Introduction to LATEX
2006 by Emmanuel Irizarry Zapata
July 6, 2017
Contents
1 Introductions 2
2 Equations
3 Tables
4 Lists
5 Literal text
6 Special Symbols
6.1 Tables and More Tables
6.2 Common Greek letters
6.3 Special symbols
7 Use of Color
Nomenclature
u My guess Value Modified A x My guess Value Modified
1 Introductions 2
TEX looks more difficult than it is. It is almost as easy as . Defining the values of u .See
how easy it is to make special symbols such as , , , , sin x , , , We also
2 b
can make subscripts A x , A x y and superscripts, e x , , and . We will use LATEX, which
e e
is based on TEX and has many higher-level commands (macros) for formatting, making tables,
etc. More information can be found in Ref. [1].
We just made a new paragraph. Extra lines and spaces make no difference. Note that all
formulas are enclosed by $ and occur in math mode.
The default font is Computer Modern. It includes italics, boldface, slanted, and
monospaced fonts.
2 Equations
Let us see how easy it is to write equations.
N 2 n
=i=1 wi ( x i x ) i=2 wi . (1)
It is a good idea to number equations, but we can have a equation without a number by writing
xa
P( x )= ,
ba
and
1
g= 2 .
2
We can give an equation a label so that we can refer to it later.
N
E=J i=1 s i si +1 , (2)
Equation (2) expresses the energy of a configuration of spins in the Ising model.1
We can define our own macros to save typing. For example, suppose that we introduce the
macros:
\newcommand{\lb}{{\langle}}
\newcommand{\rb}{{\rangle}}
1 It is necessary to process (typeset) a file twice to get the counters correct.
Then we can write the average value of x as
\begin{equation}
\lb x \rb = 3
\end{equation}
The result is
x =3 . (3)
Examples of more complicated equations:
I = f ( x) d x. (4)
We can do some fine tuning by adding small amounts of horizontal spacing:
\, small space \! negative space
as is done in Eq. (4).
We also can align several equations:
a =b (5)
c =d, (6)
or number them as subequations:
a =b (7a)
c =d. (7b)
We can also have different cases:
m( T )={0 T > T c 1[ sinh2 J ]4 1 8 T <T c (8)
write matrices
T
++
+
+
=( T T T T ) ,
e ( J+ B ) e J
=( J ). (9)
e e ( JB )
and
i AB=P r^n d A=P r d V . (10)
3 Tables
Tables are a little more difficult. TeX automatically calculates the width of the columns.
lattice d q T mf T c
square 2 4 1.763
triangular 2 6 1.648
diamond 3 4 1.479
simple cubic 3 6 1.330
bcc 3 8 1.260
fcc 3 12 1.225
Table 1: Comparison of the mean-field predictions for the critical temperature of the Ising model
with exact results and the best known estimates for different spatial dimensions d and lattice
symmetries.
4 Lists
Some example of formatted lists include the following:
1. bread
2. cheese
Tom
Dick
5 Literal text
It is desirable to print program code exactly as it is typed in a monospaced font. Use
\begin{verbatim}and \end{verbatim}as in the following example:
double y0 = 10; // example of declaration and assignment
statement
double v0 = 0; // initial velocity
double t = 0; // time
double dt = 0.01; // time step
double y = y0;
The command \verbatiminput{programs/Square.java}\allows you to list the
file Square.java in the directory programs.
6 Special Symbols
6.1 Tables and More Tables
6.2 Common Greek letters
These commands may be used only in math mode. Only the most common letters are included
here.
, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
6.3 Special symbols
The derivative is defined as
dy y (11)
= lim
d x x 0 x
f (x ) y as x x0 (12)
f (x ) y (13)
x x 0
Order of magnitude:
log 1 0 f n (14)
n
f (x )1 0 (15)
Approximate equality:
f ( x ) g( x ) (16)
LATEX is simple if we keep everything in proportion:
f (x )x 3 . (17)
Finally we can skip some space by using commands such as
\bigskip \medskip \smallskip \vspace{1pc}
The space can be negative.
7 Use of Color
We can change colors for emphasis, but who is going pay for the ink?
References
[1] Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly, A Guide to LATEX: Document Preparation for Beginners
and Advanced Users, fourth edition, Addison-Wesley (2004).
[2] Some useful links are given at Error: Reference source not found.
Updated 5 December 2006.
