LaTeX is the pre-eminent system for technical and academic publishing. However, it has a steep learning curve. Whole communities have sprung up to try and make sense of it. If you are coming from Word (Microsoft 365), the transition can be jarring. That said, LaTeX is worth the effort: it creates beautiful documents, gives you fine-grained control over everything, and is the de facto standard for academic and technical publishing. So here is an informal guide that addresses the most common things that you, a Word user, might need to do. In Part 2 I’ll dig deeper with practical tips for switching over.
Contents
Where to get LaTeX
A good place to start is Overleaf, which provides a web-based LaTeX environment. If you anticipate spending a lot of time in LaTeX, or need to be able to work largely offline, then install LaTeX locally on your PC. Popular choices are MikTeX and TeXLive. If you’ve never touched LaTeX before, MikTeX is slightly easier to get to grips with. However, if you really are going to be offline a lot, TeXLive installs everything you need right away, whereas MikTeX prefers to install pieces on demand, which is no use if you are on the road and disconnected.
Getting oriented
LaTeX describes itself as a document preparation system, not a word processor. This is a polite way of saying that it pushes you strongly towards a content-first view of writing: focus on your words, and trust that LaTeX will make it look pretty. You shouldn’t be thinking, “does this header need to be in 10-point Calibri?” The closest equivalent in Word would be if you forced yourself to only ever use a pre-built template and only ever applied formatting that was defined in the Styles Gallery on the ribbon. You might think of LaTeX applying the “styles” metaphor to every part of the document.
What’s with the \ % } { $ stuff?
You’ll see this all over LaTeX documents. Think of LaTeX a bit like a special language where your content (your words) is mingled with instructions on how to process those words (make them large, format them, etc.) The symbols are clues to the computer to stop treating what it sees as just your words and start doing something with them.
-
The percent sign
%identifies comments in the document. These are comments internal to the document itself, e.g. comments you might make about an imported package, and not in the Word sense, of material that the author wants other collaborators to see and respond to concerning the content of the document. -
Dollar sign
$tells LaTeX to enter/leave “math mode”, which produces better-looking results for mathematical equations and symbols. Even if you don’t expect to use math in your document, you may still come across math mode from time to time, because the symbols creep into everyday usage and generally look better when formatted in math mode than in regular text. -
\precedes a command. For example,\textbf, to make what follows boldface. The curly braces enclose things that need to be operated on, and remove ambiguity, for example,\textbf{one two}compared to\textbf one two.
\ also has another use: when you want to include a special character
(like, “%”) in your document text, without it being confused for a LaTeX command
or comment, you can ‘escape’ it by preceding it with backslash: \% say.
Use this technique when you need to write symbols such as # (hash sign),
$ (dollar sign), _ (underscore), and either of {} (curly braces). More on this
in Part 2
The new model will be sold for under \$ 50.
Templates and styles
“All I want to do is create documents in a standard format”
Approximate equivalent in Word: templates and styles.
documentclass
For Word template, think LaTeX documentclass. The class gives you a bunch of
prebuilt settings and styles that are tuned for that type of document.
For example, article sets up for single-column, one-sided printing,
and 10-point type, among other things, whereas report and letter handle
things differently.
Settings can be overridden. For example, maybe you need A4 paper instead of US Letter, or you want a different type size. No problem:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{letter}
usepackage
Sometimes you need more than what a document class can give you by itself.
Maybe you are writing an article, but need multiple levels of bullets, and
advanced math symbols. Word has extensive functionality for common situations
but once you reach the limit of its capabilities, there is nowhere to go.
By contrast, LaTeX is extensible. You can import functionality via packages.
There are thousands of them. To import the capability of a package into your
document, use the \usepackage command, for example:
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage{lastpage}
\usepackage{hyperref}
newcommand
If you can’t find the package that does what you want, you can create your own shortcuts and functions. For example, imagine you are writing about sports teams, and you want every mention of the team name to be in small caps, and colored blue. You can create a shorthand, like this:
\usepackage{xcolor}
\newcommand{\team}[1]{%
\textsc{
\color{blue}
{#1}
}%
}
Then, you can write, say, \team{Anytown College} to get the style that you want.
CLS files
Just as in the Word universe, eventually you’ll get to a combination of
document class, packages, and other settings that you like. At this point in
Word you would create a .dot Word template file. In LaTeX, you create a
“class file” (commonly, .cls). Class files can import their own packages,
define new commands, inherit and modify document class options, and can be
referenced in turn by your documents. For example:
%% snippet of a class file, CoverLetterClass.cls
%%
\ProvidesClass{CoverLetterClass}[2024/07/29 My custom Cover Letter class]
\LoadClass{article}
\RequirePackage{geometry} % For page layout control
\RequirePackage{enumitem} % for bulleted lists
\RequirePackage{fancyhdr} % For the top-of-page header
\RequirePackage{hyperref} % For live hyperlinks eg to make LinkedIn profiles clickable
and then:
%% snippet of a document that uses the class file
\documentclass{CoverLetterClass}
\begin{document}
some text goes here
\end{document}
Just as in Word, you are not restricted to the templates (class files) that you create yourself, and you can share class files with other people. There are numerous examples online covering all kinds of use cases: resumes, business letters, presentations, etc. See for example, latextemplates.com. (If you are writing for publication it’s very likely that your publisher will supply class files or packages for you to use, so that submissions are in the right style.)
What packages do I need? What class should I use?
There’s no hard and fast rule here, but for a typical Word document, in a
corporate environment, that has, say, bullets, numbered lists, page numbers,
etc., a start would be to use the article class and the following packages:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % UTF-8 character support
\usepackage{geometry} % Page layout control
\usepackage{enumitem} % Bulleted and itemized lists
\usepackage{fancyhdr} % Headers and footers
\usepackage{hyperref} % Live hyperlinks, i.e., to make URLs clickable
\usepackage{lastpage} % "Page X of Y" support, e.g., in footers
\usepackage{textcomp} % Useful symbols, e.g. for currencies and trademark sign
\usepackage{booktabs} % Rich control over tables
\usepackage{siunitx} % Adds support for aligning columns on decimal points
% e.g. for columns of currency amounts
\usepackage{multirow} % Support for merging columns and rows into single cells
\usepackage{graphicx} % Add support for graphics. Notice the 'x' in the name!
OK, I’m ready
LaTeX tries to keep out of your way. So, start a new document file, import your packages and/or class file, tell LaTeX what class of document it is, and away you go. Like so:
\documentclass{...}
\usepackage{...}
\usepackage{...}
\begin{document}
Start typing here...
\end{document}
In Part 2, we’ll look at common requests from Word users and how to address them in LaTeX.