Source: theltxprimer from Indian TeX group

The basics

Period:

latex assumes each period not following an upper case letter ends a sentence. In traditional typesetting, an extra little space is appended. Sometimes we don’t want this, so:

In order to produce Carrots are good for your eyes, since they contain Vitamin A. Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?, the correct input should be Carrots are good for your eyes, since they contain Vitamin A\@. Have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?.

To produce The numbers 1, 2, 3, etc. are called natural numbers. According to Kronecker, they were made by God; all else being the work of Man., the correct input should be The numbers 1, 2, 3, etc.\ are called natural numbers. According to Kronecker, they were made by God;all else being the works of Man..

Quotes:

To produce “”, input `` and '', or use \lq and \rq instead.

Hyphenation:

• Hyphen (-): separating compound names. e.g., Munthe-Kaas;
• Compound nouns are not hyphenated, but compound adjectives are; e.g., Lie group as opposed to Lie-group method. Compound adjectives that use adverbs are not hyphenated; e.g., “diagonally implicit method” is correct;
• -- (em-dash): used between two people, e.g., Runge–Kutta;
• --- (en-dash): connects things that are related to each other by distance, as in the May–September issue of a magazine.

Accents:

Él está aquı́, input \’{E}l est\’{a} aqu\’{\i}.

Some special symbols:

Fonts

Style (roman, sans serif, etc.), series (medium, boldface, etc.), shape (upright, italic, etc.)

Declaration (\upshape) and command (\textup{}). The declaration can be used as enviroment names.

Optional arguments are inclosed in [], and mandatory arguments are inclosed in ().

Document

Page format

• onecolumn/twocolumn
• oneside/twoside (affects position of page number)
• openany(chapters begin on “any” new page)/openright(chapters begin only on new right , that is, odd numbered, page)
• notitlepage/titlepage (whether to separate title page)

Page style

• \pagestyle{...},\thispagestyle{...}

• plain/empty/headings/myheadings

• \pagenumbering{...}

• arabic/roman/Roman/alph/Alph

• \setcounter{page}{ number }

Forming a document

• \and helps you to put authors parallel
• A proper hierarchy:\chapter\section\subsection\subsubsection\paragraph\subparagraph
• \subsubsection is not numbered
• A detailed structure, see P24 and 25
• \Par and “\"

Bibliography

• Bib style packages: harvard, natbib
• With \nocite{*} , every entry in all the databases will be included, something that is useful when producing a list of all entries and their keys.
• aux: reference auxiliary; bib: original bib; bst: bib style; bbl formatted bib; blg: log

Table of contents, index and glossary

• .toc: table of contents, *.lot list of tables, *.lof list of figures

• Edit the .toc , lof , lot files and use a \nofiles command to suppress the writing of new versions of the files

  is the last resort for you to fine-tune TOC

• Use \addtocontents{ file }{ text } or\addcontentsline{ file }{ type }{ text } to add sections marked with * (will be omitted by default) (Actually \addcontentsline is invoked by \section or caption)

• Fragile argument: What is the difference between Fragile and Robust commands

• minitoc for mini TOC

• makeidxto make index (*.idx file)

• \makeglossary to make glossary (*.glo file)

Displayed text

• Quotation \begin{quote} \end{quote} or (for multiple paragraphs) \begin{quotation} \end{quotation}
• verse environment to quote poem. Use \\* to put it within a page. Use \\[n pt] to specify line space
• {\renewcommand{\labelitemi}{$\triangleright$} (for example, \labelitemi, \labelitemiv, etc.) to replace default itemize bullets. Use {} to enclose \renewcommand and anything else for local effect only
• Package enumerate for customized enumerate bullets and other formatting styles
• \renewcommand{\descriptionlabel}[1]{\hspace{1cm}\textsf{#1}} example to customize description
• enumerate can also include description

Rows and columns

• tabbing environment for vertical alignment in enumerate

• Use parbox to format column cells

• \multicolumn{1} can override the position specification of any column set at the beginning of the environment.

• \arraystretch to stretch columns

• Use r@{--}l for range. Example:

  \begin{center}
  \begin{tabular}{|c|r@{--}l|}
  \hline
  Height & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{Ideal weight}\\
  (cm)
  & \multicolumn{2}{c|}{(kg)}\\
  \hline
  155 & 53.5 & 64\\
  160 & 56
  & 67\\
  ...............
  190 & 78
  & 92.5\\
  \hline
  \end{tabular}
  \end{center}

• Enhancement: array, multirow, multicol, longtable, hhline, delarray, tabularx etc.

Mathematics

• Text placed within $$ is in math italic

• TeX has its own spacing rules in math mode

• Inline math: in LaTeX:\( ... \) or \begin{math}\end{math}); in TeX: $$

• Independent line: in LaTeX: \[\] or \begin{displaymath}\end{displaymath}, in TeX: $$$$

• \;: thickspace, \, thinspace

• \ldots: ellipsis (...)

• Binary operator:\mathbin; relation operator: \mathrel

  x\Box y % produces x\Boxy
  x\mathbin\Box y % produces x \Box y

• \newcommand{\vect}[1]{(#1_1,#1_2,\dots,#1_n)}% use \vect{sth} will substitute 1 to sth (2 and #2, 3 and #3… is the same)

• The amsmath package:

  • Multi-line equation: multline env; use split env and & for alignment

  • Multi equations: gather env pr align env

  • An example: gather two groups of equations together

    • \begin{equation*}
      	\begin{aligned}
      		\cosˆ2x+sinˆ2x & = 1\\
      		\cosˆ2x-\sinˆ2x & = \cos 2x
      	\end{aligned}
      	\qquad\text{and}\qquad
      	\begin{aligned}
      		\coshˆ2x-\sinhˆ2x & = 1\\
      		\coshˆ2x+\sinhˆ2x & = \cosh 2x
      	\end{aligned}
      \end{equation*}

  • \tag{} for customized equation label; \notag to suppress

  • pmatrix is enclosed in parentheses, bmatrix is in square brackets, Bmatrix is in braces, and vmatrix is for determinant

  • \dotsc for dots to be used with commas, \dotsb for dots with binary operations (or relations), and \dotsm for multiplication dots. There is also a \dotsi for dots with integrals

  • smallmatrix env for inline matrices (use \left \right for appropriate alignment for brackets)

  • \bigl, \bigr; \biggl, \biggr; \Biggl, \Biggr to control bracket sizes (if you find using \left \right produces too large brackets)

  • \tfrac a “tiny” version of \frac, \genfrac for a customized frac. Note, binomial coefficients \binom is a special case of \genfrac

  • \verset for putting symbols overhead. e.g. $\overset{\circ}{a}$

  • \displaystyle changes inline expressions to displayed style (as in env).

  • \substack for multi-line subscripts.

  • Refer to “Log-like symbols” for math notations that should be typed in Roman (other than usual italic)

  • \DeclareMathOperator*{\new_operator}{statement}

  • “The TEX Book”: more on typing math

• \newtheorem{user_difined}{displayed_test}[numbering_style], for userdefined` env

• Customized theorem: amsthm package

Boxes

• A box is an object that is treated by TEX as a single character. A box cannot be split and broken across lines or pages.

• 3 types of boxes:

  • LR: (left-right) The content of this box are typeset from left to right.
  • Par: (paragraphs) This kind of box can contain several lines, which will be typeset in paragraph mode just like normal text. Paragraphs are put one on top of the other. Their widths are controlled by a user specified value.
  • Rule: A thin or thick line that is often used to separate various logical elements on the output page, such as between table rows and columns and between running titles and the main text.

• LR boxes:

  • \mbox{ text } % without frame
    \makebox{ width }{ pos }{ text } % without frame
    \fbox{ text } % with frame
    \framebox{ width }{ pos }{ text } % with frame
    % pos arguments: l for left, r for right, c for center, s for stretch (in-text spaces)

  • \fboxrule, \fboxsep, and\raisebox for determining frame style, box positions(or rotations)

• Par boxes:

  • Use either \parbox or minipage env (minipage is a page itself, i.e., it has footnotes, contains tabular, etc.)
  • \parbox{ pos }{ height }{ inner pos }{ width }{ text } or \begin{minipage}{ pos }{ height }{ inner pos }{ width }, with t,b,c,s for top, bottom, center, stretch

• A rule box is basically a filled-in black rectangle.

• It is also possible to have a rule box of zero width. This creates an invisible line with the given height. Such a construction is called a strut and is used to force a horizontal box to have a desired height or depth that is different from that of its contents.

Floats

• Figures:

• \begin{figure}
  	\includegraphics{figure.eps}
  	\caption{This is an inserted EPS graphic} 
  	% use \caption[lof]{description} to produce concise description in list of figures
  	\label{fig1}
  \end{figure}

  • Figures are not allowed in boxes (\parbox or minipage)
  • Positional arguments: h for here, t for top, b for bottom and p for page containing only floats (default [tbp])
  • \clearpage : This command places unprocessed floats and starts a new page.
  • \FloatBarrier: This command causes all unprocessed floats to be processed. This is provided by the placeins package. It does not start a new page, unlike \clearpage .
  • To place figures within a section: \usepackage[section]{placeins}, a less-restrictive one: \usepackage[below]{placeins}
  • The afterpage package provides the \afterpage command which executes a command at the next naturally-ocurring page break. (\afterpage{\clearpage} causes all unprocessed floats to be cleared at the next page break.)
  • Use float placement counters to control number of floats per page: \setcounter{totalnumber/topnumber/bottomnumber}{n}
  • Adjust float coverage per page using \textfraction etc.
  • Add graphics search path: \graphicspath{{dir1/}{dir2/}}
  • \rotatebox and \scalebox provided by graphicx package can rotate and boxes and floats

• tabular is actually a minipage

  • The tabular env:

  • `\begin{ tabular }[ pos ]{ cols } rows \end{ tabular }``

  • ``\begin{ tabular* }{ width }[ pos ]{ cols } rows \end{ tabular* }`

  • Column positioning arguments:

    cols	meaning
    l	left
    r	right
    c	center
    { wd }	The text in this column is set into lines of width wd and the top line is aligned with the other columns. In fact, the text is set in a parbox with the command \parbox[ t ]{ wd }{ column text } .
    * { num }{ cols }	The column format contained in cols is reproduced num times, so that *{3}{|c|}| is the same as |c|c|c| .

Cross references

• “cross” means both backward AND forward
• Use ~ in your cross reference to avoid breaking lines
• In floats, \label command should be given after the \caption command or in its argument
• \pageref{ key } refer to page number
• Package varioref (\vref{key}) produces “full” reference (position, page number, etc.) using some rules. (produce ref and/or \pageref depending on the current page)
• Use package xr for external reference: \usepackage{xr} \externaldocument{ other.tex }

Footnotes, marginpars, and endnotes

• Use tabularx, longtable or wrap tabular in minipage if you want to use footnote inside a tabular. Another package called threeparttable is also helpful.
• \setcounter{footnote}{0} for resetting footnote counter (or use \@addtoreset{footnote}{section} in \makeatletter or \makeatother preamble)
• \marginpar for marginal notes. A better version (macro): \newcommand{\marginlabel}[1] {\mbox{}\marginpar{\raggedleft\hspace{0pt}#1}}
• Create query for margin notes: \def\query#1#2{\underline{#1}\marginpar{#2}}
• Package endnotes for endnotes.