LaTeX

Pointers and References

Here are some places where you can learn about using LaTeX:

• A good and free tutorial/reference text is "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2" by Tobias Oetiker, Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna and Elisabeth Schlegl.
• Don't know the LaTeX code for a specific symbol? Try Detexify.
  • A wiki on Installing LaTeX on a Mac
  • Direct link to TeXShop, which is an especially friendly version for computers running OS X.5
  • On Windows machines LaTeX is often installed as MiKTeX; the current version can be found here: http://miktex.org/about
  • On Windows, together with LaTeX, several other programs are often installed such as the Emacs editor, the ghostscript viewer, and so on. How to install such a suite is given here. Note however that this is an old web site using an obsolete version of MiKTeX.
  • Friends and colleagues
  • The Internet

Common Mistakes and Advice

For proper typography, avoid the following common mistakes:

• Use $\log$ not $log$, $\sin$ not $sin$, and so on
• Do not use $...$ to italicize text, use \emph{...} instead
• Use \begin{equation} ... \end{equation} to display complicated equations (avoid the obsolete \[...\]or $$...$$ construction)
• Do not use contractions like "don't", "we're" et cetera
• Avoid the [a4paper] option when you know your text will be printed in the US
• To get bigger parenthesis you can use \left( ... \right) (other ways of doing this exist)
• Do not try to typeset your text by using ad-hoc modifiers like \nonindent or \\; when you use the right environments like \section and \begin{itemize, LaTeX will take care of the lay-out
• If you want to change the behavior of LaTeX you should try to do so in the preamble before the \begin{document}
• To get curly letters, use \mathcal, as in $x\in\mathcal{X}$
• There is a difference in how your equations get displayed between the $...$ and the \begin{equation}...\end{equation} construction. For example, $\sum_i ...$ will produce a 'squeezed' summation with the index to the side of the summation symbol, while \begin{equation} \sum_i \end{equation} puts the index under the summation. The \displaystyle command forces the math inside $...$ to appear as if you are using the \begin{equation}...\end{equation} construction. Using \displaystyle within equation environment does not serve a purpose.