LaTeX Guide

Starting a document
These commands will create a nicely formatted document.


 * Body text.
 * Body text.
 * Body text.
 * Body text.

Although other parameters and document classes can be used, it is recommended to use A4 paper and 12pt as the defaults. Likewise, different parameters can be used to set margins, however 1.25 inches all around is a good default.

Packages
In the example above we used the package 'geometry' to adjust the page margins. Packages can be used to provide a variety of formatting options. Loading packages is simple. In the document header (before  but after  ) just insert:



Some packages allow you to specify additional parameters. This will be shown in further examples below.

Measurements
Various parameters can be changed to increase or decrease sizes. Points, centimetres, millimetres and inches are the most common. Where appropriate you can use the following (without quotation marks):


 * "pt" (eg "16pt", "10pt")
 * "cm" (eg "1cm", "0.5cm")
 * "mm" (eg "5mm", "10mm")
 * "in" (eg "1.25in", "0.75in")

Working examples are provided in other sections.

Paragraph and line spacing
The default document settings will produce a document with paragraph indenting and no space between paragraphs. To change this so that there are spaces between paragraphs and no indents, load the 'parskip' package:



You may want to increase the space between paragraphs further. You can do this using the following command (along with the parskip package):



"16pt" can be changed to any size (see the section on using measurements).

You may also want to increase the space between lines. The easiest way to do this is to use the 'setspace' package:



Then insert, typically after the  command, the following for one and a half spacing or double spacing respectively:





You can change the spacing within the document any time by using one of these commands. If you want to change from one and a half to double spacing, just use the appropriate command at the point you want it to change. If you want to return to single spacing, use the command:



Quotation marks and apostrophes
Quotation marks are produced using grave accents (`) for the opening marks and the "typewriter" apostrophe (') for the closing marks. This is a very manual process, but gives specific control over the type of quotation mark/apostrophe used. For example:





You will want to use the typewriter apostrophe for regular apostrophes:



Regular quotation marks may not be correctly rendered, so be sure to use grave accents and typewriter apostrophes.

Bold and italics
Bold and italic text are produced using similar commands:




 * Hello world.




 * Hello world.