2025-latex-course/presentation/presentation.md

Introductory Course to \LaTeX

About this course

• Created by Bjørnar Kaarevik
• Updated by Torstein Nordgård-Hansen in 2025

Slides available on git.pvv.ntnu.no/Kurs/latex-course

Get \LaTeX

• Linux: sudo apt install texlive-full
• Mac: brew install mactex
• BSD: texlive?
• Windows: choco install texlive
• Online: overleaf.com

Recommended etidors: TeXstudio, Emacs, VSCode

What even is \LaTeX?

• 1978: Donald Knuth gets fed up by typographical errors in his documents and creates \TeX
• 1984: Leslie Lamport gets fed up with having to write bonkers \TeX\ -commands and piles on a bunch of macros
• 2025: We're here, still stuck with this ancient mess

But actually, it is a pretty good document preparation system.

(a modern alternative is Typst)

What even is a document preparation system?

It is a system that prepares your documents!

Crucial elements:

• What are the contents of the document?
• Where should all the words and sentences go?
• What do we do about equations, figures and tables?
• We need references and appendices and other things, right?!?

First Principle of \LaTeX

Separate content and presentation.

• General classes/types of content
• Styling applies to the entire document
• Just write, and deal with making it pretty later
• The publisher will mangle your document anyways

Second Principle of \LaTeX

Let the system handle book keeping.

• Don't manually update captions and figure numbers
• Don't manually update captions and table numbers
• Don't manually write/update/sort your list of references

Now, how do we use it?

Types of content

• Frontmatter
• Sections, subsections, paragraphs
• Math: both inline and standalone
• Figures and tables
• References (bibliography)
• Appendices

Document structure

• Preamble
• Frontmatter - title, table of content, list of figures/tables
• (The actual) Document
  • Sections/Chapters
    • Text
    • Math
    • Figures
    • Tables
• Bibliography
• Appendices

Document setup

• Type of document: \documentclass
• Preamble with \input
• Document body with \begin{document}
  • This is an environment
• Frontmatter with \maketitle
• Sections with \input
• Bibliography with \bibliography
• Appendices with \appendix

Part 0: Preamble

Here you might stick:

• \usepackage-directives
• Custom commands
  • For instance those defined with \newcommand
• Setup for packages used in the document
• Directives for the presentation of the types of content in the document

\vspace{2em}

Tip: Make you preamble self-contained and portable

Basic structure of a \LaTeX\ command

\commandname[optionalarguments]{requriedarguments}

Examples:

• \usepackage[paper=a4paper]{geometry}

• \emph{Hello!}

Part 1: Content

Since content and presentation is mostly separate:

• Content type must be specified in the "raw content"
• Presentation will be defined "elsewhere"

Environments and displays define what you write means

Types of environments:

• Document, math, figure, table, list, quote, bold, italics

Usually specified in the text with:

\begin{contenttype}
... what you write goes here
\end{contenttype}

Normal text: headings, paragraphs, lists

• Headings
  • \section, \subsection, \subsubsection
• Paragraphs
  • Just add some line-breaks!
  • An empty line signifies the boundary between paragraphs
• Lists
  • itemize: bullet points
  • enumerate: numbered list
  • Can be nested

\vspace{2em}

Tip: For better version control, stick to one sentence, one line

MATH

• equation: a single line of math
• gather: multiple lines of math
• align: multiple lines that can be lined up
• \(...\): inline math
• \[...\]: basically like equation

We're talking inline F = ma versus full display:

    E = mc^2.

Figures and tables

• \begin{figure}: figure environment
  • \includegraphics: the graphics to be shown
  • \caption: text under/over the figure, with number
  • \label: name to remember the figure by in the raw latex
• \begin{table}: table environment
  • \begin{tabular}: environment for tabulated data
  • \caption: text over/under table, with number
  • \label: allows you to refer to the table in the document

Referencing

• \usepackage[backend=biber, style=ieee]{biblatex}
  • Reference list styling
  • Many other options
• Needs a file containing available sources
  • Put \addbibresource in the preamble
• \printbibliography
  • Options are available for this one as well

Appendices

• \usepackage{appendix}
• \appendix: changes context of the document to "appendices"
  • Each \section now defines an appendix, not a "chapter"
  • Should probably have been an environment, but alas

Part 2: Presentation

I used to fight all the time with my typesetter about where the images should be placed. Now I use \LaTeX\ and have accepted that I'll never win.

. . .

The \TeX \ typesetting engine is really powerful and will probably make better choices than you.

Linebreaks and pagebreaks

• Empty line: separates paragraphs
  • Depending on settings, this may not produce empty lines in the compiled document
• \\: forces linebreak
  • Used in tables, matrices and multiline math
  • Can force air between paragraphs, but be careful
• \newpage: forces the rest of the page to be empty
• \mbox: forces words to "stay together", no hyphenation
• ~: non-breaking space

vspace and hspace

• \vspace: vertical spacing
• \hspace: horizontal spacing
• Valid lengths are:
  • cm, mm, em, ex, pt, mu, sp
  • ... and some more
• Lengths may be negative

Default/documentwide lengths and widths

• \parskip: space when skipping to next paragraph
• \parindent: indent space on the first line of a paragraph
• \baselinestretch: how tall is a line?
• \setstretch and \itemsep: line height in itemize/enumerate environments

MATH - but displaystyle this time

• \textstyle: inline math, when using \(...\)
• \displaystyle: math in it's own box
  • With equation, gather, align and \[...\]
• \scriptstyle: when showing in sub/superscript
• \scriptscriptstyle: when sub/superscript is nested!

Figures and tables

• Width, height and angle:
  • [width=0.8\linewidth, height=100mm, angle=45]
• [!htbp]
  • Here, top, bottom and "special page"
• Floats
  • They float around and cannot be broken up

Part 3: Custom commands

• \newcommand: make a new one!
• \renewcommand: change an existing one

Some examples:

\newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}}
\newcommand{\bb}[1]{\mathbb{#1}}
\newcommand{\un}[1]{\ensuremath{\, \mathrm{#1}}}

Further reading

• Everything on Overleaf.com
• Documentation for packages on CTAN
• StackExchange
• LLMs (sometimes)

\vspace{2em}

Tip: Keep it simple, stupid!

More packages \neq better document