.14)
\end{align}

8.12 Breaking an Inline Equation

When you have formulas in a paragraph, TEX may have to break them between lines.
This is a necessary evil, something like the hyphenation of words; we want to avoid it
unless the alternative is worse.
By default, a formula will be broken only after a relation symbol like = or <
or →, or after a binary operation symbol like + or − or ×, where the relation or
binary operation is on the “outer level” of the formula (i.e., not enclosed in {...}). For
example,

equationbreakanequation equationbreakanequation f (x, y) = x2 − y 2 =

$f(x,y)=x^2-y^2=(x+y)(x-y)$. (x + y)(x − y).

There’s a chance that TEX will break after either of the = signs (it prefers this) or
after the - or + or - (in an emergency). But there won’t be a break after the comma in
any case.
If you don’t want to permit breaking in this example except after the = signs, you
could type

,
 8.13 Breaking a Displayed Equation 73

equationbreakanequation equationbreakanequation f (x, y) = x2 − y 2 =

$f(x,y)={x^2-y^2}={(x+y)(x-y)}$. (x + y)(x − y).

On the other hand, if you do want to break after the comma, try this:

breakanequationbreakanequation breakanequationbreakanequation f (x, y) =

$f(x,\allowbreak y)=x^2-y^2=(x+y)(x-y)$. x2 − y 2 = (x + y)(x − y).

This is not a good example. But sometimes, you might want to break something
like (x1 , . . . , xm , y1 , . . . , yn ).
Another interesting example:

anequation
$f(x,y)=x^2-y^2=(x+y)(x-y)$\\
anequation f (x, y) = x2 − y 2 = (x + y)(x − y)
anequation
anequation f (x, y) = x2 − y 2 = (x + y)(x − y)
$f(x,y)=x^2-y^2=(x+y)\*(x-y)$\\
equation f (x, y) = x2 − y 2 = (x + y)(x − y)
equation
$f(x,y)=x^2-y^2=(x+y)\*(x-y)$

The command \* acts like \-. However, instead of inserting a hyphen, a × sign is
inserted in text size.

8.13 Breaking a Displayed Equation

Breaking a displayed equation is mostly not preferable, but sometimes you just have to.
Two things that you have to keep in heart when breaking a displayed equation: (1) It is
stated in The TEXbook that “Although formulas within a paragraph always break after
binary operations and relations, displayed formulas break before binary operations and
relations.” (2) Retain the logic of your math equations! I formatted the equations in
this section rather carefully, in the hope that you can figure out the rules lying behind
the surface.
The first environment to introduce is the multline environment, which does the
following:

\begin{multline}
First line of a multline
\text{First line of a multline}\\
\text{Centered Middle line}\\ Centered Middle line
\shoveright{\text{A right Middle}}\\ A right Middle
\text{Another centered Middle}\\ Another centered Middle
\text{Yet another centered Middle}\\
Yet another centered Middle
\shoveleft{\text{A left Middle}}\\
\text{Last line of the multline} A left Middle
\end{multline} Last line of the multline (8.15)

Let’s look at a serious example:

à
 74 When TEX Dates Math

\begin{multline}
A=\lim_{n\to\infty}\Delta x\Bigl(a^2+
\bigl(a^2+2a\Delta x

A = lim ∆x a2 + a2 + 2a∆x + (∆x)2


+(\Delta x)^2\bigr)\\ n→∞
+ a2 + 2 × 2a∆x + 22 (∆x)2


+\bigl(a^2+2\times2a\Delta x+
2^2(\Delta x)^2\bigr)\\
+ a2 + 2 × 3a∆x + 32 (∆x)2


+\bigl(a^2+2\times3a\Delta x+
3^2(\Delta x)^2\bigr)\\ + ···
+\cdots\\

+ a2 + 2 · (n − 1)a∆x + (n − 1)2 (∆x)2
+\bigl(a^2+2\cdot(n-1)a\Delta x+
(n-1)^2(\Delta x)^2\bigr)\Bigr)\\ = 31 (b3 − a3 ). (8.16)
=\tfrac{1}{3}(b^3-a^3).
\end{multline}

Now let’s try the align environment.

\begin{align*}
(a+b)^3&=(a+b)(a+b)^2\\ (a + b)3 = (a + b)(a + b)2
&=(a+b)(a^2+2ab+b^2)\\ = (a + b)(a2 + 2ab + b2 )
&=a^3+3a^2b+3ab^2+b^3
= a3 + 3a2 b + 3ab2 + b3
\end{align*}

You can achieve the same effect with the split environment.

\begin{equation*}
\begin{split}
(a+b)^3&=(a+b)(a+b)^2\\ (a + b)3 = (a + b)(a + b)2
&=(a+b)(a^2+2ab+b^2)\\ = (a + b)(a2 + 2ab + b2 )
&=a^3+3a^2b+3ab^2+b^3 = a3 + 3a2 b + 3ab2 + b3
\end{split}
\end{equation*}

Another example. With the following codes (Pay attention to the use of the
command \quad):

\begin{verbatim}
\begin{align*}
x_nu_1+\cdots+x_{n+t-1}u_t&=
x_nu_1+(ax_n+c)u_2+\cdots\\
&\quad+\bigl(a^{t-1}x_n+
c(a^{t-2}+\cdots+1)\bigr)u_t\\
&=(u_1+au_2+\cdots+a^{t-1}u_t)x_n
+h(u_1,\ldots,u_t).
\end{align*}
\end{verbatim}

we can get the following output:

xn u1 + · · · + xn+t−1 ut = xn u1 + (axn + c)u2 + · · ·

+ at−1 xn + c(at−2 + · · · + 1) ut

= (u1 + au2 + · · · + at−1 ut )xn + h(u1 , . . . , ut ).

,
 8.13 Breaking a Displayed Equation 75

Now we’re going to take a look at a very complicated example.

Z tε
fh,ε (x, y) = εEx,y Lx,yϕ (εu) ϕ(x) du
0
Z
= h Lx,z ϕ(x) + ρx (dz)
 Z tε Z 
1
+h Ey Lx,yx (s) ϕ(x) ds − tε Lx,z ϕ(x)ρx (dz)
tε 0
 Z tε Z tε !
1
+ Ey Lx,yx (s) ϕ(x) ds − Ex,y Lx,yϕ (εs) ϕ(x) ds
tε 0 0
(8.17)
Here are the codes to typeset the equation above.

\begin{verbatim}
\newcommand\ve{\varepsilon} \newcommand\tve{t_{\varepsilon}}
\newcommand\vf{\varphi} \newcommand\yvf{y_{\varphi}}
\newcommand\bfE{\mathbf{E}}
\newcommand\relphantom[1]{\mathrel{\phantom{#1}}}
\begin{equation}
\begin{split}
f_{h,\ve}(x,y)&=\ve\bfE_{x,y}\int_0^{\tve} L_{x,\yvf(\ve u)}\vf(x)\,\rd u\\
&=h\int L_{x,z}\vf(x)+\rho_x(\rd z)\\
&\relphantom{=}{}+h\Biggl(\frac{1}{\tve}\biggl(
\bfE_y \int_0^{\tve} L_{x,y^x(s)}\vf(x)\,\rd s\
-\tve \int L_{x,z}\vf(x)\rho_x(\rd z)\biggr)\\
&\relphantom{=}\phantom{{}+h\Biggl(}+
\frac{1}{\tve}
\biggl(\bfE_y\int_0^{\tve} L_{x,y^x(s)}\vf(x)\,\rd s
-\bfE_{x,y}\int_0^{\tve} L_{x,\yvf(\ve s)}\vf(x)\,\rd s\biggr)\Biggr)
\end{split}
\end{equation}
\end{verbatim}
Standard LATEX also provides the eqnarray environment for typesetting equations
that will spread onto a few lines. I hardly use it. But it is introduced below FYI.

\setlength\arraycolsep{2pt}
\begin{eqnarray} y =a+b+c+d
y & = & a+b+c+d\nonumber\\
+e + f + g
& & +e+f+g\nonumber\\
& & {}+h+i+j\nonumber\\ +h+i+j
& \geq & {}-k-l-m ≥ −k−l−m (8.18)
\end{eqnarray}

I have two comments: (1) Notice the use of the {}. (Can you explain what happens
right here?) (2) Setting \arraycolsep to 2 pt could give better output. (It controls the
space before and after the sign enclosed between &’s.)
By the way, by default LATEX does not allow any page break within a displayed
equation. If you do want to allow page breaks, put \allowpagebreak in the preamble
of your document.

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 76 When TEX Dates Math

8.14 Array

Arrays, in mathematics, are produced with the array environment. It has a single
argument that specifies the number of columns and the alignment of items within the
columns. For each column in the array, there is a single letter in the argument that
specifies how items in the column should be positioned: c for centered, l for flush left,
or r for flush right. Within the body of the environment, adjacent rows are separated
by a \\ command and adjacent items within a row are separated by an & character.
For example,

\[
\begin{array}{clcr}
a+b+c & uv & x-y & 27\\ a + b + c uv x−y 27
a+b & u+v & z & 134\\ a+b u+v z 134
a & 3u+uw & xyz & 2\,978 a 3u + uw xyz 2 978
\end{array}
\]

You can do a lot of amazing things with this structure:

\begin{equation*}
P_{r-j}=\left\{\!\!\!
\begin{array}{ll} 
0 & \text{if $r-j$ is odd,}\\ 0 if r − j is odd,
Pr−j =
r!\,(-1)^{(r-j)/2} & r! (−1)(r−j)/2 if r − j is even.
\text{if $r-j$ is even.}
\end{array}\right.
\end{equation*}

The amsmath package provides an alternative:

\begin{equation*}
P_{r-j}=
\begin{cases} (
0 & \text{if $r-j$ is odd,}\\ 0 if r − j is odd,
Pr−j =
r!\,(-1)^{(r-j)/2} & r! (−1)(r−j)/2 if r − j is even.
\text{if $r-j$ is even.}
\end{cases}
\end{equation*}

If you look closely at the two outputs, you’ll find that they are actually slightly
different. Coleen’s Workgroup prefers the former one, though it is more difficult to enter.
Matrices are produced in the similar way:

\begin{equation*}  
\left(\!\!\!\begin{array}{cc} 0& -1\\ 0 −1
1 & 0\end{array}\!\!\!\right) 1 0
\end{equation*}

Again, the amsmath package provides some simpler solutions:

,
 8.14 Array 77

\begin{gather*}  
\begin{matrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{matrix}\quad 0 1 0 1
\begin{pmatrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{pmatrix}\\ 1 0 1 0
   
\begin{bmatrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{bmatrix}\quad 0 1 0 1
\begin{Bmatrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{Bmatrix}\\ 1 0 1 0
\begin{vmatrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{vmatrix}\quad 0 1 0 1
\begin{Vmatrix}0&1\\ 1&0\end{Vmatrix} 1 0 1 0
\end{gather*}

It is generally speaking not preferable to put a matrix in inline mode. However, if

it is a small matrix, you can do it with the smallmatrix environment provided by the
amsmath package:

To show the effect of the matrix on

surrounding lines in side a paragraph,
To show the effect of the matrix on surround-
we put it here:
ing lines

in side a paragraph, we put it here:
$\left(\begin{smallmatrix} 1 0
1&0\\0&-1 0 −1 and follow it with enough text to en-
sure that there is at least one full line below
\end{smallmatrix}\right)$ and follow
the matrix.
it with enough text to ensure that there
is at least one full line below the matrix.

There’s also a command provided by TEX that produces a special kind of matrix:

\[\bordermatrix{ 0 1 2
& 0 & 1 & 2\cr  
0 A B C
0 & A & B & C\cr
1 d e f
1 & d & e & f\cr
2 1 2 3
2 & 1 & 2 & 3}\]

A final trick. Some people (including me) feel the braces are too big when used
with arrays. The following example might give you some insight:1

\[f(x)= \left\{%
\vphantom{\begin{array}{c} a\\[13ex]
\end{array}}\right.\kern-7pt 
 4, if x ∈ (4, ∞),
\begin{array}{ll} 

 3, if x ∈ (3, 4],


4, & \text{if} \quad x\in (4,\infty), \\
f (x) = 2, if x ∈ (2, 3],
3, & \text{if} \quad x\in (3,4], \\
 1, if x ∈ (1, 2],


2, & \text{if} \quad x \in (2,3], \\ 
 0, if x ∈ (−∞, 1].

1, & \text{if} \quad x \in (1,2], \\
0, & \text{if} \quad x \in (-\infty,1].
\end{array}\]

1 Provided by Neals of the CTEX Community.

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 78 When TEX Dates Math

8.14.1 The delarray Package

The delarray package is a useful general extension to the array package that allows you
to specify opening and closing extensible delimiters to surround a mathematical array
environment.
\[\bm{Q}=  
\begin{array}[t]({cc}) X&Y \end{array}
 
 L 

\begin{array}[t][{cc}]A&B\\ C&D\end{array} Q= X Y A B M
 
\begin{array}[b]\lgroup{cc}\rgroup C D
L\\M\end{array}\]

8.14.2 Partitioned matrices

The pmat package is designed for typesetting partitioned matrices. The \pmat macro
takes three arguments. The first one is a left delimiter (the thing you put immediately
after a \left command). The last one is a right delimiter (the thing you put immediately
after a \right command). As usual, a delimiter may be omitted by using a dot (.).
The middle argument specifies the dashed vertical lines that are to be placed between
columns of the matrix. This argument must contain exactly n − 1 characters, where
n is the number of columns of the matrix. If a character is a | then a dashed vertical
line will be placed between the appropriate columns. Otherwise, no dashed line will be
placed between those columns (we recommend the use of the character dot (.) in these
cases). The format of the entries of the partitioned matrix follows the conventions of
plain TEX, i.e., entries are separated by a & (just like in LATEX), but lines are separated
by a \cr (instead of the \\ used in LATEX). All entries are typeset in math mode (in
\textstyle). For technical reasons, a \cr must also be placed at the end of the last
line. The placement of horizontal dashed lines is done with the command \-, which
must be placed immediately after the command \cr. For example,

\[
\begin{pmat}({.|})  
a_{11} & a_{12} & b_{11} \cr a11 a12 b11
a_{21} & a_{22} & b_{21} \cr\-  a21 a22 b21 
c_{11} & c_{12} & d_{11} \cr c11 c12 d11
\end{pmat}
\]
A lot of parameters may be changed to modify the appearance. For more in-
formation, refer to ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/packages/TeX/macros/generic/pmat/
pmat.pdf.
8.14.3 Case structures with the cases package
We already know that case structures can be constructed either with the array envi-
ronment or the cases environment provided by the amsmath package. Here is another
really useful package—cases. Its general syntax goes like this:

\begin{numcases}{left_side}
case_1 & explanation_1 \\
case_2 & explanation_2 \\
...
case_n & explanation_n
\end{numcases}

,
 8.15 Dress your letters! 79

Let’s take a look at an example:

\begin{numcases}{|x|=}
x, & for $x \geq 0$\\ 
x, for x ≥ 0 (8.19)
-x, & for $x < 0$ |x| =
−x, for x < 0 (8.20)
\end{numcases}

And here is a more complex one:

\begin{verbatim}
\begin{subnumcases}{\label{w} w\equiv}
0 & $c = d = 0$\label{wzero}\\
\sqrt{|c|}\,\sqrt{\frac{1 + \sqrt{1+(d/c)^2}}{2}} & $|c| \geq |d|$ \\
\sqrt{|d|}\,\sqrt{\frac{|c/d| + \sqrt{1+(c/d)^2}}{2}} & $|c| < |d|$
\end{subnumcases}
Then, using $w$ from equation~(\ref{w}), the square root is
\begin{subnumcases}{\sqrt{c+\ri d}=}
0 & $w=0$ (case \ref{wzero})\\
w+\ri\frac{d}{2w} & $w \neq 0$, $c \geq 0$ \\
\frac{|d|}{2w} + \ri w & $w \neq 0$, $c < 0$, $d \geq 0$ \\
\frac{|d|}{2w} - \ri w & $w \neq 0$, $c < 0$, $d < 0$
\end{subnumcases}
\end{verbatim}

The above codes generates the following output:



 0 c=d=0 (8.21a)

 s p
2

 |c| 1 + 1 + (d/c)

 p
|c| ≥ |d| (8.21b)
w≡ 2

 s
 p
2
 |d| |c/d| + 1 + (c/d)

 p
|c| < |d| (8.21c)


2

Then, using w from equation (8.21), the square root is



 0 w = 0 (case 8.21a) (8.22a)
d


w+i w 6= 0, c ≥ 0 (8.22b)



√

 2w
c + id = |d|
 2w + iw

 w 6= 0, c < 0, d ≥ 0 (8.22c)


 |d| − iw


w 6= 0, c < 0, d < 0 (8.22d)

2w

8.15 Dress your letters!

Sometimes, you might want to put a “hat” on your letter, e.g., â. All the related
commands are given in table 8.5:
A few comments: (1) The notation ~a and â are only used in handwritten documents.
In professional typesetting, use a and a instead. (2) If you do want to use the arrow
notation, use \imath and \jmath instead of i and j, e.g., ~ı, ̂. (3) However, we do use
−−→
AB instead of AB. (4) Instead of A ^+ B, you might consider an alternative: (A + B)∼ ,

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 80 When TEX Dates Math

Table 8.5: Accents in math mode

Command Sample Command Sample Command Sample
\acute á \bar ā \breve ă
\check ǎ \dot ȧ \ddot ä
...
\dddot a \grave à \hat â
\mathring å \tilde ã \vec ~a
\underbar a
−−→
\overline AB \underline AB \overrightarrow AB
←−− ←→
\overleftarrow AB \overleftrightarrow AB \underleftarrow AB
←−−
\underrightarrow AB
−−→ \underleftrightarrow AB
←→ \widetilde AB
g
\widehat AB
d

which can be produced by typing $(A+B)\sptilde$ provided by the amsxtra package.

Here are more examples:

$(xyz)\spdddot$\quad$(xyz)\spddot$\\ (xyz)... (xyz)..

$(xyz)\spdot$ \quad$(xyz)\spbreve$\\ (xyz). (xyz)˘
$(xyz)\spcheck$\quad$(xyz)\sphat$\\ (xyz)∨ (xyz)b
$(xyz)\sptilde$ (xyz)∼

There are two more commands there are really useful: \underbrace and \overbrace.

\begin{align*}
y&=x^2+bx+c\\ y = x2 + bx + c
&=x^2+2\cdot\frac{b}{2}x+c\\ b
= x2 + 2 · x + c
&=\underbrace{x^2+2\cdot\frac{b}{2}x+ 2
 2   2
\left(\frac{b}{2}\right)^2}_{\left(x+ 2 b b b
(b/2)\right)^2} =x +2· x+ − +c
2 2 2
-\left(\frac{b}{2}\right)^2+c | {z }
(x+(b/2))2
\end{align*}

8.15.1 More Accents: The accents Package

∗
We’ve talked about accents in section 4.1. But how do we produce stuff like d. The
accents packages can help. Here are a few examples:

∗
$\accentset{*}{d}$\\ d∗
$\accentset{*}{h}$ h

If you look at the examples very carefully, you’ll find that the accents package even
takes the skewness of letters into consideration.
The accents package also allows you to dress your letters with “shoes”:

,
 8.16 Constructing New Symbols 81

$\underaccent{\bar}{x}$\\ x
¯
$\underaccent{*}{x}$ x
∗

Refer to http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/entries/accents.html for more

details.
8.15.2 “ı” in Different Fonts—The dotlessi package
I mentioned in section 4.1 that if you want to “dress” the letter “i” or “j,” you should
first remove the dot by using the commands \imath and \jmath. Question: how can we
make the dotless i and j upright? You might want to try $\mathrm{\imath}$, which
still gives ‘ı’. The solution is provided by the dotlessi package. After loading the package,
you can do the following:

$\vec{\mathsf{\dotlessj}}$\\ ~
$\tilde{\bm{\dotlessi}}$ ı̃

8.15.3 The undertilde Package

The undertilde package provides the \utilde command, which behaves more or less like
TEX’s \widetilde, except that the resulting accent is placed under the letter.

$\utilde{a} \neq \widetilde{a}$ a 6= e

a
e

8.16 Constructing New Symbols

def
In ISO 31-11:1992 , the symbol ‘a = b’ is used to denote “a is by definition equal to
b.” You can easily define it with the ‘\stackrel’ command provided by the amsmath
package:

\newcommand\eqdef{%
\stackrel{\mathrm{def}}{=}} def
a = b
$a\eqdef b$

8.17 Extensible arrows

The commands \xleftarrow and \xrightarrow produce horizontal relation arrows;
they are intended to have textual decorations above and/or below the arrow and the
length of the arrow is chosen automatically to accommodate the text. These arrows are
normally available in only one size. Thus, they will probably not be suited for use in
fractions, subscripts, or superscripts. For example.

\[
0\xleftarrow[\zeta]{} F\times
∂0 α(b)
\Delta(n-1) − F × ∆(n − 1) −−−−→ E ∂0 b
0←
ζ
\xrightarrow{\partial_0\alpha(b)}
E^{\partial_0 b}\]

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82 When TEX Dates Math

8.17.1 Extensible arrows with the extarrows package

1 Syntax
The \arrowname[sub-script]{super-script}
amsmath package provides a few simple extendable arrows. The extarrows package
is pretty much a supplement. It follows the same syntax of amsmath:
arrowname is xlongequal, xLongleftarrow, etc.
The parameter [sub-script] is optional.
\arrowname[subscript]{superscript}

2 Examples
Examples are listed in table 8.6.

we love to love
\xlongequal: A =========== Z (1)
sub

we love to love
\xLongleftarrow: A ⇐========= Z (2)
sub
we love to love
\xLongrightarrow: A =========⇒ Z (3)
sub
we love to love
\xLongleftrightarrow: A ⇐========⇒ Z (4)
sub
we love to love
\xLeftrightarrow: A ⇐========⇒ Z (5)
sub

we love to love
\xlongleftrightarrow: A ←−−−−−−−−→ Z (6)
sub
we love to love
\xlongrightarrow: A −−−−−−−−−→ Z (7)
sub

we love to love
\xleftrightarrow: A ←−−−−−−−−→ Z (8)
sub
we love to love
\xlongleftarrow: A ←−−−−−−−−− Z (9)
sub
we love to love
(amsmath) \xleftarrow: A ←−−−−−−−−− Z (10)
sub
we love to love
(amsmath) \xrightarrow: A −−−−−−−−−→ Z (11)
sub

\xlongleftarrow: A ←−
−Z (12)
\xlongrightarrow: A −→ Z (13)
(amsmath) \xleftarrow: A←−Z (14)
(amsmath) \xrightarrow: A−→Z (15)

Table 8.6: Extendible arrows of the extarrows package

8.17.2 The harpoon Package

Let’s talk a bit more about the notation for directed line segments. Some people do not
−−→
like the notation AB and want a change. The harpoon package is a good choice.

1
,
 8.18 Framed Math 83

$\overrightharp{AB}$, $\overleftharp{AB}$,
$\overrightharpdown{AB}$,
$\overleftharpdown{AB}$,
$\underrightharp{AB}$, *
AB, (
+ )
AB, AB, AB, AB, AB, AB, AB
$\underleftharp{AB}$,
* ( + )
$\underrightharpdown{AB}$,
$\underleftharpdown{AB}$

8.18 Framed Math

You can use the ‘\fbox’ command to get any inline equation framed. For example:

√
Let’s frame \fbox{$f(x)=\sqrt{x}$}! Let’s frame f (x) = x !

Now let’s do a more complex example:

\fboxsep=1mm \fboxrule=1mm √
Let’s frame f (x) = x !
Let’s frame \fbox{$f(x)=\sqrt{x}$}!

After loading the color package, we can even frame an inline math formula in a
colored box:

√
\colorbox{yellow}{ $f(x)=\sqrt{x}$}! f (x) = x !

Now let’s do the same thing with displayed equation. Some good news for you: the
\fbox command still works.

\fbox{\parbox{0.9\linewidth}{% √
\begin{equation} f (x) = x (8.23)
f(x)=\sqrt{x}\end{equation}}}

And \colorbox works as well:

\colorbox{yellow}{\parbox{0.9\linewidth}{% √
\begin{equation} f (x) = x (8.24)
f(x)=\sqrt{x}\end{equation}}}

If you don’t want to frame the equation number, try the \boxed command provided
by the amsmath package:

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 84 When TEX Dates Math

\begin{equation}
\boxed{W_t-F\subseteq V(P_i)\subseteq W_t} Wt − F ⊆ V (Pi ) ⊆ Wt (8.25)
\end{equation}

What if you want the box to be colored as well? We can try the empheq package.
It supports different frames for math environments of the amsmath package.

\begin{empheq}[box=\fbox]{align}
f(x)=\int_1^\infty \frac{1}{x^2}\,\rd t=1
\end{empheq} Z ∞
\begin{empheq}[box={\fboxsep=10pt 1
f (x) = dt = 1 (8.26)
\colorbox{yellow}}]{align} 1 x2
f(x)=\int_1^\infty \frac{1}{x^2}\,\rd t=1
\end{empheq} Z ∞
\begin{subequations} 1
f (x) = dt = 1 (8.27)
\begin{empheq}[box={ 1 x2
\fboxsep=1pt\colorbox{cyan}}]{align}
f(x)&=\int_1^\infty Z ∞
1
\frac{1}{x^2}\,\rd f (x) = dt = 1 (8.28a)
x2
t=1\\ Z1 ∞
1
f(x)&=\int_2^\infty \frac{1}{x^2}\,\rd f (x) = dt = 0.25 (8.28b)
t=0.25 2 x2
\end{empheq}
\end{subequations}

8.19 Aligning Your Equations

Let’s now turn to a variant of the align environment:

\begin{flalign}
x&=y & X&=Y & a&=b+c\\ x=y X=Y a = b + c (8.29)
x’&=y’ & X’&=Y’ & a’&=b x0 = y 0 X0 = Y 0 a0 = b (8.30)
\end{flalign}

Isn’t that smart? You can set the space between “column-pairs” by changing \minalignsep,
whose default value is 10pt.

\renewcommand\minalignsep{25pt}
\begin{flalign}
x=y X=Y a = b + c (8.31)
x&=y & X&=Y & a&=b+c\\
x’&=y’ & X’&=Y’ & a’&=b x0 = y 0 X0 = Y 0 a0 = b (8.32)
\end{flalign}

OK, now you’re ready for the following:

\begin{flalign}
x&=y && \text{by hypothesis}\tag{1}\\ x=y by hypothesis (1)
x’&=y’&&\text{by definition}\tag{*}\\ x0 = y 0 by definition (*)
x+x’&=y+y’&&\text{by Axiom 1}\tag{$*$} x + x0 = y + y 0 by Axiom 1 (∗)
\end{flalign}

Notice the use of \tag.

,
 8.20 Footnotes in Math Mode 85

8.20 Footnotes in Math Mode

Let’s do something eccentric. If you want to add a footnote to a displayed equation,

you’ll find that the command \footnote works in a very mysterious way. The correct
solution is to use the \footnotemark and \footnotetext commands.
For example, the following code:

\begin{verbatim}
\begin{displaymath}
a+b=c+d\footnotemark
\end{displaymath}
\footnotetext{Here comes the footnote
in math mode. Hooray!!!}
\end{verbatim}

should give the following glorious output:

a + b = c + d2

8.21 Equation Numbers

The first “crazy” thing you might want to do is to put the equation number on the
left side of your document. To do this is easy—you just turn “on” the leqno option
of your document class, e.g., \documentclass[leqno]{article}. The premise is that
the document class in question provides the leqno option. If not, you can achieve this
by giving options to your amsmath package. To place equation numbers on the left,
say ‘\usepackage[leqno]{amsmath}’. To place equation numbers on the right, say
‘\usepackage[reqno]{amsmath}’, which is the default value.
Going on, let’s talk about the style of equation numbers. This book is prepared
with the standard LATEX book class. Equation numbers take the form “chapter num-
ber + equation number within the chapter.” You can change this by redefining the
\theequation command. For example,

\renewcommand\theequation{
\thesection-\roman{equation}}
\begin{equation} a+b=c+d (8.21-xxxiii)
a+b=c+d
\end{equation}

If you want to make the equation numbers to go like “chapter number + equation
number within section,” the amsmath package provides a useful command:

\numberwithin{equation}{section}.

Another topic: sub-equations. The amsmath package provides some useful com-
mands:

2 Here comes the footnote in math mode. Hooray!!!

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 86 When TEX Dates Math

\begin{subequations}
\begin{align}
y&=d\\ y=d (8.34a)
y&=cx+d\\ y = cx + d (8.34b)
y&=bx^2+cx+d\\
y = bx2 + cx + d (8.34c)
y&=ax^3+bx^2+cx+d
3 2
\end{align} y = ax + bx + cx + d (8.34d)
\end{subequations}

OK, now let’s try modifying the equation numbers of the sub-equations:

\renewcommand\theequation{%
\theparentequation{}-\arabic{equation}}
\begin{subequations}
\begin{align} y=d (34-35a)
y&=d\\ y = cx + d (34-35b)
y&=cx+d\\
y = bx2 + cx + d (34-35c)
y&=bx^2+cx+d\\
3 2
y&=ax^3+bx^2+cx+d y = ax + bx + cx + d (34-35d)
\end{align}
\end{subequations}

8.21.1 Prime Equation Numbers

First an equation.
\begin{equation}\label{e:previous}
A=B First an equation.
\end{equation}
A=B (8.36)
That was equation \eqref{e:previous}.
That was equation (8.36).
Then the same, with a prime on the number.
\begin{equation} Then the same, with a prime on the number.
\tag{\ref{e:previous}$’$}
C=D (8.360 )
\label{e:prevprime}
C=D And that was equation (8.360 ).
\end{equation}
And that was equation \eqref{e:prevprime}.

Notice, by the way, that when a \ref occurs inside a \tag, and that \tag is
then \label’d, a \ref for the the second \label requires three runs of LATEX in order
to get the proper value. (If you run through the logic of LATEX’s cross-referencing
mechanisms as they apply in this case, you will see that this is necessary.) Note the use
of \eqref: instead of simply giving the “number,” it also enclose the equation number
in parentheses.

8.21.2 Equation Numbers on Both Sides

I don’t know why anyone wants to do this, but here is the solution just in case.3
3 Provided by mytex of the CTEX Community.

,
 8.22 A List of Options of the amsmath Package 87

\makeatletter
\def\xlabel#1#2{%
{\@bsphack\protected@write\@auxout{}%
{\string\newlabel{#2}{{#1}{\thepage}}}%
\@esphack}{\mathrm(#1)}}
\makeatother
(H1) x=y+z (1)
\begin{flalign} (H2) a = b2 + c2 − a (2)
\xlabel{H1}{eq:refL}&&x=y+z&&
\label{eq:ee1}\\
\xlabel{H2}{eq:xxy}&&a=b^2+c^2-a&&
\label{eq:ee2}
\end{flalign}

8.21.3 Equation numbers with the subeqnarray package

The subeqnarray package defines the subeqnarray and subeqnarray* environments,

which behave like the equivalent eqnarray and eqnarray* environments, except that
the individual lines are numbered like 1a, 1b, 1c, etc. Here’s an application:

\begin{subeqnarray}
\label{eqw} \slabel{eq0}
x & = & a \times b \\
\slabel{eq1} x = a×b (8.37a)
& = & z + t\\ = z+t (8.37b)
\slabel{eq2}
= z+t (8.37c)
& = & z + t
\end{subeqnarray} The first equation is number (8.37a), the last
The first equation is number~\eqref{eq0}, is (8.37c). The equation as a whole can be
the last is~\eqref{eq2}. The referred to as equation (8.37).
equation as a whole can be referred to as
equation~\eqref{eqw}.

0 Exercise

1. There is a more powerful package called subeqn. Study it!

8.22 A List of Options of the amsmath Package

1
The amsmath package has the following options:

• centertags
(default) Place equation numbers vertically centered on the total height of the
equation when using the split environment.

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 88 When TEX Dates Math

• tbtags
If the equation numbers are on the right, place equation numbers level with the
last line. If the equation numbers are on the left, place equation numbers level with
the first line.

• sumlimimts
(default) Place the subscripts and superscripts of summation symbols above and
below,
Q N in displayed equations. It also affects other symbols of the same type, e.g.,
, . However, it doesn’t affect integrals.

• nosumlimits
Place the subscripts and superscripts of summation-type symbols to the side, even
in displayed equations.

• intlimits
It is just like sumlimits, but it works for integral symbols.

• nointlimits
(default) Opposite of intlimits.

• namelimits
(default) It is just like sumlimits, but it works for functions, e.g., det, lim, etc.,
which traditionally have subscripts placed underneath when they occur in a dis-
played equation.

• nonamelimits
You can guess its function, can’t you?

8.23 Commutative Diagrams—The amscd Package

Some commands for producing simple commutative diagrams based on arrays are
available in the amscd package. It provides some useful shorthand forms for specifying
the decorated arrows and other connectors.
In the CD environment the notations @>>>, @<<<, @VVV, and @AAA give right, left,
down, and up arrows, respectively. For example,

\[\begin{CD} cov(L) −−−−→ non(K) −−−−→ cf(K)

\cov(L) @>>> \non(K) @>>> \cf(K)\\  x x
@VVV @AAA @AAA \\
  
y  
\add(L) @>>> \add(K) @>>> \cov(K)\\
\end{CD}\] add(L) −−−−→ add(K) −−−−→ cov(K)

Decorations on the arrows are specified as follows. For the horizontal arrows,
material between the first and second > or < symbols will be typeset as a superscript,
and material between the second and third will be typeset as a subscript. Similarly,
material between the first and second, or second and third, As or Vs of vertical arrows
will be typeset as left or right “side-scripts”.
The notations @= and @| give horizontal and vertical double lines.
A “null arrow” (produced by @) can be used instead of a visible arrow to fill out
an array where needed.

,
 8.24 Coloring Your Math—The color Package 89

\[\begin{CD}
j
S^{W_\Lambda}\otimes T @>j>> S WΛ ⊗ T −−−−→ T
T \\ 



@VVV @VV{\mathop{\rm End} P}V\\ y yEnd P
(S\otimes T)/I @= (Z\otimes T)/J (S ⊗ T )/I (Z ⊗ T )/J
\end{CD}\]

8.24 Coloring Your Math—The color Package

There is no difference in producing colored text and colored math expression. With the
color package, you can do this:

\begin{equation}
\textcolor{blue}{f(x)}=\int_1^\infty Z ∞
1
\textcolor{red}{\frac{1}{x^2}}\,\rd x=1 f (x) = dx = 1 (8.38)
1 x2
\end{equation}

8.25 Packages Smarter Than Me

8.25.1 The polynom package

Here comes a package that is better at math than I am. An example should shed some
light on its usage:

x2 + 2x + 2


x−1 x3 + x2 −1
− x3 + x2
2x2
\polylongdiv{x^3+x^2-1}{x-1}
− 2x2 + 2x
2x − 1
− 2x + 2
1

Here are more examples:

1 1 0 −1
\polyhornerscheme[x=1]{x^3+x^2-1} 1 1 2 2
1 2 2 1

 √  √ 
1 1 13 1 13
\polyfactorize{2x^3+x^2-7x+3} 2 x− 2 x+ 2 + 2 x+ 2 − 2

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 90 When TEX Dates Math

Also, the output of \polylonggcd{(x-1)(x-1)(x^2+1)}{(x-1)(x+1)(x+1)} is:

x4 − 2x3 + 2x2 − 2x + 1 = x3 + x2 − x − 1 · x − 3 + 6x2 − 4x − 2
5
x3 + x2 − x − 1 = 6x2 − 4x − 2 · 61 x + 18 + 49 x − 49

6x2 − 4x − 2 = 49 x − 94 · 27 9



2 x+ 2 +0

8.25.2 The longdiv package

The longdiv is actually a TEX package. So you should load it with ‘\input longdiv.tex’.
Now take a look at what you can do with it:

15707
2 31415
20000
11415
10000
\longdiv{31415}{2}
1415
1400
15
14
1

8.26 The mathlig Package

The mathlig is a TEX package and should be loaded by ‘\input mathlig.tex’. It can
produce special “math ligatures,” like these:

\mathlig{->}{\rightarrow}
\mathlig{<-}{\leftarrow} →, ←, ↔
\mathlig{<->}{\leftrightarrow}
$->$, $<-$, $<->$

8.27 Miscellaneous
8.27.1 Canceling out—The cancel Package
Another short section. (Happy?) After loading the cancel package, you can do this:

\[f(x)=\frac{(x^2+1)\cancel{(x-1)}} (x2 + 1) −

(x 1)

f (x) =
{\cancel{(x-1)}(x+1)}\] (x − 1)(x + 1)
 

8.27.2 The units and nicefrac Packages

About the loading of the packages: (1) When you load the units package, the nicefrac
package is loaded automatically; (2) The units package itself has two options, tight
and loose. The default value, tight, indicates a thin space will be added between
the number and the unit. The option loose will add a normal word spacing between

,
 8.27 Miscellaneous 91

the number and the unit. You should remember that I have said that a thin space is
preferable! (3) The nicefrac package has two options, nice and ugly. We’ll talk a little
bit about them in a short while. (4) Options specified for the units package will be
passed on to the nicefrac package. (5) The nicefrac package can be used independently.
Let’s now take a look how this package can be used. Suppose no options are
specified; i.e., the options tight and nice are used, this is what you are going to get:

\unit[20]{cm}\\ 20 cm
\unitfrac[20]{m}{s}\\ 20 m/s
\nicefrac[\textsf]{m}{s} m/s

However, if the \ugly option is specified, the command \unitfrac[20]{m}{s}

will produce 20 m/s.
My recommendation is to use \usepackage[ugly]{units} which would produce
the output I’ve been proposing in this book.

8.27.3 Math in Titles—The maybemath Package

The maybemath package provides a set of commands for adjusting math mode typesetting
to match the context of the surrounding paragraph.
For context-sensitive boldness use \maybebm:

Normal $x^2+\maybebm{x^3}+\cdots$\\ Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·

\textbf{$x^2+\maybebm{x^3}+\cdots$} x2 + x3 + · · ·

For context-sensitive upright math typesetting use \mayberm:

Normal $x^2+\mayberm{x^3}+\cdots$\\ Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·

\textit{$x^2+\mayberm{x^3}+\cdots$} x2 + x3 + · · ·

Alternatively, to force \mathit in italic contexts use \maybeit:

Normal $x^2+\maybeit{x^3}+\cdots$\\ Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·

\textit{$x^2+\maybeit{x^3}+\cdots$} x2 + x 3 + · · ·

The functionality of both \mayberm and \maybeit is combined for convenience in

the command \maybeitrm:

Normal $x^2+\maybeitrm{x^3}+\cdots$\\ Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·

\textit{$x^2+\maybeitrm{x^3}+\cdots$} x2 + x 3 + · · ·

For context-sensitive sans-serif math typesetting use \maybesf:

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 92 When TEX Dates Math

Normal $x^2+\maybesf{x^3}+\cdots$\\ Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·

\textit{$x^2+\maybesf{x^3}+\cdots$} x2 + x3 + · · ·

For combined bold-and-sans-serif context handling, a \maybebmsf command is

provided:

Normal $x^2+\maybebmsf{x^3}+\cdots$\\
Normal x2 + x3 + · · ·
\textbf{$x^2+\maybebmsf{x^3}+\cdots$}\\
x2 + x3 + · · ·
\textsf{$x^2+\maybebmsf{x^3}+\cdots$}\\
x2 + x3 + · · ·
\textbf{\textsf{$x^2+\maybebmsf{x^3}+
x2 + x3 + · · ·
\cdots$}}

The most important application of this package is to control the font in titles. If you
are using the default book or article class files, type things like ‘\section{... $\maybebm{...}$}’
to get the correct font.

8.27.4 The nccmath Package

The nccmath package extends the amsmath package. It also improves spacing control
before display equations and fixes a bug of ignoring the \displaybreak in the amsmath
version of the equation environment.
Its first feature is a modification to the \intertext command:

a + b = c + d.
\begin{align*}
a+b&=c+d.
\intertext[1cm]{Therefore,} Therefore,
e+f&=g+h.
\end{align*}

e + f = g + h.

As you can see, the additional option can specify a vertical space inserted before
and after the text. If it is omitted, standard TEX’s skips are inserted.
It also allows you to create a series of medium-sized mathematics:

\[\medmath{\cfrac{1}{\sqrt 2 + 1
1
\cfrac{1}{\sqrt 2 +\dotsb}}}
√ 1 √ 1
\quad \cfrac{1}{\sqrt 2 +\cfrac{1} 2+ √ 2+ √
2 + ···
{\sqrt 2 +\dotsb}}\] 2 + ···

Now medium-sized operators:

X XX
$\sum_{i=1}^n \medop\sum_{i=1}^n
\displaystyle\sum\nolimits_{i=1}^n$ Xn n n n
Pn n P
\quad $\sum\limits_{i=1}^n i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1 i=1
\displaystyle \medop\sum_{i=1}^n
\sum_{i=1}^n$

,
 8.28 Two Powerful Packages Mentioned Merely in Passing 93

There are also commands for producing medium-sized integral, fractions, binomial
coefficient, and matrix.

$\int_a^b\medint\int_a^b
\displaystyle\int_a^b$\quad
Rb Z b
Z b RR b ZZ b
a a a a
$\iint_a^b\medint\iint_a^b$ a

$\frac{x+y}{a-b} \mfrac{x+y}{a-b}  
\dfrac{x+y}{a-b}$\quad x+y x + y x+y n

 n  n
$\binom{n}{k} \mbinom{n}{k} a−b a − b a−b k k k
\dbinom{n}{k}$

$\bigl(\begin{smallmatrix} a&b\\c&d
\end{smallmatrix}\bigr)$
 
$\Bigl(\begin{mmatrix} a&b\\c&d a b

a b a b
\end{mmatrix}\Bigr)$ c d c d c d
$\begin{pmatrix} a&b\\c&d
\end{pmatrix}$

This package actually has more features. Please refer to ftp://ftp.sunsite.utk.

edu/pub/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/ncctools/doc/nccmath.pdf.

8.28 Two Powerful Packages Mentioned Merely in Passing

There are two more amazing, brilliant packages I really want to show you. However, they
cause some compatibility issues which disturb the compilation of my book. What’s more,
they themselves come with easy-to-read and well-written documentations. Anyway, I’d
like to give you an overview.
The first package to mention is the nath package. Here is an excerpt from the
documentation of the package:
Nath is a LATEX style to separate presentation and content in mathematical
typography. The style delivers a particular context-dependent presentation on the
basis of a rather coarse context-independent notation. Although essentially back-
ward compatible with LATEX, Nath aims at producing traditional math typography
even from sources devoid of aesthetic ambitions. Its name is derived from “natural
math notation.”
This description is quite accurate: The nath package has quite some compatibility
issues, but its functions are amazing! I strongly recommend that you read its mar-
velous documentation, which could be obtained at http://texcatalogue.sarovar.
org/entries/nath.html.
Another one is the mathenv package, which can ease your work to a large extent.
The documentation is available at ftp://ftp.sunsite.utk.edu/pub/CTAN/macros/
latex/contrib/bosisio/mathenv
.html.

à
94 When TEX Dates Math

,
 9
Tables and Graphics

9.1 External graphics are a lot of fun

Graphics are always a good thing—they are not miserable to look at, they increase the
length of your paper dramatically. . . . They are just great!
In Microsoft Word, you can insert a graphics by “drag-and-drop.” In LATEX, you
don’t even need to drag and drop. For example, if you have a photo named ColinLee.jpg,
you need to: 1) drag and picture into the folder where the TEX file you’re compiling
lives, 2) load the grahpicx package, and 3) now you could insert the picture into your
document like this:

\includegraphics[width=3cm]{ColinLee.jpg}

This book recommends that you use the PDF-LATEX typesetting engine which support
JPEG and PDF files pretty well. If you’re using the default LATEX engine, your best
choice is to use EPS files. If you use files that are not in the EPS format, you’ll have
to specify the bounding box yourself or create a .bb file to help LATEX decides the
bounding box of the image. On the contrary, PDF-LATEX does not support EPS files.
bb=10 20 100 200 sets
As you’ve seen in the example, the \includegraphics command could be followed the left bottom point of
by optional argument. width is one of them; there are also height, totalheight, scale the bounding box to be
(this should be a number), angle, origin (the point that the image rotates along) and (10, 20) and the top right
bb. point to be (100, 200).

9.2 Structuring a table

We get started with a simple table that illustrates most of LATEX’s own commands for
constructing tables.

à
 96 Tables and Graphics

\begin{tabular}{|r|c|r|}
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{AT\&T Common Stock}\\ AT&T Common Stock
\hline
Year Price Dividend
Year & Price & \multicolumn{1}{c|}{Dividend}\\
1971 41–54 $2.60
\hline
2 41–54 2.70
1971 & 41--54 & \$2.60\\\hline
3 46–55 2.97
2 & 41--54 & 2.70\\\cline{2-3}
3 & 46--55 & 2.97\\\hline
\end{tabular}

As you can see, a table is created with the tabular environment. We set up the
general layout of the table by providing special argument right after \begin{tabular},
using a combination of c (centered), r (right-aligned), l (left-aligned), and p{width}
(a column with automatic line breaks to cater to the specified width). Vertical lines are
specified with ‘|’.
Columns are separated with & (You don’t need to put a & before the first column
though). In other words, a & indicates a jump to the next column. \\ simply starts a
new row and the \hline command produces a horizontal line. Of course, two \hline’s
produce two consecutive horizontal lines. Sometimes, you might want a horizontal line
for just a few of the columns; this is done with the \cline{a-b}” command, where
a is the index number of starting column, and b is the number of the ending column.
For instance, in our example, \cline{2-3} produces a partial horizontal line under the
second and the third columns.
We could “merge cells” with \multicolumn{number }{position}{text}. The number
parameter specifies the total number of cells to merge; the position parameter specifies
how to align the text in the cell; and of course, you need to provide what text to
be placed in the merged cell. You might be wondering why I “merged” one cell in
the example. The reason is that all the text in this column has been specified to be
right-aligned, and I want to center the text in this cell. The \multicolumn command
provides a perfect work around.
There’s one more thing that can be useful in specifying the general layout of the
table: @{...}. It eliminates the space between any two columns and replaces it with the
... that you provide. As you could imagine, if you say r@{}l, then the right-aligned
column will literally “kiss” the left-aligned column. Here’s a very good example from
The Not So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε with some minor modification:

\begin{tabular}{c r @{.} l}
\hline
Pi expression &
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Value} \\ Pi expression Value
\hline π 3.1416
$\pi$ & 3&1416 \\ ππ 36.46
$\pi^{\pi}$ & 36&46 \\ (π π )π 80662.7
$(\pi^{\pi})^{\pi}$ & 80662&7 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
A recent trend is that the design of tables is getting simpler—most modern tables
have no vertical lines and few horizontal lines (like the ones you’ve seen in this book).
LATEX is quite capable of producing these tables, but the booktabs provides a few
commands that is going to ease your work a lot!

,
 9.3 Tables that travel a long way 97

Table 1: The ISOGRK3 entity set Continued from previous page

Entity Unicode Name Unicode
Entity Unicode Name Unicode
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
alpha GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA 03BA
Continued on next page

1 2
Figure 9.1: Tables that travel a long way

\tiny
\def\figurespace{\phantom{0}}

\begin{tabular}{@{}crrrr@{}}
\toprule
&\multicolumn{2}{c}{Export contracts (\%)}
&\multicolumn{2}{c}{Import contracts (\%)}\\ Export contracts (%) Import contracts (%)

\cmidrule(lr){2-3} \cmidrule(l){4-5} Year In yen In dollars In yen In dollars

1970 0.9 90.4 0.3 80.0

Year & In yen & In dollars 1975 17.5 78.0 0.9 89.9
1980 28.9 66.3 2.4 93.1
& In yen & In dollars\\
\midrule
1970 & \figurespace0.9 & 90.4 & 0.3 & 80.0\\
1975 & 17.5 & 78.0 & 0.9 & 89.9\\
1980 & 28.9 & 66.3 & 2.4 & 93.1\\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

The commands \toprule, \midrule, and \bottomrule are self-explanatory. The

\cmidrule is like \cline, but you could use r and l put in parentheses to specify which
side of the line to truncate.

9.3 Tables that travel a long way

After loading the longtable package, the work is easy:

\begin{longtable}{@{}lll@{}}
\caption{The ISOGRK3 entity set}\\
\toprule
Entity & Unicode Name & Unicode \\ \midrule
\endfirsthead
\multicolumn{3}{r}{Continued from previous page}\\
\toprule
Entity & Unicode Name & Unicode \\ \midrule

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98 Tables and Graphics

Figure 9.2: A picture of Colin and his super friend, Lee.

\endhead
\midrule
\multicolumn{3}{r}{Continued on next page}
\endfoot
\bottomrule
\endlastfoot
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
alpha & GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA & 03BA\\
......

9.4 Floating tables and figures around

Using \begin{tabular} and \includegraphics orders LATEX to place the table and
image “here,” and without a caption. But most publications today require a more
flexible mechanism—tables and figures are hardly placed right after a paragraph, and it
is generally agreed that such statements as “Refer to the figure below:” are bad and
should be replaced with something similar to “Refer to figure 3.14.” Luckily, LATEX is
born with the support for such “floating bodies.”
A floating figure is created with the figure environment and a floating table is
constructed with table.
For example, figure 9.2 is created with

\begin{figure}[bt]
\includegraphics[width=3cm]{ColinLee.jpg}
\caption{A picture of Colin and his super friend, Lee.}
\label{samplefigure}
\end{figure}

Similarly, you can create a floating table with something like:

\begin{table}[tbhp]
\centering
\caption{...}
\begin{tabular}
...
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

,
 9.5 Customizing your captions 99

Table 9.1: Parameters for controlling the float bodies.

topnumber The maximum number of floats allowed at the top of the page
(default to 2). It can be changed with \setcounter.
bottomnumber The maximum number of floats allowed at the bottom of the page
(default to 1). It can be changed with \setcounter.
totalnumber The maximum number of floats allowed on a page (default to 3).
It can be changed with \setcounter.
\topfraction Maximum fraction of the page that can be occupied by floats
at the top of the page (default to 0.7). It can be changed with
\renewcommand.
\bottomfraction Maximum fraction of the page that can be occupied by floats at
the bottom of the page (default to 0.3). It can be changed with
\renewcommand.
\floatsep Rubber length specifying the vertical space added between floats
(default to 12pt plus 2pt minus 2pt for 10 pt and 11 pt docu-
ments, and 14pt plus 2pt minus 4pt for 12 pt documents). This
can be changed with \setlength.
\textfloatsep Rubber length specifying the vertical space added between floats
and the text (default to 20pt plus 2pt minus 4pt).
\intextsep Rubber length specifying the vertical space added below and above
a float that is positioned in the middle of the text.

You might have noticed that there are a few optional arguments immediately
following \begin{table} and \begin{figure}. There are actually give of them in
total and you can use a combination of any one of them. t stands for top, b for bottom,
p for page, h for here, and ! means to ignore most of the internal parameters (e.g., the
maximum number of floats allowed on a page). Then [tb] means that LATEXcould place
the figure at the top or at the bottom of a page. Note that h doesn’t necessarily mean
that LATEX will place the figure here, but that LATEX will try its best to put it here. If
the page doesn’t have enough space to hold the figure, a different parameter will be
chosen.
Table 9.1 lists some of the most important parameters for controlling the floating
environments.

9.5 Customizing your captions

Captions can be easily customized with the caption package.
caption2 used to be my
All the most useful parameters are listed in table ??.
choice, but it is not
You could pass these options to the package itself, like what you do with the obsolete. Sigh . . .
geometry package. For example, the following code is legitimate:

\usepackage[textfont={rm,it},labelfont{sf}]{caption}

An alternative is to use the \captionsetup command:

\captionsetup[type]{option-value-list}

The advantage is that you’ll be able to specify the “type” of caption that you want to
define. For example, if you say \captionsetup[figure], only the caption of figures
will be affected.

à
100 Tables and Graphics

Table 9.2: Parameters for changing captions.

Parameter Explanation
singlelinecheck Checks if the whole option fits on a single line. If so, it will be
centered.
format The default format is the the standard LATEX format. The alter-
native is hang, which specifies that the caption be set with the
label to the left of the caption text; i.e., continuation lines are
indented by the width of the label.
margin, width Sets the width and the margin of the caption.
indentation Sets the indentation of continuation lines.
font Defines the font characteristics for the entire caption. It can take
a set of keywords values including rm, sf, tt, md, bf, up, it, sl,
sc, scriptsize, footnotesize, small, normalsize, large, or
Large. For example, font={sf,bf} sets the caption in the bold
sans serif typeface.
labelfont Sets the font of the label.
textfont Sets the font of the text of the caption.
labelsep Sets the separation between the label and the text. Keywords
include colon, period, space, and newline.
justification Specifies how the paragraph should be justified. Available keywords
are raggedleft, raggedright, centerfirst, and centerlast.
parskip Sets the space between paragraphs in multi-paragraph captions.
aboveskip Sets the space between the caption and float body.
belowskip Space on the opposite side of the caption.

The captions in this book are set up with the following code:

\DeclareCaptionFont{blue}{\color{blue}}
\captionsetup{justification=raggedright,
singlelinecheck=false,font={blue,sf,small}}