Five minute guide to LaTeX

The guide

The title of the document says it all: this is a five minute guide to LaTeX, a way of typesetting documents that will save time and frustration. This guide is written to get you over the fairly steep learning curve. More LaTeX guides exist, but they all drown you in information.

The content of this guide will teach you enough to write proper documents. Before you can start, the LaTeX system needs to be installed. A guide for Windows and Mac OS X is found here. To make life even easier, download this folder structure to start LaTeXing right away.

Download

Download the guide in PDF format
Download a ZIP file. This zip-archive contains the guide itself, together with a folder structure to help you right away.

Comments?

Off course, our guide will not be perfect just yet. So, any feedback is highly appreciated; leave a comment below or fill in this contact form.

What you’ll be creating

The preamble

The preamble is pretty the much the same as all my other templates, except for some details that define this template. I will only cover those items. First the font:

\usepackage[sc]{mathpazo}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\linespread{1.05}

This enables the Palatino font. The linespread command is there to enlarge the space between lines, which is done because Palatino needs it.

Next, the lettrine package is used to create a dropped capital (a larger first character of the document):

\usepackage{lettrine}

Furthermore, the abstract package is used to customize the abstract environment a bit. The packages titlesec and fancyhdr are used to alter the section headings and page headers, respectively.

The content

The abstract is written within the abstract environment. Then, the first character of the actual content is larger and really stands out. This is possible because we’ve called the lettrine package in the preamble. The drop cap (a large letter L) is made as follows:

\lettrine[nindent=0em,lines=3]{L}

Where between the square brackets the indentation is turned off and the number of lines the drop cap spans is set to 3.

One last thing to notice is the compact list. This is done with the compactitem environment, which came when we called the paralist package in the preamble. This package was actually featured before in this post.

The result

Download PDF
Download TEX

Want more?

If there are any templates you like me to add to this section, feel free to contact me.

The longtable package

The longtable package provides a longtable environment that allows to create tables spanning multiple pages. This is perfect for the use of a nomenclature:

1. In table environments, you can align the entries. A nomenclature mostly requires two or three columns, which should be aligned!
2. For larger documents, it is likely that your nomenclature will span more than one page and the longtable package handles this perfectly.

To include the longtable package in your LaTeX document, add the following line to your preamble:

\usepackage{longtable}

Setting up the nomenclature

The nomenclature we will create here consists of three columns: the first for the symbol, the middle column for the unit and the last one for a description. Here’s how to implement it:

\begin{longtable}[l]{p{50pt} p{50pt} p{200pt}}
\textbf{Symbol}	& \textbf{Units} & \textbf{Description} \\
$L$	 	& \si{\meter}	 & Length\\
$Ma$	 	& $-$		 & Mach number\\
$p$	 	& \si{\pascal}	 & Pressure
%...
\end{longtable}

This piece of code shouldn’t be all to hard to understand. It’s much like a normal table environment. The arguments after \begin{longtable} contain information about the amount of columns (3) and their widths (respectively 50pt, 50pt, and 250pt). This can of course be changed to your own needs. Also, note that the siunitx package, with the \si command, is used here for the units.

Now that the table is created, let’s put it in a separated section. Assuming your working on a large document with a class like book or report (where \chapter is a valid command), add a section like this:

\chapter*{Nomenclature}

Suppress the section numbering, just like the table of contents, with the asterix (*).

The disadvantage of managing the nomenclature in a way as described in this post is that you’ll have to sort everything manually in order to make the list in alphabetical order. Also, with the alternatives named below you will be able to add content to the nomenclature throughout the complete document (the items will then automatically be added to the nomenclature, similar to the table of contents in LaTeX). However, it does require more time to set up and that might not be worth the trouble. Plus, I find this way more flexible in terms of styling and variance.

What else?

Now that you know how to set up your own simple glossary, let’s expand it a bit. For example, you might want to have different sections for different things (symbols, acronyms, greek symbols, indices and so on). For example, if you want to create a section with acronyms, consisting of a table with two columns, you might want to add this:

\subsection*{Acronyms}
\begin{longtable}[l]{p{50pt} p{200pt}}
RAC & Rear axle carrier  \\
FAC & Front axle carrier \\
... & ...                \\
\end{longtable}

Alternatives

As said before, a lot of alternatives exist for creating nomenclatures. To name a few:

• glossaries: a glossary package that makes use of either makeindex or xindy.
• gloss makes use of bibTeX (where \cite is replaced by \gloss).
• glosstex: this package also makes use of makeindex.
• listofsymbols: This package does not make use of an additional package for the creation of the glossary and is actually quite similar to the way described here. The difference here is that you can use the \newsym command to add items from within the document you are writing.
• nomencl and nomentbl: these packages are alike, both making use of makeindex

The following packages are just listed in a random order. The first line of each section presents the way I use the package most of the time.

amsmath

\usepackage{amsmath}

The amsmath package is the most important package of the AMS collection. This package introduces several improvements for math environments. For example, with amsmath comes the align environment. Al my display equations are captured in an align (or align* for unnumbered equations) environment, even if there’s nothing to align. This PracTeX journal by Lars Madsen encourages the use of the amsmath environments.

geometry

\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}

To adjust the margins of pages, the geometry package comes in handy. The default page margins of the entire document can be altered with package options (the syntax between square brackets after \usepackage). I use this package most of the time to create A4 paper margins, which is done with the a4paper option.

With this package it is also possible to change the margins of one particular page as was described in this post. Another post on howtoTeX.com about the geometry package is about resetting two-sided document margins.

graphicx

\usepackage{graphicx}

Nothing special about the graphicx package, but it probably is the most important of all. This package introduces the \includegraphics command, which is needed for inserting figures.

nag

\RequirePackage[l2tabu, orthodox]{nag}

This package deserved a post on howtoTeX.com already. Actually, this package doesn’t do anything as long as your syntax is right. Load the package in the first lines of your preamble (even before the \documentclass command). It then checks for obsolete LaTeX packages and outdated commands. The documentation can be found here.

microtype

\usepackage{microtype}

The microtype package improves the spacing between words and letters. It does a lot more and most people won’t notice the difference. But still, the resulting document will be easier to read and looks better when microtype is loaded. Load this package after fonts, if any, as the package behavior is dependent on this font.

siunitx

\usepackage{siunitx}

The siunitx package greatly simplifies TeXing when writing scientific documents, where units and numbers are a big part of the writing. This package adds commands like \num for typesetting numbers in all sorts of ways and \si for units. The commands I use a lot are \SI and \SIrange. For example, \SI{10}{\hertz} results in ‘10Hz‘ in text (this is especially useful to prevent typo’s; I tend to write HZ or hz a lot instead of Hz). The \SIrange command requires one more input variable: \SIrange{10}{100}{\hertz} produces ‘10Hz to 100Hz‘.

Note that the siunitx package was already featured in an earlier post on this blog.

cleveref

\usepackage{cleveref}

Another fascinating LaTeX package is cleveref. This package introduces the \cref command. When using this command to make cross-references, instead of \ref or \eqref, a word is placed in front of the reference according to the type of reference: fig. for figures, eq. for equations. Hence, another LaTeX package that simplifies the writing. The package was earlier mentioned in this post. In that post it is also shown how to change the words in front of references.

hyperref

\usepackage[colorlinks=false, pdfborder={0 0 0}]{hyperref}

The possibilities with hyperref seem to be endless. The most prominent feature of this package is the hyperlinking; when referring to a figure, the reference becomes hyperlinked such that it takes you to the corresponding figure when you click on it.
Also, hyperref allows you to add PDF metadata to the compiled PDF.
One last note on this package: as a rule of thumb it should be loaded at the end of the preamble, after all the other packages. A few exceptions exist, such as the cleveref package that is also mentioned in this post. Hence, cleveref should be loaded after hyperref. More exceptions are listed in this post on TeX.SE.

booktabs

\usepackage{booktabs}

The booktabs package allows you to create tables without vertical separators. These separators are just unnecessary and plain ugly. Creating a table with booktabs is however more of a pain than the normal way of creating LaTeX tables. Therefore, I dedicated a post on how to create nice tables with the booktabs package earlier.

Download

A small latex file, mostly a preamble, is available for downloading here. In this file, all packages from above are already included. Happy TeXing!

Did I miss something?

Of course, this post is a great one for discussion. I’m interested in the packages you think should be represented in this list. Leave a comment below!

Static and dynamic parts of a preamble

First, split your preamble in a static and a dynamic part. With static part, I mean the part of the preamble that is not likely to change during the time you’re working on a certain LaTeX project. Think of: most packages, standard macros you always use, and so on. End your static preamble with an important command: \endofdump. The precompiled preamble will contain everything above this line.

In the dynamic part, stuff that might change every now and then should be put. Think of the \title, \author and \date commands, as well as \includeonly if you’ve followed the first post in this series. As a side note: if you’re using the minitoc package, include it in the dynamic part as well (mylatexformat doesn’t work with it).

So to summarize, your preamble should have the following layout:

% static part
...
\endofdump
%dynamic part
...
\begin{document}

How to precompile the preamble

Now for the hard part. For this example we’ll be using a LaTeX file called mydoc.tex.
One last note: I’ve tested this trick on both Mac OS X with TeXlive and Windows with MikTeX. For Linux, I guess the syntax is all the same. If not, I I hope the readers will comment the right syntax in the comments below ;-) Let’s start!

1. Make sure you preamble as the upper mentioned distinction of static and dynamic part, separated by the \endofdump command.
2. Open terminal. Put mydoc.tex either in the root folder of your computer or navigate in the Terminal command prompt the folder containing mydoc.tex.
3. In Terminal, run the following command:

   pdftex -ini -jobname="mydoc" "&pdflatex" mylatexformat.ltx mydoc.tex

   You might get an LaTeX error message (File `mydoc.mtc0′ not found). Ignore that by pressing return. Now a file called mydoc.fmt should be created among others. This one contains the precompiled preamble. The command &pdflatex can be changed to &latex, &xetex, and so on (depending on with you’re using).

4. In order to load the mydoc.fmt format, add %&mydoc to the very first line of mydoc.tex. Hence, it will look something like this:

   %&mydoc
   ...
   \begin{document}

   Notice that the static part of the preamble is removed, as that is all stored in the mydoc.fmt file. So if you haven’t done this already: comment the static part of the preamble (with %, off course)!

Saved time

I was interested in how much time I actually saved with this little trick, so I made a little comparison. I made two versions of mydoc.tex: mydoc-noformat.tex for the original file and mydoc-format.tex for the file with precompiled preamble and with the %&mydoc line added. The files are available for downloading below.

Without a precompiled preamble, the process took 1.864 seconds. With the format file created, compiling mydoc-format.tex only took 0.531 seconds. That is more than three times as fast!!

Download

A ZIP archive is made, containing to beamer documents; one with and one without precompiled preamble. Download it here. The beamer class was chosen to exaggerate the effect of precompiled preambles (as loading the beamer class requires quite some time).

The geometry package

If you haven’t already, call the geometry package in the preamble:

\usepackage{geometry}

By the way: I suggest you always call this package as it is one of the LaTeX essential packages in my opinion.

Example

I’ll give an example of the \newgeometry command. First, let’s say you have an initial page layout defined in you preamble:

\usepackage[a4paper]{geometry}

Note that this is purely illustrative, you do not have to chose for a4paper.

Then you stumble upon a page of which you want to adjust the margins. In you LaTeX code, go to a line that is one that page and add the following:

\newgeometry{left=3cm,bottom=0.1cm}

Hence, the page will have a left margin of 3cm and a bottom margin of 0.1cm. The right and top margins remain unchanged.

In order to go back to the original (a4paper) layout, type:

\restoregeometry

Done! Easy!

Alternatives

A lot of alternative ways exist for adjust margins of a single page. Just to name a few of them:

• The adjustwidth macro that comes with the memoir class
• The chngpage package
• The geometry package together with the geometric package
• The \enlargethispage command if you only want to add one or two extra lines to your page

However, upper mentioned alternatives require either a certain documentclass (memoir) or additional packages. I find the one described in this post perfect.

This CV will be set up in a similar way to the previous one. However, the big difference is that this designer’s CV makes use of a two column layout, where the left column’s width is smaller than that of the right.

What you’ll be creating

Document properties and packages

Probably for the first time on this blog, we will be using the memoir documentclass. The reason for this are the endless possibilities that this class offers. I do not expect you to read the full documentation of memoir, as we will only be using a small part of it. The first line of your document:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt,final]{memoir}

Next, some design specifications are required. Add the following lines to the preamble:

\renewcommand{\familydefault}{bch}
\pagestyle{empty}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

The first line changes the document’s font to the modern looking Charter font. The second line tells LaTeX not to print page numbers etc. and the last line removes the indentation of paragraphs.

Also, quite a few package are required for this CV.

\usepackage{flowfram}
\usepackage[top=1cm,left=1cm,right=1cm,bottom=1cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage[usenames,dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage{multicol}
	\setlength{\multicolsep}{0pt}
\usepackage{paralist}
\usepackage{tikz}

Most of them should be known: geometry for layout settings, graphicx for figures, url for hyper refs and xcolor for colors. The flowfram package is the most important one, as this package allows you to create the special two column layout. The multicol and paralist packages will be used to create a two column list. Note that the latter package was also used in my post about how to create compact lists in LaTeX. Lastly, the TikZ is used to create the dotted vertical line in the template (more on that in the next section).

Create column layout

The unevenly spaced columns in the CV are created with the flowfram package. This package is rather complicated, so if you don’t follow what’s going on in the following I suggest you read the flowfram documentation.

First, two length commands will be defined:

\setlength{\vcolumnsep}{\baselineskip}
\setlength{\columnsep}{\vcolumnsep}

For the frame setup we use:

% left frame
\newflowframe{0.2\textwidth}{\textheight}{0pt}{0pt}[left]
	\newlength{\LeftMainSep}
	\setlength{\LeftMainSep}{0.2\textwidth}
	\addtolength{\LeftMainSep}{2\columnsep}

In order to change the left column width find the two lengths that say 0.2\textwidth and adjust them. For the right frame, we add:

% right frame
\newflowframe{0.7\textwidth}{\textheight}{\LeftMainSep}{0pt}[main01]

To change this frame’s width adjust the 0.7\textwidth length.

Lastly, creating the vertical line between the columns using TikZ:

\renewcommand{\ffvrule}[3]{%
\hfill
\tikz{%
	\draw[loosely dotted,color=RoyalBlue,line width=1.5pt,yshift=-#1] 
	(0,0) -- (0pt,#3);}%
\hfill\mbox{}}
\insertvrule{flow}{1}{flow}{2}

Now, the above might be a bit difficult to understand. No problem, because all you might want to change here is the width of the columns.

Define macros (for convience)

Let’s define some commands that will make typesetting the CV a lot easier. First two vertical spacing commands to make the spacing between sections and item consistent. Note that we’ve also used these commands in the previous CV tutorial.

\newcommand{\Sep}{\vspace{1.5em}}
\newcommand{\SmallSep}{\vspace{0.5em}}

We’ll also define an environment for the ‘About me’ section:

\newenvironment{AboutMe}
	{\ignorespaces\textbf{\color{RoyalBlue} About me}}
	{\Sep\ignorespacesafterend}

Hence this environment is called AboutMe and can be used with \begin{AboutMe}...\end{AboutMe}.

Two more commands are introduced to create a new section (\CVSection) and to create a new item/entry (\CVItem).

\newcommand{\CVSection}[1]
	{\Large\textbf{#1}\par
	\SmallSep\normalsize\normalfont}
\newcommand{\CVItem}[1]
	{\textbf{\color{RoyalBlue} #1}}

That’s it for the preamble part!

Begin document

My advice now would be to open the downloaded .tex file and see how the left and right frames are filled with content. I’ll give a very brief explanation on what is done.

Left frame

The left frame consists of a figure environment for a photo of yourself, if wanted. Just remove the corresponding lines if you’d like a CV without photo. Thereafter, your name, phone and email are printed. This text is right-aligned with the flushright environment.

Right frame

The right frame is set up similar to the plain CV I wrote about earlier. First, the previously define AboutMe environment is used. Thereafter, several sections are created. This all speaks for itself I hope, but if not: feel free to leave a comment!

One thing worth mentioning is the two column list in the template. This is done by creating a two column minipage with the multicols environment. Within this environment, a list is created with compactitem. This is part of the paralist package, which you might remember from an earlier post.

The result

Download PDF
Download ZIP. This zip-archive contains the PDF, TEX and photo file that were used in this tutorial.

Want more?

If there are any templates you like me to add to this section, feel free to contact me.

The nag package

Let’s implement the nag package. This goes a little different than normal packages. In your preamble, the first line should be like this:

\RequirePackage[l2tabu, orthodox]{nag}

Again, this should be the first line. So the package is called before the documentclass command.

The l2tabu and orthodox options

About the two specified options l2tabu and orthodox. The first (l2tabu) tells nag to check for obsolete syntax mentioned in the l2tabu documentation. It will also give hints on what to use instead. The second option (orthodox) checks the LaTeX code for syntax that is technically correct, but most likely produces an unwanted result. This is handy for novice users. Experienced LaTeX users might want to omit this option.

Syntax checking

Checking the syntax only can be done with the syntonly package. This little package provides only the command \syntaxonly and is so small that it doesn’t even have a documentation! Add the following to your preamble:

\usepackage{syntonly}
\syntaxonly

Compiling the document

Of course, you sometimes need to compile the complete document. To do this, simply comment the \syntaxonly command:

\usepackage{syntonly}
%\syntaxonly

That’s all!

Compact lists

Let’s start by creating a compact list. In order to do so, call the paralist package in your preamble:

\usepackage{paralist}

With the paralist package, a few new environments are introduced. The ones we will be using in this post are: compactitem and compactenum. As their name imply, the first creates a compact itemized list and the latter creates a compact numbered list. Run the following code to see the difference:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{paralist}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{itemize}
	\item This is entry number one
	\item This is entry number two
\end{itemize}
\lipsum[2]
\begin{compactitem}
	\item This is entry number one, compact
	\item This is entry number two, compact
\end{compactitem}
\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

In here, the lipsum package is used to create dummy text.

Multicolumn lists

Let’s extend the knowledge from above to multicolumn lists. Multicolumn list can save a lot of space in your document and can look a lot nicer if the list entries are short. The idea is pretty simple: We’ll define a three column environment that contains the list environment. This can be done with the multicol package. By default, a multicolumn environment introduces additional spacing above and underneath. To remove this, implement the following in your preamble:

\usepackage{multicol}
	\setlength{\multicolsep}{0pt}

Now, a compact multicolumn list can be created with the following code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{paralist}
\usepackage{multicol}
	\setlength{\multicolsep}{0pt}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{multicols}{3}
	\begin{compactitem}
		\item One
		\item Two
		\item Three
		\item Four
		\item Five		
		\item \ldots
	\end{compactitem}
\end{multicols}
\lipsum[2]
\end{document}

That’s it!

Alternatives

For compact list environments, the method described above is my preference. However, a lot of other options are available. As found here the popular enumitem package can also be used, as well as shortlst and mdwlist.