The Not So Short

Introduction to LATEX 2ε
Or LATEX 2ε in 90 minutes

by Tobias Oetiker
Hubert Partl, Irene Hyna and Elisabeth Schlegl

Version 3.16, 25 September, 2000

ii

Copyright 2000
c Tobias Oetiker and all the Contributers to LShort. All rights
reserved.
This document is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This document is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY
or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public
License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with
this document; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave,
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Thank you!

Much of the material used in this introduction comes from an Austrian

introduction to LATEX 2.09 written in German by:
Hubert Partl <[email protected]>
Zentraler Informatikdienst der Universität für Bodenkultur Wien
Irene Hyna <[email protected]>
Bundesministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung Wien
Elisabeth Schlegl <no email>
in Graz
If you are interested in the German document, you can find a version up-
dated for LATEX 2ε by Jörg Knappen at CTAN:/tex-archive/info/lshort/german
While preparing this document, I asked for reviewers on comp.text.tex.
I got a lot of response. The following individuals helped with corrections,
suggestions and material to improve this paper. They put in a big effort to
help me get this document into its present shape. I would like to sincerely
thank all of them. Naturally, all the mistakes you’ll find in this book are
mine. If you ever find a word which is spelled correctly, it must have been
one of the people below dropping me a line.

Rosemary Bailey, Friedemann Brauer, David Carlisle,

Mike Chapman, Christopher Chin, Chris McCormack,
Wim van Dam, Jan Dittberner, Michael John Downes,
David Dureisseix, Elliot, David Frey, Robin Fairbairns, Erik Frisk,
Frank, Alexandre Guimond, Cyril Goutte, Greg Gamble,
Neil Hammond, Rasmus Borup Hansen, Markus Brühwiler, Björn
Hvittfeldt, Martien Hulsen, Werner Icking, Jakob, Eric Jacoboni,
Alan Jeffrey, Byron Jones, David Jones, Johannes-Maria Kaltenbach,
Andrzej Kawalec, Alain Kessi, Christian Kern, Jörg Knappen,
Kjetil Kjernsmo, Maik Lehradt, Alexander Mai, Martin Maechler,
Claus Malten, Kevin Van Maren, Lenimar Nunes de Andrade,
Hubert Partl, John Refling, Mike Ressler, Brian Ripley,
Young U. Ryu, Bernd Rosenlecher, Chris Rowley, Hanspeter Schmid,
Craig Schlenter, Christopher Sawtell, Josef Tkadlec, Didier Verna,
Fabian Wernli, Carl-Gustav Werner, Chris York, Fritz Zaucker,
Rick Zaccone, and Mikhail Zotov.
Preface

LATEX [1] is a typesetting system which is very suitable for producing scien-
tific and mathematical documents of high typographical quality. The system
is also suitable for producing all sorts of other documents, from simple letters
to complete books. LATEX uses TEX [2] as its formatting engine.
This short introduction describes LATEX 2ε and should be sufficient for
most applications of LATEX. Refer to [1, 3] for a complete description of the
LATEX system.
LATEX is available for most computers, from the PC and Mac to large
UNIX and VMS systems. On many university computer clusters, you will
find that a LATEX installation is available, ready to use. Information on
how to access the local LATEX installation should be provided in the Local
Guide [4]. If you have problems getting started, ask the person who gave
you this booklet. The scope of this document is not to tell you how to install
and set up a LATEX system, but to teach you how to write your documents
so that they can be processed by LATEX.
This Introduction is split into 5 chapters:

Chapter 1 tells you about the basic structure of LATEX 2ε documents. You
will also learn a bit about the history of LATEX. After reading this
chapter, you should have a rough picture of LATEX. The picture will
only be a framework, but it will enable you to integrate the information
provided in the other chapters into the big picture.

Chapter 2 goes into the details of typesetting your documents. It explains

most of the essential LATEX commands and environments. After read-
ing this chapter, you will be able to write your first documents.

Chapter 3 explains how to typeset formulae with LATEX. Again, a lot

of examples help you to understand how to use one of LATEX’s main
strengths. At the end of this chapter, you will find tables, listing all
the mathematical symbols available in LATEX.

Chapter 4 explains index and bibliography generation, inclusion of EPS

graphics, and some other useful extensions.
vi Preface

Chapter 5 contains some potentially dangerous information about how to

make alterations to the standard document layout produced by LATEX.
It will tell you how to change things such that the beautiful output of
LATEX begins looking quite bad.

It is important to read the chapters in sequential order. The book is not

that big after all. Make sure to carefully read the examples, because a great
part of the information is contained in the various examples you will find all
throughout the book.

If you need to get hold of any LATEX related material, have a look in one of
the Comprehensive TEX Archive Network (CTAN) ftp archives. They can be
found e.g. at ctan.tug.org (US), ftp.dante.de (Germany), ftp.tex.ac.uk
(UK). If you are not in one of these countries, choose the archive closest to
you.
If you want to run LATEX on your own computer, take a look at what is
available from CTAN:/tex-archive/systems.

If you have ideas for something to be added, removed or altered in this

document, please let me know. I am especially interested in feedback from
LATEX novices about which bits of this intro are easy to understand and
which could be explained better.

Tobias Oetiker <[email protected]>

Department of Electrical Engineering,

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

The current version of this document is available on

CTAN:/tex-archive/info/lshort
Contents

Thank you! iii

Preface v

1 Things You Need to Know 1

1.1 The Name of the Game . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.1 TEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1.2 LATEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.1 Author, Book Designer, and Typesetter . . . . . . . . 2
1.2.2 Layout Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 LATEX Input Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.1 Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.2 Special Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3.3 LATEX Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.3.4 Comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Input File Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5 The Layout of the Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5.1 Document Classes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5.2 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.6 Files you might encounter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.6.1 Page Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.7 Big Projects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

2 Typesetting Text 15
2.1 The Structure of Text and Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.2 Linebreaking and Pagebreaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.1 Justified Paragraphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2.2 Hyphenation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.3 Ready made Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4 Special Characters and Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4.1 Quotation Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
viii CONTENTS

2.4.2 Dashes and Hyphens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

2.4.3 Tilde (∼) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.4 Ellipsis ( . . . ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.5 Ligatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.6 Accents and Special Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.5 International Language Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.6 The Space between Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.7 Titles, Chapters, and Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.8 Cross References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.9 Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.10 Emphasized Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.11 Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.11.1 Itemize, Enumerate, and Description . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.11.2 Flushleft, Flushright, and Center . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.11.3 Quote, Quotation, and Verse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.11.4 Printing Verbatim . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.11.5 Tabular . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.12 Floating Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

3 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae 35

3.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.2 Grouping in Math Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.4 Math Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
3.5 Vertically Aligned Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
3.6 Phantom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3.7 Math Font Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
3.8 Theorems, Laws, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
3.9 Bold symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

4 Specialities 55
4.1 Including EPS Graphics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
4.2 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.3 Indexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
4.4 Fancy Headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
4.5 The Verbatim Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
4.6 Protecting fragile commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

5 Customising LATEX 63
5.1 New Commands, Environments and Packages . . . . . . . . . 63
5.1.1 New Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
5.1.2 New Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
5.1.3 Your own Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
CONTENTS ix

5.2 Fonts and Sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

5.2.1 Font changing Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
5.2.2 Danger, Will Robinson, Danger . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.2.3 Advice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
5.3 Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.3.1 Line Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.3.2 Paragraph Formatting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
5.3.3 Horizontal Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.3.4 Vertical Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.4 Page Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.5 More fun with lengths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
5.6 Boxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
5.7 Rules and Struts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

Bibliography 79
List of Figures

1.1 Components of a TEX System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 A Minimal LATEX File. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.3 Example of a Realistic Journal Article. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

4.1 Example fancyhdr Setup. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

5.1 Example Package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

5.2 Page Layout Parameters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
List of Tables

1.1 Document Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

1.2 Document Class Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3 Some of the Packages Distributed with LATEX. . . . . . . . . . 12
1.4 The Predefined Page Styles of LATEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

2.1 Accents and Special Characters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

2.2 Float Placing Permissions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

3.1 Math Mode Accents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3.2 Lowercase Greek Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.3 Uppercase Greek Letters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3.4 Binary Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.5 Binary Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
3.6 BIG Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.7 Arrows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.8 Delimiters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.9 Large Delimiters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.10 Miscellaneous Symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.11 Non-Mathematical Symbols. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.12 AMS Delimiters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.13 AMS Greek and Hebrew. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.14 AMS Binary Relations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.15 AMS Arrows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.16 AMS Negated Binary Relations and Arrows. . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.17 AMS Binary Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.18 AMS Miscellaneous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.19 Math Alphabets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

4.1 Key Names for graphicx Package. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

4.2 Index Key Syntax Examples. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

5.1 Fonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.2 Font Sizes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.3 Absolute Point Sizes in Standard Classes. . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.4 Math Fonts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.5 TEX Units. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Chapter 1

Things You Need to Know

In the first part of this chapter, you will get a short overview about the philosophy
and history of LATEX 2ε . The second part of the chapter focuses on the basic
structures of a LATEX document. After reading this chapter, you should have a
rough knowledge of how LATEX works. When reading on, this will help you to
integrate all the new information into the big picture.

1.1 The Name of the Game

1.1.1 TEX
TEX is a computer program created by Donald E. Knuth [2]. It is aimed
at typesetting text and mathematical formulae. Knuth started writing the
TEX typesetting engine in 1977 to explore the potential of the digital printing
equipment that was beginning to infiltrate the publishing industry at that
time, especially in the hope that he could reverse the trend of deteriorating
typographical quality that he saw affecting his own books and articles. TEX
as we use it today was released in 1982, with some slight enhancements
added in 1989 to better support 8-bit characters and multiple languages.
TEX is renowned for being extremely stable, for running on many different
kinds of computers, and for being virtually bug free. The version number of
TEX is converging to π and is now at 3.14159.
TEX is pronounced “Tech,” with a “ch” as in the German word “Ach”
or in the Scottish “Loch.” In an ASCII environment, TEX becomes TeX.

1.1.2 LATEX
LATEX is a macro package which enables authors to typeset and print their
work at the highest typographical quality, using a predefined, professional
layout. LATEX was originally written by Leslie Lamport [1]. It uses the TEX
formatter as its typesetting engine.
2 Things You Need to Know

 
copy

...
? ispell
emacs
editor
6
  ? 
.mf .tex
 
...
AMS-Package
?   ? LATEX 2ε  
Plain
METAfont - .tfm - TEX - .log
 

?  ? 
.pk .dvi
  . .
.
? xdvi
- driver dvips
- printer
screen
PostScript 6
 Fonts - Typesetting -

Figure 1.1: Components of a TEX System.

In 1994 the LATEX package was updated by the LATEX3 team, led by Frank
Mittelbach, to include some long-requested improvements, and to reunify all
the patched versions which had cropped up since the release of LATEX 2.09
some years earlier. To distinguish the new version from the old, it is called
LATEX 2ε . This documentation deals with LATEX 2ε .
LATEX is pronounced “Lay-tech” or “Lah-tech.” If you refer to LATEX in
an ASCII environment, you type LaTeX. LATEX 2ε is pronounced “Lay-tech
two e” and typed LaTeX2e.
Figure 1.1 above shows how TEX and LATEX 2ε work together. This figure
is taken from wots.tex by Kees van der Laan.

1.2 Basics
1.2.1 Author, Book Designer, and Typesetter
To publish something, authors give their typed manuscript to a publishing
company. One of their book designers then decides the layout of the docu-
ment (column width, fonts, space before and after headings, . . . ). The book
1.2 Basics 3

designer writes his instructions into the manuscript and then gives it to a
typesetter, who typesets the book according to these instructions.
A human book designer tries to find out what the author had in mind
while writing the manuscript. He decides on chapter headings, citations,
examples, formulae, etc. based on his professional knowledge and from the
contents of the manuscript.
In a LATEX environment, LATEX takes the role of the book designer and
uses TEX as its typesetter. But LATEX is “only” a program and therefore
needs more guidance. The author has to provide additional information
which describes the logical structure of his work. This information is written
into the text as “LATEX commands.”
This is quite different from the WYSIWYG1 approach which most mod-
ern word processors such as MS Word or Corel WordPerfect take. With
these applications, authors specify the document layout interactively while
typing text into the computer. All along the way, they can see on the screen
how the final work will look when it is printed.
When using LATEX it is normally not possible to see the final output
while typing the text. But the final output can be previewed on the screen
after processing the file with LATEX. Then corrections can be made before
actually sending the document to the printer.

1.2.2 Layout Design

Typographical design is a craft. Unskilled authors often commit serious
formatting errors by assuming that book design is mostly a question of
aesthetics—“If a document looks good artistically, it is well designed.” But
as a document has to be read and not hung up in a picture gallery, the
readability and understandability is of much greater importance than the
beautiful look of it. Examples:
• The font size and the numbering of headings have to be chosen to
make the structure of chapters and sections clear to the reader.
• The line length has to be short enough to not strain the eyes of the
reader, while long enough to fill the page beautifully.
With WYSIWYG systems, authors often generate aesthetically pleasing
documents with very little or inconsistent structure. LATEX prevents such
formatting errors by forcing the author to declare the logical structure of
his document. LATEX then chooses the most suitable layout.

1.2.3 Advantages and Disadvantages

When People from the WYSIWYG world meet people who use LATEX, they
often discuss “the advantages of LATEX over a normal word processor” or the
1
What you see is what you get.
4 Things You Need to Know

opposite. The best thing you can do when such a discussion starts is to keep
a low profile, since such discussions often get out of hand. But sometimes
you cannot escape . . .
So here is some ammunition. The main advantages of LATEX over normal
word processors are the following:

• Professionally crafted layouts are available, which make a document

really look as if “printed.”

• The typesetting of mathematical formulae is supported in a convenient

way.

• The user only needs to learn a few easy-to-understand commands

which specify the logical structure of a document. They almost never
need to tinker with the actual layout of the document.

• Even complex structures such as footnotes, references, table of con-

tents, and bibliographies can be generated easily.

• Free add-on packages exist for many typographical tasks not directly
supported by basic LATEX. For example, packages are available to
include PostScript graphics or to typeset bibliographies conforming
to exact standards. Many of these add-on packages are described in
The LATEX Companion [3].

• LATEX encourages authors to write well-structured texts, because this

is how LATEX works—by specifying structure.

• TEX, the formatting engine of LATEX 2ε , is highly portable and free.

Therefore the system runs on almost any hardware platform available.

LATEX also has some disadvantages, and I guess it’s a bit difficult for me to
find any sensible ones, though I am sure other people can tell you hundreds
;-)

• LATEX does not work well for people who have sold their souls . . .

• Although some parameters can be adjusted within a predefined docu-

ment layout, the design of a whole new layout is difficult and takes a
lot of time.2

• It is very hard to write unstructured and disorganized documents.

• Your hamster might, despite some encouraging first steps, never be

able to fully grasp the concept of Logical Markup.
2
Rumour says that this is one of the key elements which will be addressed in the
upcoming LATEX3 system.
1.3 LATEX Input Files 5

1.3 LATEX Input Files

The input for LATEX is a plain ASCII text file. You can create it with any
text editor. It contains the text of the document as well as the commands
which tell LATEX how to typeset the text.

1.3.1 Spaces
“Whitespace” characters such as blank or tab are treated uniformly as
“space” by LATEX. Several consecutive whitespace characters are treated
as one “space”. Whitespace at the start of a line is generally ignored, and
a single linebreak is treated as “whitespace”.
An empty line between two lines of text defines the end of a paragraph.
Several empty lines are treated the same as one empty line. The text below
is an example. On the left hand side is the text from the input file, and on
the right hand side is the formatted output.

It does not matter whether you

enter one or several spaces It does not matter whether you enter one or
after a word. several spaces after a word.
An empty line starts a new An empty line starts a new paragraph.
paragraph.

1.3.2 Special Characters

The following symbols are reserved characters that either have a special
meaning under LATEX or are not available in all the fonts. If you enter them
directly in your text, they will normally not print, but rather coerce LATEX
to do things you did not intend.

$ & % # _ { } ~ ^ \

As you will see, these characters can be used in your documents all the
same by adding a prefix backslash:

\$ \& \% \# \_ \{ \} $&%# {}

The other symbols and many more can be printed with special commands
in mathematical formulae or as accents. The backslash character \ can not
be entered by adding another backslash in front of it (\\), this sequence is
used for linebreaking.3
3
Try the $\backslash$ command instead. It produces a ‘\’.
6 Things You Need to Know

1.3.3 LATEX Commands

LATEX commands are case sensitive and take one of the following two formats:

• They start with a backslash \ and then have a name consisting of

letters only. Command names are terminated by a space, a number or
any other ‘non-letter’.
• They consist of a backslash and exactly one special character.

LATEX ignores whitespace after commands. If you want to get a space

after a command, you have to put either {} and a blank or a special spacing
command after the command name. The {} stops LATEX from eating up all
the space after the command name.

I read that Knuth divides the

I read that Knuth divides the people working
people working with \TeX{} into
with TEX into TEXnicians and TEXperts.
\TeX{}nicians and \TeX perts.\\
Today is September 25, 2000.
Today is \today.

Some commands need a parameter which has to be given between curly

braces { } after the command name. Some commands support optional
parameters which are added after the command name in square brackets [ ].
The next examples use some LATEX commands. Don’t worry about them,
they will be explained later.

You can \textsl{lean} on me! You can lean on me!

Please, start a new line

Please, start a new line right here!
right here!\newline
Thank you!
Thank you!

1.3.4 Comments
When LATEX encounters a % character while processing an input file, it ig-
nores the rest of the present line, the linebreak, and all whitespace at the
beginning of the next line.
This can be used to write notes into the input file, which will not show
up in the printed version.

This is an % stupid
% Better: instructive <----
example: Supercal% This is an example: Supercalifragilisticexpi-
ifragilist% alidocious
icexpialidocious
1.4 Input File Structure 7

The % character can also be used to split long input lines where no
whitespace or linebreaks are allowed.
For longer comments you should use the comment environment provided
by the verbatim package.

This is another
\begin{comment}
rather stupid, This is another example for embedding com-
but helpful ments in your document.
\end{comment}
example for embedding comments in your document.

1.4 Input File Structure

When LATEX 2ε processes an input file, it expects it to follow a certain struc-
ture. Thus every input file must start with the command

\documentclass{...}

This specifies what sort of document you intend to write. After that, you
can include commands which influence the style of the whole document, or
you can load packages which add new features to the LATEX system. To load
such a package you use the command

\usepackage{...}

When all the setup work is done,4 you start the body of the text with
the command

\begin{document}

Now you enter the text mixed with some useful LATEX commands. At
the end of the document you add the

\end{document}

command, which tells LATEX to call it a day. Anything which follows this
command will be ignored by LATEX.
Figure 1.2 shows the contents of a minimal LATEX 2ε file. A slightly more
complicated input file is given in Figure 1.3.
4
The area between \documentclass and \begin{document} is called preamble.
8 Things You Need to Know

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Small is beautiful.
\end{document}

Figure 1.2: A Minimal LATEX File.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{article}
\usepackage{latexsym}
\author{H.~Partl}
\title{Minimalism}
\frenchspacing
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents
\section{Start}
Well, and here begins my lovely article.
\section{End}
\ldots{} and here it ends.
\end{document}

Figure 1.3: Example of a Realistic Journal Article.

1.5 The Layout of the Document 9

1.5 The Layout of the Document

1.5.1 Document Classes
The first information LATEX needs to know when processing an input file is
the type of document the author wants to create. This is specified with the
\documentclass command.

\documentclass[options]{class}

Here class specifies the type of document to be created. Table 1.1 lists the
document classes explained in this introduction. The LATEX 2ε distribution
provides additional classes for other documents, including letters and slides.
The options parameter customises the behaviour of the document class. The
options have to be separated by commas. The most common options for the
standard document classes are listed in Table 1.2.
Example: An input file for a LATEX document could start with the line

\documentclass[11pt,twoside,a4paper]{article}

which instructs LATEX to typeset the document as an article with a base

font size of eleven points, and to produce a layout suitable for double sided
printing on A4 paper.

1.5.2 Packages
While writing your document, you will probably find that there are some
areas where basic LATEX cannot solve your problem. If you want to include
graphics, coloured text or source code from a file into your document, you

Table 1.1: Document Classes.

article for articles in scientific journals, presentations, short reports,

program documentation, invitations, . . .

report for longer reports containing several chapters, small books, PhD
theses, . . .

book for real books

slides for slides. The class uses big sans serif letters. You might want
to consider using FoilTEXa instead.

a
CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/foiltex
10 Things You Need to Know

Table 1.2: Document Class Options.

10pt, 11pt, 12pt Sets the size of the main font in the document. If
no option is specified, 10pt is assumed.

a4paper, letterpaper, . . . Defines the paper size. The default size

is letterpaper. Besides that, a5paper, b5paper,
executivepaper, and legalpaper can be specified.

fleqn Typesets displayed formulae left-aligned instead of centred.

leqno Places the numbering of formulae on the left hand side

instead of the right.

titlepage, notitlepage Specifies whether a new page should be

started after the document title or not. The article class does
not start a new page by default, while report and book do.

twocolumn Instructs LATEX to typeset the document in two columns.

twoside, oneside Specifies whether double or single sided output

should be generated. The classes article and report are single
sided and the book class is double sided by default. Note that
this option concerns the style of the document only. The option
twoside does not tell the printer you use that it should actually
make a two-sided printout.

openright, openany Makes chapters begin either only on right

hand pages or on the next page available. This does not work
with the article class, as it does not know about chapters. The
report class by default starts chapters on the next page available
and the book class starts them on right hand pages.
1.6 Files you might encounter 11

need to enhance the capabilities of LATEX. Such enhancements are called

packages. Packages are activated with the

\usepackage[options]{package}

command where package is the name of the package and options is a list of
keywords which trigger special features in the package. Some packages come
with the LATEX 2ε base distribution (See Table 1.3). Others are provided
separately. You may find more information on the packages installed at your
site in your Local Guide [4]. The prime source for information about LATEX
packages is The LATEX Companion [3]. It contains descriptions of hundreds
of packages along with information of how to write your own extensions to
LATEX 2ε .

1.6 Files you might encounter

When you work with LATEX you will soon find your self in a maze of files
with various extensions and probably no clue. Below there is a list telling
about the various file types you might encounter when working with TEX.
Please note that this table does not claim to be a complete list of extensions,
but if you find one missing which you think is important, please drop a line.

.tex LATEX or TEX input file. Can be compiled with latex.

.sty LATEX Macro package. This is a file you can load into your LATEX
document using the \usepackage command.

.dtx Documented TEX. This is the main distribution format for LATEX style
files. If you process a .dtx file you get documented macro code of the
LATEX package contained in the .dtx file.

.ins Is the installer for the files contained in the matching .dtx file. If you
download a LATEX package from the net, you will normally get a .dtx
and a .ins file. Run LATEX on the .ins file to unpack the .dtx file.

.cls Class files define what your document looks like. They are selected
with the \documentclass command.

The following files are generated when you run LATEX on your input file:

.dvi Device Independent file. This is the main result of a LATEX compile
run. You can look at its content with a DVI previewer program or you
can send it to a printer with dvips or a similar application.

.log Gives a detailed account of what happened during the last compiler
run.
12 Things You Need to Know

Table 1.3: Some of the Packages Distributed with LATEX.

doc Allows the documentation of LATEX programs.

Described in doc.dtxa and in The LATEX Companion [3].

exscale Provides scaled versions of the math extension font.

Described in ltexscale.dtx.

fontenc Specifies which font encoding LATEX should use.

Described in ltoutenc.dtx.

ifthen Provides commands of the form

‘if. . . then do. . . otherwise do. . . .’
Described in ifthen.dtx and The LATEX Companion [3].

latexsym To access the LATEX symbol font, you should use the
latexsym package. Described in latexsym.dtx and in The
LATEX Companion [3].

makeidx Provides commands for producing indexes. Described in

section 4.3 and in The LATEX Companion [3].

syntonly Processes a document without typesetting it.

inputenc Allows the specification of an input encoding such as

ASCII, ISO Latin-1, ISO Latin-2, 437/850 IBM code pages,
Apple Macintosh, Next, ANSI-Windows or user-defined one.
Described in inputenc.dtx.

a
This file should be installed on your system, and you should be able to
get a dvi file by typing latex doc.dtx in any directory where you have write
permission. The same is true for all the other files mentioned in this table.
1.6 Files you might encounter 13

.toc Stores all your section headers. It gets read in for the next compiler
run and is used to produce the table of content.
.lof This is like .toc but for the list of figures.
.lot And again the same for the list of tables.
.aux Another file which transports information from one compiler run to
the next. Among other things, the .aux file is used to store information
associated with crossreferences.
.idx If your document contains an index. LATEX stores all the words which
go into the index in this file. This file must be processed with makeindex.
Refer to section 4.3 on page 58 for more information on indexing.
.ind Is the processed .idx file, ready for inclusion into your document on
the next compile cycle.
.ilg Logfile telling about what makeindex did.

1.6.1 Page Styles

LATEX supports three predefined header/footer combinations—so-called page
styles. The style parameter of the

\pagestyle{style}

command defines which one to use. Table 1.4 lists the predefined page styles.

Table 1.4: The Predefined Page Styles of LATEX.

plain prints the page numbers on the bottom of the page, in the middle
of the footer. This is the default page style.

headings prints the current chapter heading and the page number in
the header on each page, while the footer remains empty. (This is
the style used in this document)

empty sets both the header and the footer to be empty.

It is possible to change the page style of the current page with the com-
mand

\thispagestyle{style}

A description how to create your own headers and footers can be found
14 Things You Need to Know

in The LATEX Companion [3] and in section 4.4 on page 59.

1.7 Big Projects

When working on big documents, you might want to split the input file into
several parts. LATEX has two commands which help you to do that.

\include{filename}

you can use this command in the document body to insert the contents
of another file named filename.tex. Note that LATEX will start a new page
before processing the material input from filename.tex.
The second command can be used in the preamble. It allows you to
instruct LATEX to only input some of the \included files.

\includeonly{filename,filename,. . . }

After this command is executed in the preamble of the document, only

\include commands for the filenames which are listed in the argument of
the \includeonly command will be executed. Note that there must be no
spaces between the filenames and the commas.
The \include command starts typesetting the included text on a new
page. This is helpful when you use \includeonly, because the pagebreaks
will not move, even when some included files are omitted. Sometimes this
might not be desirable. In this case, you can use the

\input{filename}

command. It simply includes the file specified. No flashy suits, no strings

attached.
To make LATEX quickly check your document you can use the syntonly
package. This makes LATEX skim through your document only checking for
proper syntax and usage of the commands, but doesn’t produce any (DVI)
output. As LATEX runs faster in this mode you may save you valuable time.
Usage is very simple:

\usepackage{syntonly}
\syntaxonly

When you want to produce pages, just comment out the second line (by
adding a percent sign)
Chapter 2

Typesetting Text

After reading the previous chapter, you should know about the basic stuff of
which a LATEX 2ε document is made. In this chapter I will fill in the remaining
structure you will need to know in order to produce real world material.

2.1 The Structure of Text and Language

The main point of writing a text (some modern DAAC1 literature excluded),
is to convey ideas, information, or knowledge to the reader. The reader will
understand the text better if these ideas are well-structured, and will see
and feel this structure much better if the typographical form reflects the
logical and semantical structure of the content.
LATEX is different from other typesetting systems in that you just have
to tell it the logical and semantical structure of a text. It then derives
the typographical form of the text according to the “rules” given in the
document class file and in various style files.
The most important text unit in LATEX (and in typography) is the para-
graph. We call it “text unit” because a paragraph is the typographical form
which should reflect one coherent thought, or one idea. You will learn in the
following sections, how you can force linebreaks with e.g. \\ and paragraph
breaks with e.g. leaving an empty line in the source code. Therefore, if a new
thought begins, a new paragraph should begin, and if not, only linebreaks
should be used. If in doubt about paragraph breaks, think about your text
as a conveyor of ideas and thoughts. If you have a paragraph break, but
the old thought continues, it should be removed. If some totally new line of
thought occurs in the same paragraph, then it should be broken.
Most people completely underestimate the importance of well-placed
paragraph breaks. Many people do not even know what the meaning of
1
Different At All Cost, a translation of the Swiss German UVA (Um’s Verrecken An-
ders).
16 Typesetting Text

a paragraph break is, or, especially in LATEX, introduce paragraph breaks

without knowing it. The latter mistake is especially easy to make if equa-
tions are used in the text. Look at the following examples, and figure out
why sometimes empty lines (paragraph breaks) are used before and after the
equation, and sometimes not. (If you don’t yet understand all commands
well enough to understand these examples, please read this and the following
chapter, and then read this section again.)

% Example 1
\ldots when Einstein introduced his formula
\begin{equation}
e = m \cdot c^2 \; ,
\end{equation}
which is at the same time the most widely known
and the least well understood physical formula.

% Example 2
\ldots from which follows Kirchoff’s current law:
\begin{equation}
\sum_{k=1}^{n} I_k = 0 \; .
\end{equation}

Kirchhoff’s voltage law can be derived \ldots

% Example 3
\ldots which has several advantages.

\begin{equation}
I_D = I_F - I_R
\end{equation}
is the core of a very different transistor model. \ldots

The next smaller text unit is a sentence. In English texts, there is a

larger space after a period which ends a sentence than after one which ends
an abbreviation. LATEX tries to figure out which one you wanted to have. If
LATEX gets it wrong, you must tell it what you want. This is explained later
in this chapter.
The structuring of text even extends to parts of sentences. Most lan-
guages have very complicated punctuation rules, but in many languages
(including German and English), you will get almost every comma right if
you remember what it represents: a short stop in the flow of language. If
you are not sure about where to put a comma, read the sentence aloud, and
2.2 Linebreaking and Pagebreaking 17

take a short breath at every comma. If this feels awkward at some place,
delete that comma, if you feel the urge to breathe (or make a short stop) at
some other place, insert a comma.
Finally, the paragraphs of a text should also be structured logically at a
higher level, by putting them into chapters, sections, subsections, and so on.
However, the typographical effect of writing e.g. \section{The Structure
of Text and Language} is so obvious that it is almost self-evident how
these high-level structures should be used.

2.2 Linebreaking and Pagebreaking

2.2.1 Justified Paragraphs
Often books are typeset with each line having the same length. LATEX inserts
the necessary linebreaks and spaces between words by optimizing the con-
tents of a whole paragraph. If necessary, it also hyphenates words that would
not fit comfortably on a line. How the paragraphs are typeset depends on
the document class. Normally the first line of a paragraph is indented, and
there is no additional space between two paragraphs. Refer to section 5.3.2
for more information.
In special cases it might be necessary to order LATEX to break a line:

\\ or \newline

starts a new line without starting a new paragraph.

\\*

additionally prohibits a pagebreak after the forced linebreak.

\newpage

starts a new page.

\linebreak[n], \nolinebreak[n], \pagebreak[n] and \nopagebreak[n]

do what their names say. They enable the author to influence their actions
with the optional argument n. It can be set to a number between zero
to four. By setting n to a value below 4 you leave LATEX the option of
ignoring your command if the result would look very bad. Do not confuse
these “break” commands with the “new” commands. Even when you give
a “break” command, LATEX still tries to even out the right border of the
page and the total length of the page as described in the next section. If
18 Typesetting Text

you really want to start a “new line”, then use the corresponding command.
Guess its name!
LATEX always tries to produce the best linebreaks possible. If it cannot
find a way to break the lines in a manner which meets its high standards, it
lets one line stick out on the right of the paragraph. LATEX then complains
(“overfull hbox”) while processing the input file. This happens most often
when LATEX cannot find a suitable place to hyphenate a word.2 You can in-
struct LATEX to lower its standards a little by giving the \sloppy command.
It prevents such over-long lines by increasing the inter-word spacing — even
if the final output is not optimal. In this case a warning (“underfull hbox”)
is given to the user. In most such cases the result doesn’t look very good.
The command \fussy brings LATEX back to its default behaviour.

2.2.2 Hyphenation
LATEX hyphenates words whenever necessary. If the hyphenation algorithm
does not find the correct hyphenation points, you can remedy the situation
by using the following commands to tell TEX about the exception.
The command

\hyphenation{word list}

causes the words listed in the argument to be hyphenated only at the points
marked by “-”. The argument of the command should only contain words
built from normal letters or rather signes which are regarded as normal let-
ters in the active context. The hyphenation hints are stored for the language
which is active when the hyphenation command occurs. This means that if
you place a hyphenation command into the preamble of your document it
will influence the english language hyphenation. If you place the command
after the \begin{document} and you are using some package for national
language support like babel, then the hyphenation hints will be active in the
language activated through babel.
The example below will allow “hyphenation” to be hyphenated as well
as “Hyphenation”, and it prevents “FORTRAN”, “Fortran” and “fortran”
from being hyphenated at all. No special characters or symbols are allowed
in the argument.
Example:

\hyphenation{FORTRAN Hy-phen-a-tion}

The command \- inserts a discretionary hyphen into a word. This also

becomes the only point hyphenation is allowed in this word. This command
2
Although LATEX gives you a warning when that happens (Overfull hbox), such lines
are not always easy to find. If you use the option draft in the \documentclass command,
these lines will be marked with a thick black line on the right margin.
2.3 Ready made Strings 19

is especially useful for words containing special characters (e.g. accented

characters), because LATEX does not automatically hyphenate words con-
taining special characters.

I think this is: su\-per\-cal\-%

I think this is: supercalifragilisticexpialido-
i\-frag\-i\-lis\-tic\-ex\-pi\-%
cious
al\-i\-do\-cious

Several words can be kept together on one line with the command

\mbox{text}

It causes its argument to be kept together under all circumstances.

My phone number will change soon.

It will be \mbox{0116 291 2319}. My phone number will change soon. It will
be 0116 291 2319.
The parameter The parameter filename should contain the
\mbox{\emph{filename}} should name of the file.
contain the name of the file.

2.3 Ready made Strings

In some of the examples on the previous pages you have seen some very
simple LATEX commands for typesetting special text strings:

Command Example Description

\today September 25, 2000 Current date in the current language
\TeX TEX The name of your favorite typesetter
\LaTeX LATEX The name of the Game
\LaTeXe LATEX 2ε The current incarnation of LATEX

2.4 Special Characters and Symbols

2.4.1 Quotation Marks
You should not use the " for quotation marks as you would on a typewriter.
In publishing there are special opening and closing quotation marks. In
LATEX, use two ‘s on for opening quotation marks and two ’s for closing
quotation marks.

‘‘Please press the ‘x’ key.’’ “Please press the ‘x’ key.”
20 Typesetting Text

2.4.2 Dashes and Hyphens

LATEX knows four kinds of dashes. You can access three of them with differ-
ent numbers of consecutive dashes. The fourth sign is actually not a dash
at all: It is the mathematical minus sign:

daughter-in-law, X-rated\\ daughter-in-law, X-rated

pages 13--67\\ pages 13–67
yes---or no? \\ yes—or no?
$0$, $1$ and $-1$ 0, 1 and −1

The names for these dashes are: ‘-’ hyphen, ‘–’ en-dash, ‘—’ em-dash
and ‘−’ minus sign.

2.4.3 Tilde (∼)

A character, often seen with web addresses is the tilde. To generate this in
LATEX you can use \~ but the result: ˜ is not really what you want. Try this
instead:

http://www.rich.edu/\~{}bush \\ http://www.rich.edu/˜bush
http://www.clever.edu/$\sim$demo http://www.clever.edu/∼demo

2.4.4 Ellipsis ( . . . )
On a typewriter a comma or a period takes the same amount of space as
any other letter. In book printing these characters occupy only a little space
and are set very close to the preceding letter. Therefore you cannot enter
‘ellipsis’ by just typing three dots, as the spacing would be wrong. Besides
that there is a special command for these dots. It is called

\ldots

Not like this ... but like this:\\ Not like this ... but like this:
New York, Tokyo, Budapest, \ldots New York, Tokyo, Budapest, . . .

2.4.5 Ligatures
Some letter combinations are typeset not just by setting the different letters
one after the other, but by actually using special symbols.
2.5 International Language Support 21

ff fi fl ffi. . . instead of ff fi fl ffi . . .

These so-called ligatures can be prohibited by inserting an \mbox{} between

the two letters in question. This might be necessary with words built from
two words.

Not shelfful\\ Not shelfful

but shelf\mbox{}ful but shelfful

2.4.6 Accents and Special Characters

LATEX supports the use of accents and special characters from many lan-
guages. Table 2.1 shows all sorts of accents being applied to the letter o.
Naturally other letters work too.
To place an accent on top of an i or a j, its dots have to be removed.
This is accomplished by typing \i and \j.

H\^otel, na\"\i ve, \’el\‘eve,\\

Hôtel, naı̈ve, élève,
sm\o rrebr\o d, !‘Se\~norita!,\\
smørrebrød, ¡Señorita!,
Sch\"onbrunner Schlo\ss{}
Schönbrunner Schloß Straße
Stra\ss e

Table 2.1: Accents and Special Characters.

ò \‘o ó \’o ô \^o õ \~o

ō \=o ȯ \.o ö \"o ç \c c
ŏ \u o ǒ \v o ő \H o o̧ \c o
o. \d o o \b o o o \t oo
¯
œ \oe Œ \OE æ \ae Æ \AE
å \aa Å \AA
ø \o Ø \O l \l L \L
ı \i  \j ¡ !‘ ¿ ?‘

2.5 International Language Support

If you need to write documents in languages other than English, there are
two areas where LATEX has to be configured appropriately:
22 Typesetting Text

1. All automatically generated text strings3 have to be adapted to the

new language. For many languages, these changes can be accomplished
by using the babel package by Johannes Braams.

2. LATEX needs to know the hyphenation rules for the new language.
Getting hyphenation rules into LATEX is a bit more tricky. It means
rebuilding the format file with different hyphenation patterns enabled.
Your Local Guide [4] should give more information on this.

If your system is already configured appropriately, you can activate the

babel package by adding the command

\usepackage[language]{babel}

after the \documentclass command. The languages your system supports

should also be listed in the Local Guide. Babel will automatically activate
the apropriate hyphenation rules for the language you choose. If your LATEX
format does not support hyphenation in the language of your choice, babel
will still work but it will disable hyphenation which has quite a negative
effect on the visual appearance of the typeset document.
For some languages, babel also specifies new commands which simplify
the input of special characters. The German language, for example, contains
a lot of umlauts (äöü). With babel, you can enter an ö by typing "o instead
of \"o.
Some computer systems allow you to input special characters directly
from the keyboard. LATEX can handle such characters. Since the December
1994 release of LATEX 2ε , support for several input encodings is included
in the basic distribution of LATEX 2ε . Check the inputenc package. When
using this package, you should consider that other people might not be able
to display your input files on their computer, because they use a different
encoding. For example, the German umlaut ä on a PC is encoded as 132, but
on some Unix systems using ISO-LATIN 1 it is encoded as 228. Therefore
you should use this feature with care.
Font encoding is a different matter. It defines at which position inside
a TEX-font each letter is stored. The original Computer Modern TEX font
does only contain the 128 characters of the old 7-bit ASCII character set.
When accented characters are required, TEX creates them by combining a
normal character with an accent. While the resulting output looks perfect,
this approach stops the automatic hyphenation from working inside words
containing accented characters.
Fortunately, most modern TEX distributions contain a copy of the EC
fonts. These fonts look like the Computer Modern fonts, but contain special
characters for most of the accented characters used in European languages.
3
Table of Contents, List of Figures, . . .
2.6 The Space between Words 23

By using these fonts you can improve hyphenation in non-English docu-

ments. The EC fonts are activated by including the fontenc package in the
preamble of your document.

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

2.6 The Space between Words

To get a straight right margin in the output, LATEX inserts varying amounts
of space between the words. It inserts slightly more space at the end of a
sentence, as this makes the text more readable. LATEX assumes that sen-
tences end with periods, question marks or exclamation marks. If a period
follows an uppercase letter, this is not taken as a sentence ending, since
periods after uppercase letters normally occur in abbreviations.
Any exception from these assumptions has to be specified by the author.
A backslash in front of a space generates a space which will not be enlarged.
A tilde ‘~’ character generates a space which cannot be enlarged and which
additionally prohibits a linebreak. The command \@ in front of a period
specifies that this period terminates a sentence even when it follows an
uppercase letter.

Mr.~Smith was happy to see her\\ Mr. Smith was happy to see her
cf.~Fig.~5\\ cf. Fig. 5
I like BASIC\@. What about you? I like BASIC. What about you?

The additional space after periods can be disabled with the command

\frenchspacing

which tells LATEX not to insert more space after a period than after ordinary
character. This is very common in non-English languages, except bibliogra-
phies. If you use \frenchspacing, the command \@ is not necessary.

2.7 Titles, Chapters, and Sections

To help the reader find his or her way through your work, you should divide
it into chapters, sections, and subsections. LATEX supports this with special
commands which take the section title as their argument. It is up to you to
use them in the correct order.
The following sectioning commands are available for the article class:
24 Typesetting Text

\section{...} \paragraph{...}
\subsection{...} \subparagraph{...}
\subsubsection{...} \appendix

You can use two additional sectioning commands for the report and the
book class:

\part{...} \chapter{...}

As the article class does not know about chapters, it is quite easy
to add articles as chapters to a book. The spacing between sections, the
numbering and the font size of the titles will be set automatically by LATEX.
Two of the sectioning commands are a bit special:

• The \part command does not influence the numbering sequence of

chapters.

• The \appendix command does not take an argument. It just changes

the chapter numbering to letters.4

LATEX creates a table of contents by taking the section headings and page
numbers from the last compile cycle of the document. The command

\tableofcontents

expands to a table of contents at the place where it is issued. A new doc-

ument has to be compiled (“LATEXed”) twice to get a correct table of con-
tents. Sometimes it might be necessary to compile the document a third
time. LATEX will tell you when this is necessary.
All sectioning commands listed above also exist as “starred” versions. A
“starred” version of a command is built by adding a star * after the command
name. They generate section headings which do not show up in the table of
contents and which are not numbered. The command \section{Help}, for
example, would become \section*{Help}.
Normally the section headings show up in the table of contents exactly
as they are entered in the text. Sometimes this is not possible, because the
heading is too long to fit into the table of contents. The entry for the table
of contents can then be specified as an optional argument in front of the
actual heading.

\chapter[Read it! It’s Exciting]{This is a very long

and especially boring title}
4
For the article style it changes the section numbering.
2.8 Cross References 25

The title of the whole document is generated by issuing a

\maketitle

command. The contents of the title have to be defined by the commands

\title{...}, \author{...} and optionally \date{...}

before calling \maketitle. In the argument of \author, you can supply

several names separated by \and commands.
An example of some of the commands mentioned above can be found in
Figure 1.3 on page 8.
Apart from the sectioning commands explained above, LATEX 2ε intro-
duced three additional commands for use with the book class.

\frontmatter, \mainmatter and \backmatter

They are useful for dividing your publication. The commands alter chap-
ter headings and page numbering to work as you would expect it in a book.

2.8 Cross References

In books, reports and articles, there are often cross-references to figures,
tables and special segments of text. LATEX provides the following commands
for cross referencing

\label{marker }, \ref{marker } and \pageref{marker }

where marker is an identifier chosen by the user. LATEX replaces \ref by

the number of the section, subsection, figure, table, or theorem after which
the corresponding \label command was issued. \pageref prints the page
number of the corresponding \label command.5 Just as the section titles,
the numbers from the previous run are used.

A reference to this subsection

\label{sec:this} looks like: A reference to this subsection looks like: “see
‘‘see section~\ref{sec:this} on section 11 on page 25.”
page~\pageref{sec:this}.’’

5
Note that these commands are not aware of what they refer to. \label just saves the
last automatically generated number.
26 Typesetting Text

2.9 Footnotes
With the command

\footnote{footnote text}

a footnote is printed at the foot of the current page. Footnotes should always
be put6 after the word or sentence they refer to.7

Footnotes\footnote{This is Footnotesa are often used by people using

a footnote.} are often used LATEX.
by people using \LaTeX. a
This is a footnote.

2.10 Emphasized Words

If a text is typed using a typewriter, important words are emphasized
by underlining them. In printed books, however, words are emphasized
by typesetting them in an italic font. LATEX provides the command

\emph{text}

to emphasize text. What the command actually does with its argument
depends on the context:

\emph{If you use

emphasizing inside a piece
If you use emphasizing inside a piece of em-
of emphasized text, then
phasized text, then LATEX uses the normal
\LaTeX{} uses the
font for emphasizing.
\emph{normal} font for
emphasizing.}

Please note the difference between telling LATEX to emphasize something

and telling it to use a different font:

\textit{You can also

\emph{emphasize} text if
it is set in italics,} You can also emphasize text if it is set in ital-
\textsf{in a ics, in a sans-serif font, or in typewriter
\emph{sans-serif} font,} style.
\texttt{or in
\emph{typewriter} style.}
6
“put” is one of the most common English words.
7
Footnotes referring to a sentence or part of it should therefore be put after the comma
or period.
2.11 Environments 27

2.11 Environments

\begin{environment} text \end{environment}

Where environment is the name of the environment. Environments can

be called several times within each other as long as the calling order is
maintained.

\begin{aaa}...\begin{bbb}...\end{bbb}...\end{aaa}

In the following sections all important environments are explained.

2.11.1 Itemize, Enumerate, and Description

The itemize environment is suitable for simple lists, the enumerate en-
vironment for enumerated lists, and the description environment for de-
scriptions.

\flushleft
\begin{enumerate}
\item You can mix the list
environments to your taste: 1. You can mix the list environments to
\begin{itemize} your taste:
\item But it might start to
look silly. • But it might start to look silly.
\item[-] With a dash. - With a dash.
\end{itemize}
\item Therefore remember: 2. Therefore remember:
\begin{description}
Stupid things will not become smart
\item[Stupid] things will not
because they are in a list.
become smart because they are
in a list. Smart things, though, can be
\item[Smart] things, though, can be presented beautifully in a list.
presented beautifully in a list.
\end{description}
\end{enumerate}

2.11.2 Flushleft, Flushright, and Center

The environments flushleft and flushright generate paragraphs which
are either left- or right-aligned. The center environment generates centred
text. If you do not issue \\ to specify linebreaks, LATEX will automatically
determine linebreaks.
28 Typesetting Text

\begin{flushleft}
This text is\\ left-aligned. This text is
\LaTeX{} is not trying to make left-aligned. LATEX is not trying to make
each line the same length. each line the same length.
\end{flushleft}

\begin{flushright}
This text is right-\\aligned. This text is right-
\LaTeX{} is not trying to make aligned. LATEX is not trying to make each
each line the same length. line the same length.
\end{flushright}

\begin{center}
At the centre
At the centre\\of the earth
of the earth
\end{center}

2.11.3 Quote, Quotation, and Verse

The quote environment is useful for quotes, important phrases and exam-
ples.

A typographical rule of thumb

A typographical rule of thumb for the line
for the line length is:
length is:
\begin{quote}
No line should contain more than
No line should contain more
66~characters.
than 66 characters.
This is why \LaTeX{} pages have This is why LATEX pages have
such large borders by default. such large borders by default.
\end{quote}
That’s why multicolumn print is often used
That’s why multicolumn print is
in newspapers.
often used in newspapers.

There are two similar environments: the quotation and the verse en-
vironments. The quotation environment is useful for longer quotes going
over several paragraphs, because it does indent paragraphs. The verse en-
vironment is useful for poems where the line breaks are important. The
lines are separated by issuing a \\ at the end of a line and a empty line after
each verse.
2.11 Environments 29

I know only one English poem by

heart. It is about Humpty Dumpty. I know only one English poem by heart. It is
\begin{flushleft} about Humpty Dumpty.
\begin{verse}
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:\\ Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall:
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.\\ Humpty Dumpty had a great
All the King’s horses and all fall.
the King’s men\\ All the King’s horses and all
Couldn’t put Humpty together the King’s men
again. Couldn’t put Humpty together
\end{verse} again.
\end{flushleft}

2.11.4 Printing Verbatim

Text which is enclosed between \begin{verbatim} and \end{verbatim}
will be directly printed, as if it was typed on a typewriter, with all linebreaks
and spaces, without any LATEX command being executed.
Within a paragraph, similar behavior can be accessed with

\verb+text+

The + is just an example of a delimiter character. You can use any character
except letters, * or space. Many LATEX examples in this booklet are typeset
with this command.
The \verb|\ldots| command \ldots
The \ldots command . . .
\begin{verbatim}
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD "; 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD ";
20 GOTO 10 20 GOTO 10
\end{verbatim}

\begin{verbatim*}
the starred version of the starred version of
the verbatim the verbatim
environment emphasizes environment emphasizes
the spaces in the text the spaces in the text
\end{verbatim*}

The \verb command can be used in a similar fashion with a star:

\verb*|like this :-) | like this :-)

The verbatim environment and the \verb command may not be used
within parameters of other commands.
30 Typesetting Text

2.11.5 Tabular
The tabular environment can be used to typeset beautiful tables with
optional horizontal and vertical lines. LATEX determines the width of the
columns automatically.
The table spec argument of the

\begin{tabular}{table spec}

command defines the format of the table. Use an l for a column of left-
aligned text, r for right-aligned text, and c for centred text; p{width} for a
column containing justified text with linebreaks, and | for a vertical line.
Within a tabular environment, & jumps to the next column, \\ starts
a new line and \hline inserts a horizontal line.

\begin{tabular}{|r|l|}
\hline
7C0 & hexadecimal \\ 7C0 hexadecimal
3700 & octal \\ 3700 octal
11111000000 & binary \\ 11111000000 binary
\hline \hline
1984 decimal
1984 & decimal \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabular}{|p{4.7cm}|}
\hline
Welcome to Boxy’s paragraph. Welcome to Boxy’s paragraph.
We sincerely hope you’ll We sincerely hope you’ll all en-
all enjoy the show.\\ joy the show.
\hline
\end{tabular}

The column separator can be specified with the @{...} construct. This
command kills the inter-column space and replaces it with whatever is be-
tween the curly braces. One common use for this command is explained
below in the decimal alignment problem. Another possible application is to
suppress leading space in a table with @{}.

\begin{tabular}{@{} l @{}}
\hline
no leading space\\ no leading space
\hline
\end{tabular}
2.12 Floating Bodies 31

\begin{tabular}{l}
\hline
leading space left and right\\ leading space left and right
\hline
\end{tabular}

Since there is no built-in way to align numeric columns to a decimal

point,8 we can “cheat” and do it by using two columns: a right-aligned inte-
ger and a left-aligned fraction. The @{.} command in the \begin{tabular}
line replaces the normal inter-column spacing with just a “.”, giving the ap-
pearance of a single, decimal-point-justified column. Don’t forget to replace
the decimal point in your numbers with a column separator (&)! A column
label can be placed above our numeric “column” by using the \multicolumn
command.

\begin{tabular}{c r @{.} l}
Pi expression &
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Value} \\ Pi expression Value
\hline π 3.1416
$\pi$ & 3&1416 \\ ππ 36.46
$\pi^{\pi}$ & 36&46 \\ (π π )π 80662.7
$(\pi^{\pi})^{\pi}$ & 80662&7 \\
\end{tabular}

\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
\hline
\multicolumn{2}{|c|}{\textbf{Ene}} \\
Ene
\hline
Mene Muh!
Mene & Muh! \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

2.12 Floating Bodies

Today most publications contain a lot of figures and tables. These elements
need special treatment, because they cannot be broken across pages. One
method would be to start a new page every time a figure or a table is too
large to fit on the present page. This approach would leave pages partially
empty, which looks very bad.
The solution to this problem is to ‘float’ any figure or table which does
not fit on the current page to a later page, while filling the current page with
body text. LATEX offers two environments for floating bodies; one for tables
and one for figures. To take full advantage of these two environments it is
important to understand approximately how LATEX handles floats internally.
8
If the ‘tools’ bundle is installed on your system, have a look at the dcolumn package.
32 Typesetting Text

Otherwise floats may become a major source of frustration, because LATEX

never puts them where you want them to be.

Let’s first have a look at the commands LATEX supplies for floats:
Any material enclosed in a figure or table environment will be treated
as floating matter. Both float environments support an optional parameter

\begin{figure}[placement specifier ] or \begin{table}[placement specifier ]

called the placement specifier. This parameter is used to tell LATEX about the
locations to which the float is allowed to be moved. A placement specifier is
constructed by building a string of float-placing permissions. See Table 2.2.
Note: The 0pt and 1.05em are TEX units. Read more on this in table
5.5 on page 72.
A table could be started with the following line e.g.

\begin{table}[!hbp]

The placement specifier [!hbp] allows LATEX to place the table right here
(h) or at the bottom (b) of some page or on a special floats page (p), and
all this even if it does not look that good (!). If no placement specifier is
given, the standard classes assume [tbp].
LATEX will place every float it encounters, according to the placement
specifier supplied by the author. If a float cannot be placed on the current
page it is deferred either to the figures or the tables queue9 . When a new
page is started, LATEX first checks if it is possible to fill a special ‘float’
page with floats from the queues. If this is not possible, the first float on
each queue is treated as if it had just occurred in the text: LATEX tries
again to place it according to its respective placement specifiers (except ‘h’
9
These are fifo - ‘first in first out’ queues!

Table 2.2: Float Placing Permissions.

Spec Permission to place the float . . .
h here at the very place in the text where it occurred. This is
useful mainly for small floats.
t at the top of a page
b at the bottom of a page
p on a special page containing only floats.
! without considering most of the internal parametersa which
could stop this float from being placed.
a
Such as the maximum number of floats allowed on one page.
2.12 Floating Bodies 33

which is no longer possible). Any new floats occurring in the text get placed
into the appropriate queues. LATEX strictly maintains the original order of
appearance for each type of float. That’s why a figure which cannot be
placed pushes all further figures to the end of the document. Therefore:

If LATEX is not placing the floats as you expected, it is often only

one float jamming one of the two float queues.

Having explained the difficult bit, there are some more things to mention
about the table and figure environments. With the

\caption{caption text}

command, you can define a caption for the float. A running number and
the string “Figure” or “Table” will be added by LATEX.
The two commands

\listoffigures and \listoftables

operate analogously to the \tableofcontents command, printing a list

of figures or tables, respectively. In these lists, the whole caption will be
repeated. If you tend to use long captions, you must have a shorter version
of the caption going into the lists. This is accomplished by entering the
short version in brackets after the \caption command.

\caption[Short]{LLLLLoooooonnnnnggggg}

With \label and \ref, you can create a reference to a float within your
text.
The following example draws a square and inserts it into the document.
You could use this if you wanted to reserve space for images you are going
to paste into the finished document.

Figure~\ref{white} is an example of Pop-Art.

\begin{figure}[!hbp]
\makebox[\textwidth]{\framebox[5cm]{\rule{0pt}{5cm}}}
\caption{Five by Five in Centimetres.} \label{white}
\end{figure}

In the example above, LATEX will try really hard (!) to place the figure
right here (h).10 If this is not possible, it tries to place the figure at the
bottom (b) of the page. Failing to place the figure on the current page,
it determines whether it is possible to create a float page containing this
10
assuming the figure queue is empty.
34 Typesetting Text

figure and maybe some tables from the tables queue. If there is not enough
material for a special float page, LATEX starts a new page, and once more
treats the figure as if it had just occurred in the text.
Under certain circumstances it might be necessary to use the

\clearpage or even the \cleardoublepage

command. It orders LATEX to immediately place all floats remaining in the

queues and then start a new page. \cleardoublepage even goes to a new
lefthand page.
You will learn how to include PostScript drawings into your LATEX 2ε
documents later in this introduction.
Chapter 3

Typesetting Mathematical
Formulae

Now you are ready! In this chapter, we will attack the main strength of TEX:
mathematical typesetting. But be warned, this chapter only scratches the sur-
face. While the things explained here are sufficient for many people, don’t
despair if you can’t find a solution to your mathematical typesetting needs here.
It is highly likely that your problem is addressed in AMS-LATEX1 or some other
package.

3.1 General
LATEX has a special mode for typesetting mathematics. Mathematical text
within a paragraph is entered between \( and \), between $ and $ or between
\begin{math} and \end{math}.

Add $a$ squared and $b$ squared

Add a squared and b squared to get c squared.
to get $c$ squared. Or, using
Or, using a more mathematical approach:
a more mathematical approach:
c2 = a2 + b2
$c^{2}=a^{2}+b^{2}$

\TeX{} is pronounced as TEX is pronounced as τ χ.

$\tau\epsilon\chi$.\\[6pt]
100 m3 of water
100~m$^{3}$ of water\\[6pt]
This comes from my $\heartsuit$ This comes from my ♥

It is preferable to display larger mathematical equations or formulae,

rather than to typeset them on separate lines. This means you enclose them
1
CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/amslatex
36 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

in \[ and \] or between \begin{displaymath} and \end{displaymath}.

This produces formulae which are not numbered. If you want LATEX to
number them, you can use the equation environment.

Add $a$ squared and $b$ squared

to get $c$ squared. Or, using Add a squared and b squared to get c squared.
a more mathematical approach: Or, using a more mathematical approach:
\begin{displaymath}
c2 = a2 + b2
c^{2}=a^{2}+b^{2}
\end{displaymath} And just one more line.
And just one more line.

You can reference an equation with \label and \ref

\begin{equation} \label{eq:eps}
\epsilon > 0
\end{equation} >0 (3.1)
From (\ref{eq:eps}), we gather From (3.1), we gather . . .
\ldots

Note that expressions will be typeset in a different style if displayed:

$\lim_{n \to \infty}

π2
Pn 1
\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k^2} limn→∞ k=1 k2 = 6
= \frac{\pi^2}{6}$

\begin{displaymath}
\lim_{n \to \infty} n
X 1 π2
\sum_{k=1}^n \frac{1}{k^2} lim =
n→∞ k2 6
= \frac{\pi^2}{6} k=1
\end{displaymath}

There are differences between math mode and text mode. For example
in math mode:

1. Most spaces and linebreaks do not have any significance, as all spaces
either are derived logically from the mathematical expressions or have
to be specified using special commands such as \,, \quad or \qquad.

2. Empty lines are not allowed. Only one paragraph per formula.

3. Each letter is considered to be the name of a variable and will be

typeset as such. If you want to typeset normal text within a formula
(normal upright font and normal spacing) then you have to enter the
text using the \textrm{...} commands.
3.2 Grouping in Math Mode 37

\begin{equation}
\forall x \in \mathbf{R}:
\qquad x^{2} \geq 0 ∀x ∈ R : x2 ≥ 0 (3.2)
\end{equation}

\begin{equation}
x^{2} \geq 0\qquad
\textrm{for all }x\in\mathbf{R} x2 ≥ 0 for all x ∈ R (3.3)
\end{equation}

Mathematicians can be very fussy about which symbols are used: it

would be conventional here to use ‘blackboard bold’, which is obtained using
\mathbb from the package amsfonts or amssymb. The last example becomes

\begin{displaymath}
x^{2} \geq 0\qquad
\textrm{for all }x\in\mathbb{R} x2 ≥ 0 for all x ∈ R
\end{displaymath}

3.2 Grouping in Math Mode

Most math mode commands act only on the next character. So if you want
a command to affect several characters, you have to group them together
using curly braces: {...}.

\begin{equation}
a^x+y \neq a^{x+y} ax + y 6= ax+y (3.4)
\end{equation}

3.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula

In this section, the most important commands used in mathematical type-
setting will be described. Take a look at section 3.10 on page 47 for a
detailed list of commands for typesetting mathematical symbols.
Lowercase Greek letters are entered as \alpha, \beta, \gamma, . . . ,
uppercase letters are entered as \Gamma, \Delta, . . . 2

$\lambda,\xi,\pi,\mu,\Phi,\Omega$ λ, ξ, π, µ, Φ, Ω

2
There is no uppercase Alpha defined in LATEX 2ε because it looks the same as a normal
roman A. Once the new math coding is done, things will change.
38 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

Exponents and Subscripts can be specified using the ^ and the _

character.
$a_{1}$ \qquad $x^{2}$ \qquad
$e^{-\alpha t}$ \qquad a1 x2 e−αt a3ij
$a^{3}_{ij}$\\ x2 x2
e 6= e
$e^{x^2} \neq {e^x}^2$

The square root is entered as \sqrt, the nth root is generated with
\sqrt[n]. The size of the root sign is determined automatically by LATEX.
If just the sign is needed, use \surd.

$\sqrt{x}$ \qquad √ √
p √ 3
$\sqrt{ x^{2}+\sqrt{y} }$ x x2 + y 2
\qquad $\sqrt[3]{2}$\\[3pt] √ 2
[x + y 2 ]
$\surd[x^2 + y^2]$

The commands \overline and \underline create horizontal lines

directly over or under an expression.

$\overline{m+n}$ m+n

The commands \overbrace and \underbrace create long horizontal

braces over or under an expression.

a + b + ··· + z
$\underbrace{ a+b+\cdots+z }_{26}$ | {z }
26

To add mathematical accents such as small arrows or tilde signs to vari-

ables, you can use the commands given in Table 3.1 on page 47. Wide hats
and tildes covering several characters are generated with \widetilde and
\widehat. The ’ symbol gives a prime.

\begin{displaymath}
y=x^{2}\qquad y’=2x\qquad y’’=2 y = x2 y 0 = 2x y 00 = 2
\end{displaymath}

Vectors often are specified by adding small arrow symbols on top of

a variable. This is done with the \vec command. The two commands
\overrightarrow and \overleftarrow are useful to denote the vector from
A to B.
\begin{displaymath}
\vec a\quad\overrightarrow{AB} −−→
~a AB
\end{displaymath}
3.3 Building Blocks of a Mathematical Formula 39

Names of log-like functions are often typeset in an upright font and not
in italic like variables. Therefore LATEX supplies the following commands to
typeset the most important function names:
\arccos \cos \csc \exp \ker \limsup \min \sinh
\arcsin \cosh \deg \gcd \lg \ln \Pr \sup
\arctan \cot \det \hom \lim \log \sec \tan
\arg \coth \dim \inf \liminf \max \sin \tanh

\[\lim_{x \rightarrow 0} sin x

lim =1
\frac{\sin x}{x}=1\] x→0 x

For the modulo function, there are two commands: \bmod for the binary
operator “a mod b” and \pmod for expressions such as “x ≡ a (mod b).”
A built-up fraction is typeset with the \frac{...}{...} command.
Often the slashed form 1/2 is preferable, because it looks better for small
amounts of ‘fraction material.’

$1\frac{1}{2}$~hours
\begin{displaymath} 1 12 hours
\frac{ x^{2} }{ k+1 }\qquad
x^{ \frac{2}{k+1} }\qquad x2 2
x k+1 x1/2
x^{ 1/2 } k+1
\end{displaymath}

To typeset binomial coefficients or similar structures, you can use either

the command {... \choose ...} or {... \atop ...}. The second com-
mand produces the same output as the first one, but without braces. (Note
that the usage of these old-style commands is expressly forbidden by the
amsmath package. They are replaced by \binom and \genfrac. The latter
is a superset of all related construct, e.g. you may get a similar construct to
\atop by \newcommand{\newatop}[2]{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{1}{#1}{#2}}.)

\begin{displaymath}  
n x
{n \choose k}\qquad {x \atop y+2}
\end{displaymath} k y+2

For binary relations it may be useful to stack symbols over each other.
\stackrel puts the symbol given in the first argument in superscript-like
size over the second which is set in its usual position.
40 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

\begin{displaymath} Z
!
\int f_N(x) \stackrel{!}{=} 1 fN (x) = 1
\end{displaymath}

The integral operator is generated with \int, the sum operator with
\sum and the product operator with \prod. The upper and lower limits
are specified with ^ and _ like subscripts and superscripts. 3

\begin{displaymath}
\sum_{i=1}^{n} \qquad n
X Z π
2 Y
\int_{0}^{\frac{\pi}{2}} \qquad
\prod_\epsilon i=1 0 
\end{displaymath}

For braces and other delimiters, there exist all types of symbols in
TEX (e.g. [ h k l). Round and square braces can be entered with the
corresponding keys, curly braces with \{, all other delimiters are generated
with special commands (e.g. \updownarrow). For a list of all delimiters
available, check table 3.8 on page 49.

\begin{displaymath}
{a,b,c}\neq\{a,b,c\} a, b, c 6= {a, b, c}
\end{displaymath}

If you put the command \left in front of an opening delimiter or \right

in front of a closing delimiter, TEX will automatically determine the correct
size of the delimiter. Note that you must close every \left with a corre-
sponding \right, and that the size is determined correctly only if both are
typeset on the same line. If you don’t want anything on the right, use the
invisible ‘\right.’ !

\begin{displaymath}
 3
1 + \left( \frac{1}{ 1-x^{2} } 1
\right) ^3 1+
1 − x2
\end{displaymath}

In some cases it is necessary to specify the correct size of a mathematical

delimiter by hand, which can be done using the commands \big, \Big,
\bigg and \Bigg as prefixes to most delimiter commands.4
3
AMS-LATEX in addition has multiline super-/subscripts
4
These commands do not work as expected if a size changing command has been used,
or the 11pt or 12pt option has been specified. Use the exscale or amsmath packages to
correct this behaviour.
3.4 Math Spacing 41

 2
$\Big( (x+1) (x-1) \Big) ^{2}$\\ (x + 1)(x − 1)
$\big(\Big(\bigg(\Bigg($\quad )
 o
$\big\}\Big\}\bigg\}\Bigg\}$\quad


$\big\|\Big\|\bigg\|\Bigg\|$

To enter three dots into a formula, you can use several commands.
\ldots typesets the dots on the baseline, \cdots sets them centred. Besides
that, there are the commands \vdots for vertical and \ddots for diagonal
dots. You can find another example in section 3.5.

\begin{displaymath}
x_{1},\ldots,x_{n} \qquad
x_{1}+\cdots+x_{n} x1 , . . . , xn x1 + · · · + xn
\end{displaymath}

3.4 Math Spacing

If the spaces within formulae chosen by TEX are not satisfactory, they can be
adjusted by inserting special spacing commands. There are some commands
3 4 5
for small spaces: \, for 18 quad ( ), \: for 18 quad ( ) and \; for 18 quad
( ). The escaped space character \ generates a medium sized space and
\quad ( ) and \qquad ( ) produce large spaces. The size of a \quad
corresponds to the width of the character ‘M’ of the current font. The \!
3
command produces a negative space of − 18 quad ( ).

\newcommand{\ud}{\mathrm{d}}
\begin{displaymath} ZZ
\int\!\!\!\int_{D} g(x,y) g(x, y) dx dy
\, \ud x\, \ud y D

\end{displaymath} instead of
instead of Z Z
\begin{displaymath} g(x, y)dxdy
\int\int_{D} g(x,y)\ud x \ud y D

\end{displaymath}

Note that ‘d’ in the differential is conventionally set in roman.

AMS-LATEX provides another way for finetuning the spacing between
multiple integral signs, namely the \iint, \iiint, \iiiint, and \idotsint
commands. With the amsmath package loaded, the above example can be
typeset this way:

\newcommand{\ud}{\mathrm{d}} ZZ
\begin{displaymath}
dx dy
\iint_{D} \, \ud x \, \ud y D
\end{displaymath}
42 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

See the electronic document testmath.tex (distributed with AMS-LATEX)

or Chapter 8 of “The LaTeX Companion” for further details.

3.5 Vertically Aligned Material

To typeset arrays, use the array environment. It works somewhat similar
to the tabular environment. The \\ command is used to break the lines.

\begin{displaymath}
\mathbf{X} =
\left( \begin{array}{ccc} 
x11 x12 ...

x_{11} & x_{12} & \ldots \\  x21 x22 ... 
X=
x_{21} & x_{22} & \ldots \\ .. .. ..

\vdots & \vdots & \ddots . . .
\end{array} \right)
\end{displaymath}

The array environment can also be used to typeset expressions which

have one big delimiter by using a “.” as an invisible \right delimiter:

\begin{displaymath}
y = \left\{ \begin{array}{ll} 
a & \textrm{if $d>c$}\\  a if d > c
b+x & \textrm{in the morning}\\ y= b + x in the morning
l & \textrm{all day long} l all day long

\end{array} \right.
\end{displaymath}

As within the tabular environment you can also draw lines in the array
environent, e.g. separating the entries of a matrix:

\begin{displaymath}
\left(\begin{array}{c|c}
1 & 2 \\  
1 2
\hline
3 4
3 & 4
\end{array}\right)
\end{displaymath}

For formulae running over several lines or for equation systems, you can
use the environments eqnarray, and eqnarray* instead of equation. In
eqnarray each line gets an equation number. The eqnarray* does not
number anything.
The eqnarray and the eqnarray* environments work like a 3-column
table of the form {rcl}, where the middle column can be used for the equal
sign or the not-equal sign. Or any other sign you see fit. The \\ command
breaks the lines.
3.6 Phantom 43

\begin{eqnarray}
f(x) & = & \cos x \\ f (x) = cos x (3.5)
f’(x) & = & -\sin x \\
\int_{0}^{x} f(y)dy & f 0 (x) = − sin x (3.6)
Z x
= & \sin x f (y)dy = sin x (3.7)
\end{eqnarray} 0

Notice that the space on either side of the the equal signs is rather large. It
can be reduced by setting \setlength\arraycolsep{2pt}, as in the next
example.
Long equations will not be automatically divided into neat bits. The
author has to specify where to break them and how much to indent. The
following two methods are the most common ones used to achieve this.

{\setlength\arraycolsep{2pt}
\begin{eqnarray} x3 x5
\sin x & = & x -\frac{x^{3}}{3!} sin x = x − + −
3! 5!
+\frac{x^{5}}{5!}-{} 7
x
\nonumber\\ − + ··· (3.8)
& & {}-\frac{x^{7}}{7!}+{}\cdots 7!
\end{eqnarray}}

\begin{eqnarray}
\lefteqn{ \cos x = 1
-\frac{x^{2}}{2!} +{} } x2
cos x = 1 − +
\nonumber\\ 2!
& & {}+\frac{x^{4}}{4!} x4 x6
-\frac{x^{6}}{6!}+{}\cdots + − + ··· (3.9)
4! 6!
\end{eqnarray}

The \nonumber command causes LATEX to not generate a number for this
equation.
It can be difficult to get vertically aligned equations to look right with
these methods; the package amsmath provides a more powerful set of alter-
natives. (see split and align environments).

3.6 Phantom
We can’t see phantoms, but they still occupy some space in the minds of a
lot of people. LATEX is no different. We can use this for some interesting
spacing tricks.
When vertically aligning text using ^ and _ LATEX sometimes is just a
little bit too helpful. Using the \phantom command you can reserve space
for characters which do not show up in the final output. Best is to look at
the following examples.
44 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

\begin{displaymath}
{}^{12}_{\phantom{1}6}\textrm{C}
\qquad \textrm{as opposed to} \qquad 12 12
6C as opposed to 6 C
{}^{12}_{6}\textrm{C}
\end{displaymath}

\begin{displaymath}
\Gamma_{ij}^{\phantom{ij}k}
\qquad \textrm{as opposed to} \qquad Γij k as opposed to Γkij
\Gamma_{ij}^{k}
\end{displaymath}

3.7 Math Font Size

In math mode, TEX selects the font size according to the context. Super-
scripts, for example, get typeset in a smaller font. If you want to typeset
part of an equation in roman, don’t use the \textrm command, because
the font size switching mechanism will not work, as \textrm temporarily
escapes to text mode. Use \mathrm instead to keep the size switching mech-
anism active. But pay attention, \mathrm will only work well on short items.
Spaces are still not active and accented characters do not work.5

\begin{equation}
2^{\textrm{nd}} \quad
2^{\mathrm{nd}} 2nd 2nd (3.10)
\end{equation}

Nevertheless, sometimes you need to tell LATEX the correct font size. In
math mode, the fontsize is set with the four commands:

\displaystyle (123), \textstyle (123), \scriptstyle (123) and

\scriptscriptstyle (123).

Changing styles also affects the way limits are displayed.

\begin{displaymath}
\mathop{\mathrm{corr}}(X,Y)=
\frac{\displaystyle
n
\sum_{i=1}^n(x_i-\overline x) X
(xi − x)(yi − y)
(y_i-\overline y)}
i=1
{\displaystyle\biggl[ corr(X, Y ) =  n n 1/2
X X
\sum_{i=1}^n(x_i-\overline x)^2 (xi − x) 2
(yi − y) 2
\sum_{i=1}^n(y_i-\overline y)^2 i=1 i=1
\biggr]^{1/2}}
\end{displaymath}
5
The AMS-LATEX package makes the \textrm command work with size changing.
3.8 Theorems, Laws, . . . 45

This is one of those examples in which we need larger brackets than the
standard \left[ \right] provides.

3.8 Theorems, Laws, . . .

When writing mathematical documents, you probably need a way to typeset
“Lemmas”, “Definitions”, “Axioms” and similar structures. LATEX supports
this with the command

\newtheorem{name}[counter ]{text}[section]

The name argument, is a short keyword used to identify the “theorem”.

With the text argument, you define the actual name of the “theorem” which
will be printed in the final document.
The arguments in square brackets are optional. They are both used to
specify the numbering used on the “theorem”. With the counter argument
you can specify the name of a previously declared “theorem”. The new
“theorem” will then be numbered in the same sequence. The section argu-
ment allows you to specify the sectional unit within which you want your
“theorem” to be numbered.
After executing the \newtheorem command in the preamble of your doc-
ument, you can use the following command within the document.

\begin{name}[text]
This is my interesting theorem
\end{name}

This should be enough theory. The following examples will hopefully

remove the final remains of doubt and make it clear that the \newtheorem
environment is way too complex to understand.

% definitions for the document

% preamble
\newtheorem{law}{Law}
\newtheorem{jury}[law]{Jury} Law 1 Don’t hide in the witness box
%in the document
\begin{law} \label{law:box} Jury 2 (The Twelve) It could be you! So
Don’t hide in the witness box beware and see law 1
\end{law}
\begin{jury}[The Twelve]
It could be you! So beware and Law 3 No, No, No
see law~\ref{law:box}\end{jury}
\begin{law}No, No, No\end{law}

The “Jury” theorem uses the same counter as the “Law” theorem. There-
fore it gets a number which is in sequence with the other “Laws”. The ar-
46 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

gument in square brackets is used to specify a title or something similar for

the theorem.

\flushleft
\newtheorem{mur}{Murphy}[section]
\begin{mur} Murphy 3.8.1 If there are two or more
If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those
ways to do something, and ways can result in a catastrophe, then
one of those ways can result someone will do it.
in a catastrophe, then
someone will do it.\end{mur}

The “Murphy” theorem gets a number which is linked to the number of

the current section. You could also use another unit, for example chapter
or subsection.

3.9 Bold symbols

It is quite difficult to get bold symbols in LATEX; this is probably intentional
as amateur typesetters tend to overuse them. The font change command
\mathbf gives bold letters, but these are roman (upright) whereas mathe-
matical symbols are normally italic. There is a \boldmath command, but
this can only be used outside mathematics mode. It works for symbols too.

\begin{displaymath}
\mu, M \qquad \mathbf{M} \qquad
\mbox{\boldmath $\mu, M$} µ, M M µ, M
\end{displaymath}

Notice that the comma is bold too, which may not be what is required.
The package amsbsy (included by amsmath) makes this much easier as it
includes a \boldsymbol command.

\begin{displaymath}
\mu, M \qquad
\boldsymbol{\mu}, \boldsymbol{M} µ, M µ, M
\end{displaymath}
3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols 47

3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols

In the following tables, you find all the symbols normally accessible from
math mode.
To use the symbols listed in Tables 3.12–3.16,6 the package amssymb
must be loaded in the preamble of the document and the AMS math fonts
must be installed, on the system. If the AMS package and fonts are not
installed, on your system, have a look at
CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/amslatex

Table 3.1: Math Mode Accents.

â \hat{a} ǎ \check{a} ã \tilde{a} á \acute{a}
à \grave{a} ȧ \dot{a} ä \ddot{a} ă \breve{a}
ā \bar{a} ~a \vec{a} A
b \widehat{A} A
e \widetilde{A}

Table 3.2: Lowercase Greek Letters.

α \alpha θ \theta o o υ \upsilon
β \beta ϑ \vartheta π \pi φ \phi
γ \gamma ι \iota $ \varpi ϕ \varphi
δ \delta κ \kappa ρ \rho χ \chi
 \epsilon λ \lambda % \varrho ψ \psi
ε \varepsilon µ \mu σ \sigma ω \omega
ζ \zeta ν \nu ς \varsigma
η \eta ξ \xi τ \tau

Table 3.3: Uppercase Greek Letters.

Γ \Gamma Λ \Lambda Σ \Sigma Ψ \Psi

∆ \Delta Ξ \Xi Υ \Upsilon Ω \Omega
Θ \Theta Π \Pi Φ \Phi

6
These tables were derived from symbols.tex by David Carlisle and subsequently
changed extensively as suggested by Josef Tkadlec.
48 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

Table 3.4: Binary Relations.

You can produce corresponding negations by adding a \not command as

prefix to the following symbols.

< < > > = =

≤ \leq or \le ≥ \geq or \ge ≡ \equiv
.
 \ll  \gg = \doteq
≺ \prec  \succ ∼ \sim
 \preceq  \succeq ' \simeq
⊂ \subset ⊃ \supset ≈ \approx
⊆ \subseteq ⊇ \supseteq ∼
= \cong
< \sqsubset a = \sqsupset a 1 \Join a
v \sqsubseteq w \sqsupseteq ./ \bowtie
∈ \in 3 \ni , \owns ∝ \propto
` \vdash a \dashv |= \models
| \mid k \parallel ⊥ \perp
^ \smile _ \frown  \asymp
: : ∈
/ \notin 6= \neq or \ne
a
Use the latexsym package to access this symbol

Table 3.5: Binary Operators.

+ + − -
± \pm ∓ \mp / \triangleleft
· \cdot ÷ \div . \triangleright
× \times \ \setminus ? \star
∪ \cup ∩ \cap ∗ \ast
t \sqcup u \sqcap ◦ \circ
∨ \vee , \lor ∧ \wedge , \land • \bullet
⊕ \oplus \ominus  \diamond
 \odot  \oslash ] \uplus
⊗ \otimes \bigcirc q \amalg
4 \bigtriangleup 5 \bigtriangledown † \dagger

\lhd a  \rhd a ‡ \ddagger
 \unlhd a  \unrhd a o \wr
 3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols 49

Table 3.6: BIG Operators.

P S W L
\sum \bigcup \bigvee \bigoplus
Q T V N
\prod \bigcap \bigwedge \bigotimes
` F J
\coprod \bigsqcup \bigodot
R H U
\int \oint \biguplus

Table 3.7: Arrows.

← \leftarrow or \gets ←− \longleftarrow ↑ \uparrow
→ \rightarrow or \to −→ \longrightarrow ↓ \downarrow
↔ \leftrightarrow ←→ \longleftrightarrow l \updownarrow
⇐ \Leftarrow ⇐= \Longleftarrow ⇑ \Uparrow
⇒ \Rightarrow =⇒ \Longrightarrow ⇓ \Downarrow
⇔ \Leftrightarrow ⇐⇒ \Longleftrightarrow m \Updownarrow
7→ \mapsto 7−→ \longmapsto % \nearrow
←- \hookleftarrow ,→ \hookrightarrow & \searrow
( \leftharpoonup * \rightharpoonup . \swarrow
) \leftharpoondown + \rightharpoondown - \nwarrow

\rightleftharpoons ⇐⇒ \iff (bigger spaces) ; \leadsto a
a
Use the latexsym package to access this symbol

Table 3.8: Delimiters.

( ( ) ) ↑ \uparrow ⇑ \Uparrow
[ [ or \lbrack ] ] or \rbrack ↓ \downarrow ⇓ \Downarrow
{ \{ or \lbrace } \} or \rbrace l \updownarrow m \Updownarrow
h \langle i \rangle | | or \vert k \| or \Vert
b \lfloor c \rfloor d \lceil e \rceil
/ / \ \backslash . (dual. empty)

Table 3.9: Large Delimiters.

   
 \lgroup  \rgroup  \lmoustache  \rmoustache
 w 
\arrowvert \Arrowvert   \bracevert
 w 
50 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

Table 3.10: Miscellaneous Symbols.

.. ..
... \dots ··· \cdots . \vdots . \ddots
~ \hbar ı \imath  \jmath ` \ell
< \Re = \Im ℵ \aleph ℘ \wp
∀ \forall ∃ \exists 0 \mho a ∂ \partial
0 ’ 0 \prime ∅ \emptyset ∞ \infty
∇ \nabla 4 \triangle 2 \Box a 3 \Diamond a
√
⊥ \bot > \top ∠ \angle \surd
♦ \diamondsuit ♥ \heartsuit ♣ \clubsuit ♠ \spadesuit
¬ \neg or \lnot [ \flat \ \natural ] \sharp
a
Use the latexsym package to access this symbol

Table 3.11: Non-Mathematical Symbols.

These symbols can also be used in text mode.

† \dag § \S
c \copyright
‡ \ddag ¶ \P £ \pounds

Table 3.12: AMS Delimiters.

p \ulcorner q \urcorner x \llcorner y \lrcorner

Table 3.13: AMS Greek and Hebrew.

z \digamma κ \varkappa i \beth k \daleth ‫ג‬ \gimel

 3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols 51

Table 3.14: AMS Binary Relations.

l \lessdot m \gtrdot + \doteqdot or \Doteq

6 \leqslant > \geqslant : \risingdotseq
0 \eqslantless 1 \eqslantgtr ; \fallingdotseq
5 \leqq = \geqq P \eqcirc
≪ \lll or \llless ≫ \ggg or \gggtr $ \circeq
. \lesssim & \gtrsim , \triangleq
/ \lessapprox ' \gtrapprox l \bumpeq
≶ \lessgtr ≷ \gtrless m \Bumpeq
Q \lesseqgtr R \gtreqless ∼ \thicksim
S \lesseqqgtr T \gtreqqless ≈ \thickapprox
4 \preccurlyeq < \succcurlyeq u \approxeq
2 \curlyeqprec 3 \curlyeqsucc v \backsim
- \precsim % \succsim w \backsimeq
w \precapprox v \succapprox  \vDash
j \subseteqq k \supseteqq \Vdash
b \Subset c \Supset  \Vvdash
< \sqsubset = \sqsupset  \backepsilon
∴ \therefore ∵ \because ∝ \varpropto
p \shortmid q \shortparallel G \between
` \smallsmile a \smallfrown t \pitchfork
C \vartriangleleft B \vartriangleright J \blacktriangleleft
E \trianglelefteq D \trianglerighteq I \blacktriangleright

Table 3.15: AMS Arrows.

L99 \dashleftarrow 99K \dashrightarrow ( \multimap
⇔ \leftleftarrows ⇒ \rightrightarrows  \upuparrows
 \leftrightarrows  \rightleftarrows  \downdownarrows
W \Lleftarrow V \Rrightarrow  \upharpoonleft
 \twoheadleftarrow  \twoheadrightarrow  \upharpoonright
 \leftarrowtail  \rightarrowtail  \downharpoonleft
 \leftrightharpoons
\rightleftharpoons  \downharpoonright
 \Lsh  \Rsh \rightsquigarrow
" \looparrowleft # \looparrowright ! \leftrightsquigarrow
x \curvearrowleft y \curvearrowright
\circlearrowleft  \circlearrowright
52 Typesetting Mathematical Formulae

Table 3.16: AMS Negated Binary Relations and Arrows.

≮ \nless ≯ \ngtr & \varsubsetneqq

 \lneq \gneq ' \varsupsetneqq
 \nleq  \ngeq " \nsubseteqq

\nleqslant  \ngeqslant # \nsupseteqq
 \lneqq \gneqq - \nmid
\lvertneqq
\gvertneqq ∦ \nparallel
 \nleqq  \ngeqq . \nshortmid
 \lnsim  \gnsim / \nshortparallel
 \lnapprox  \gnapprox  \nsim
⊀ \nprec  \nsucc  \ncong
 \npreceq  \nsucceq 0 \nvdash
 \precneqq  \succneqq 2 \nvDash
 \precnsim  \succnsim 1 \nVdash
 \precnapprox  \succnapprox 3 \nVDash
( \subsetneq ) \supsetneq 6 \ntriangleleft
\varsubsetneq ! \varsupsetneq 7 \ntriangleright
* \nsubseteq + \nsupseteq 5 \ntrianglelefteq
$ \subsetneqq % \supsetneqq 4 \ntrianglerighteq
8 \nleftarrow 9 \nrightarrow = \nleftrightarrow
: \nLeftarrow ; \nRightarrow < \nLeftrightarrow

Table 3.17: AMS Binary Operators.

u \dotplus  \centerdot | \intercal

n \ltimes o \rtimes > \divideontimes
d \Cup or \doublecup e \Cap or \doublecap r \smallsetminus
Y \veebar Z \barwedge [ \doublebarwedge

\boxplus  \boxminus  \circleddash
 \boxtimes \boxdot } \circledcirc
h \leftthreetimes i \rightthreetimes ~ \circledast
g \curlyvee f \curlywedge
3.10 List of Mathematical Symbols 53

Table 3.18: AMS Miscellaneous.

~ \hbar } \hslash k \Bbbk
 \square  \blacksquare s \circledS
M \vartriangle N \blacktriangle { \complement
O \triangledown H \blacktriangledown a \Game
♦ \lozenge  \blacklozenge F \bigstar
∠ \angle ] \measuredangle ^ \sphericalangle
 \diagup  \diagdown 8 \backprime
@ \nexists ` \Finv ∅ \varnothing
ð \eth 0 \mho

Table 3.19: Math Alphabets.

Example Command Required package

ABCdef \mathrm{ABCdef}
ABCdef \mathit{ABCdef}
ABCdef \mathnormal{ABCdef}
ABC \mathcal{ABC}
ABC \mathcal{ABC} eucal with option: mathcal or
\mathscr{ABC} eucal with option: mathscr
ABCdef \mathfrak{ABCdef} eufrak
ABC \mathbb{ABC} amsfonts or amssymb
Chapter 4

Specialities

When putting together a large document, LATEX will help you with some special
features like index generation, bibliography management, and other things. A
much more complete description of specialities and enhancements possible with
LATEX can be found in the LATEX Manual [1] and The LATEX Companion [3].

4.1 Including EPS Graphics

LATEX provides the basic facilities to work with floating bodies such as images
or graphics, with the figure and the table environment.
There are also several possibilities to generate the actual graphics with
basic LATEX or a LATEX extension package. Unfortunately, most users find
them quite difficult to understand. Therefore this will not be explained any
further in this manual. Please refer to The LATEX Companion [3] and the
LATEX Manual [1] for more information on that subject.
A much easier way to get graphics into a document, is to generate them
with a specialised software package1 and then include the finished graphics
into the document. Here again, LATEX packages offer many ways to do that.
In this introduction, only the use of Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) graphics
will be discussed, because it is quite easy to do and widely used. In order
to use pictures in the EPS format, you must have a PostScript printer2
available for output.
A good set of commands for inclusion of graphics is provided in the
graphicx package by D. P. Carlisle. It is part of a whole family of packages
called the “graphics” bundle3 .
1
Such as XFig, CorelDraw!, Freehand, Gnuplot, . . .
2
Another possibility to output PostScript is the GhostScript program available
from CTAN:/tex-archive/support/ghostscript. Windows users might want to look for
GSview.
3
CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/graphics
56 Specialities

Assuming you are working on a system with a PostScript printer avail-

able for output and with the graphicx package installed, you can use the
following step by step guide to include a picture into your document:

1. Export the picture from your graphics program in EPS format.4

2. Load the graphicx package in the preamble of the input file with

\usepackage[driver ]{graphicx}

where driver is the name of your “dvi to postscript” converter pro-

gram. The most widely used program is called dvips. The name of
the driver is required, because there is no standard on how graphics
are included in TEX. Knowing the name of the driver, the graphicx
package can choose the correct method to insert information about the
graphics into the .dvi file, so that the printer understands it and can
correctly include the .eps file.

3. Use the command

\includegraphics[key=value, . . . ]{file}

to include file into your document. The optional parameter accepts a

comma separated list of keys and associated values. The keys can be
used to alter the width, height and rotation of the included graphic.
Table 4.1 lists the most important keys.

Table 4.1: Key Names for graphicx Package.

width scale graphic to the specified width

height scale graphic to the specified height
angle rotate graphic counterclockwise
scale scale graphic

The following example code will hopefully make things clear:

4
If your software can not export into EPS format, you can try to install a PostScript
printer driver (some Apple LaserWriter for example) and then print to a file with this
driver. With some luck this file will be in EPS format. Note that an EPS must not
contain more than one page. Some printer drivers can be explicitly configured to produce
EPS format.
4.2 Bibliography 57

\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[angle=90, width=0.5\textwidth]{test}
\end{center}
\end{figure}
This includes the graphic stored in the file test.eps. The graphic is first
rotated by an angle of 90 degrees and then scaled to the final width of 0.5
times the width of a standard paragraph. The aspect ratio is 1.0, because
no special height is specified. The width and height parameters can also be
specified in absolute dimensions. Refer to Table 5.5 on page 72 for more
information. If you want to know more about this topic, make sure to read
[8] and [11].

4.2 Bibliography
You can produce a bibliography with the thebibliography environment.
Each entry starts with

\bibitem{marker }

The marker is then used to cite the book, article or paper within the
document.

\cite{marker }

The numbering of the entries is generated automatically. The parameter

after the \begin{thebibliography} command sets the maximum width of
these numbers. In the example below, {99} tells LATEX to expect that none
of the bibliography item numbers will be wider than the number 99.

Partl [1] has proposed that . . .

Partl~\cite{pa} has
proposed that \ldots

\begin{thebibliography}{99}
\bibitem{pa} H.~Partl:
\emph{German \TeX}, Bibliography
TUGboat Vol.~9, No.~1 (’88)
\end{thebibliography}

[1] H. Partl: German TEX, TUGboat

Vol. 9, No. 1 (’88)
58 Specialities

For larger projects, you might want to check out the BibTEX program.
BibTEX is included with most TEXdistributions. It allows you to maintain
a bibliographic database and then extract the references relevant to things
you cited in your paper. The visual presentation of BibTEX generated bib-
liographies is based on a style sheets concept which allows you to create
bibliographies following a wide range of established designs.

4.3 Indexing
A very useful feature of many books is their index. With LATEX and the
support program makeindex5 , an index can be generated quite easily. In this
introduction, only the basic index generation commands will be explained.
For a more in-depth view, please refer to The LATEX Companion [3].
To enable the indexing feature of LATEX, the makeidx package must be
loaded in the preamble with:

\usepackage{makeidx}

and the special indexing commands must be enabled by putting the

\makeindex

command into the input file preamble.

The content of the index is specified with

\index{key}

commands, where key is the index entry. You enter the index commands
at the points in the text where you want the final index entries to point to.
Table 4.2 explains the syntax of the key argument with several examples.
When the input file is processed with LATEX, each \index command
writes an appropriate index entry together with the current page number
to a special file. The file has the same name as the LATEX input file, but a
different extension (.idx). This .idx file can then be processed with the
makeindex program.

makeindex filename

The makeindex program generates a sorted index with the same base
file name, but this time with the extension .ind. If now the LATEX input
5
On systems not necessarily supporting filenames longer than 8 characters, the program
may be called makeidx.
4.4 Fancy Headers 59

Table 4.2: Index Key Syntax Examples.

Example Index Entry Comment

\index{hello} hello, 1 Plain entry
\index{hello!Peter} Peter, 3 Subentry under ‘hello’
\index{Sam@\textsl{Sam}} Sam, 2 Formatted entry
\index{Lin@\textbf{Lin}} Lin, 7 Same as above
\index{Jenny|textbf} Jenny, 3 Formatted page number
\index{Joe|textit} Joe, 5 Same as above

file is processed again, this sorted index gets included into the document at
the point where LATEX finds

\printindex

The showidx package which comes with LATEX 2ε prints out all index
entries in the left margin of the text. This is quite useful for proofreading a
document and verifying the index.

4.4 Fancy Headers

The fancyhdr package,6 written by Piet van Oostrum, provides a few sim-
ple commands which allow you to customize the header and footer lines of
your document. If you look at the top of this page, you can see a possible
application of this package.
The tricky problem when customising headers and footers is to get things
like running section and chapter names in there. LATEX accomplishes this
with a two-stage approach. In the header and footer definition, you use
the commands \rightmark and \leftmark to represent the current chapter
and section heading, respectively. The values of these two commands are
overwritten whenever a chapter or section command is processed.
For ultimate flexibility, the \chapter command and its friends do not
redefine \rightmark and \leftmark themselves, they call yet another com-
mand called \chaptermark, \sectionmark or \subsectionmark which is
responsible for redefining \rightmark and \leftmark.
So, if you wanted to change the look of the chapter name in the header
line, you simply have to “renew” the \chaptermark command.
Figure 4.1 shows a possible setup for the fancyhdr package which makes
the headers look about the same as they look in this booklet. In any case
6
Available from CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/supported/fancyhdr.
60 Specialities

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
% with this we ensure that the chapter and section
% headings are in lowercase.
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\markboth{#1}{}}
\renewcommand{\sectionmark}[1]{\markright{\thesection\ #1}}
\fancyhf{} % delete current setting for header and footer
\fancyhead[LE,RO]{\bfseries\thepage}
\fancyhead[LO]{\bfseries\rightmark}
\fancyhead[RE]{\bfseries\leftmark}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.5pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
\addtolength{\headheight}{0.5pt} % make space for the rule
\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhead{} % get rid of headers on plain pages
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt} % and the line
}

Figure 4.1: Example fancyhdr Setup.

I suggest you fetch the documentation for the package at the address men-
tioned in the footnote.

4.5 The Verbatim Package

Earlier in this book, you got to know the verbatim environment. In this
section, you are going to learn about the verbatim package. The verba-
tim package is basically a re-implementation of the verbatim environment,
which works around some of the limitations of the original verbatim envi-
ronment. This by itself is not spectacular, but with the implementation of
the verbatim package, there was also new functionality added, and this is the
reason I am mentioning the package here. The verbatim package provides
the

\verbatiminput{filename}

command which allows you to include raw ASCII text into your document
as if it was inside a verbatim environment.
As the verbatim package is part of the ‘tools’ bundle, you should find it
preinstalled on most systems. If you want to know more about this package,
make sure to read [9]
4.6 Protecting fragile commands 61

4.6 Protecting fragile commands

Text given as arguments of commands like \caption or \section may show
up more than once in the document (e.g. in the table of contents as well
as in the body of the document). Some commands fail when used in the
argument of \section-like commands. These are called fragile commands.
Fragile commands are for example \footnote or \phantom. What these
fragile commands need to work, is protection (don’t we all?). You can
protect them by putting the \protect command in front of them.
\protect only refers to the command which follows right behind, not
even to its arguments. In most cases a superfluous \protect won’t hurt.

\section{I am considerate
\protect\footnote{and protect my footnotes}}
Chapter 5

Customising LATEX

Documents produced by using the commands you have learned up to this point
will look acceptable to a large audience. While they are not looking fancy, they
obey all the established rules of good typesetting, which will make them easy
to read and pleasant to look at.
However there are situations where LATEX does not provide a command or
environment which matches your needs, or the output produced by some existing
command may not meet your requirements.
In this chapter, I will try to give some hints on how to teach LATEX new tricks
and how to make it produce output which looks different than what is provided
by default.

5.1 New Commands, Environments and Packages

You may have noticed that all the commands I introduce in this book are
typeset in a box, and that they show up in the index at the end of the book.
Instead of directly using the necessary LATEX commands to achieve this, I
have created a package in which I defined new commands and environments
for this purpose. Now I can simply write:

\begin{command}
\dum
\ci{dum}
\end{command}

In this example, I am using both a new environment called command

which is responsible for drawing the box around the command and a new
command named \ci which typesets the command name and also makes a
corresponding entry in the index. You can check this out by looking up the
\dum command in the index at the back of this book, where you’ll find an
entry for \dum, pointing to every page where I mentioned the \dum command.
64 Customising LATEX

If I ever decide that I do not like the commands to be typeset in a box

any more, I can simply change the definition of the command environment
to create a new look. This is much easier than going through the whole
document to hunt down all the places where I have used some generic LATEX
commands to draw a box around some word.

5.1.1 New Commands

To add your own commands, use the

\newcommand{name}[num]{definition}

command. Basically, the command requires two arguments: the name of

the command you want to create, and the definition of the command. The
num argument in square brackets is optional and specifies the number of
arguments the new command takes (up to 9 are possible). If missing it
defaults to 0, i.e. no argument allowed.
The following two examples should help you to get the idea. The first
example defines a new command called \tnss. This is short for “The Not
So Short Introduction to LATEX 2ε ”. Such a command could come in handy
if you had to write the title of this book over and over again.

\newcommand{\tnss}{The not
so Short Introduction to This is “The not so Short Introduction to
\LaTeXe} LATEX 2ε ” . . . “The not so Short Introduc-
This is ‘‘\tnss’’ \ldots{} tion to LATEX 2ε ”
‘‘\tnss’’

The next example illustrates how to define a new command which takes
one argument. The #1 tag gets replaced by the argument you specify. If
you wanted to use more than one argument, use #2 and so on.

\newcommand{\txsit}[1]
{This is the \emph{#1} Short
Introduction to \LaTeXe} • This is the not so Short Introduction
% in the document body: to LATEX 2ε
\begin{itemize} • This is the very Short Introduction to
\item \txsit{not so} LATEX 2ε
\item \txsit{very}
\end{itemize}

LATEX will not allow you to create a new command which would overwrite
an existing one. But there is a special command in case you explicitly
want this: \renewcommand. It uses the same syntax as the \newcommand
command.
5.1 New Commands, Environments and Packages 65

In certain cases you might also want to use the \providecommand com-
mand. It works like \newcommand, but if the command is already defined,
LATEX 2ε will silently ignore it.
There are some points to note about whitespace following LATEX com-
mands. See page 6 for more information.

5.1.2 New Environments

Similar to the \newcommand command, there is also a command to create
your own environments. The \newenvironment command uses the following
syntax:

\newenvironment{name}[num]{before}{after }

Like the \newcommand command, you can use \newenvironment with an

optional argument or without. The material specified in the before argument
is processed before the text in the environment gets processed. The material
in the after argument gets processed when the \end{name} command is
encountered.
The example below illustrates the usage of the \newenvironment com-
mand.

\newenvironment{king}
{\rule{1ex}{1ex}%
\hspace{\stretch{1}}}
{\hspace{\stretch{1}}%
\rule{1ex}{1ex}} My humble subjects . . .

\begin{king}
My humble subjects \ldots
\end{king}

The num argument is used the same way as in the \newcommand com-
mand. LATEX makes sure that you do not define an environment which
already exists. If you ever want to change an existing command, you can
use the \renewenvironment command. It uses the same syntax as the
\newenvironment command.
The commands used in this example will be explained later: For the
\rule command see page 77, for \stretch go to page 71, and more infor-
mation on \hspace can be found on page 71.

5.1.3 Your own Package

If you define a lot of new environments and commands, the preamble of your
document will get quite long. In this situation, it is a good idea to create
a LATEX package containing all your command and environment definitions.
66 Customising LATEX

You can then use the \usepackage command to make the package available
in your document.

% Demo Package by Tobias Oetiker

\ProvidesPackage{demopack}
\newcommand{\tnss}{The not so Short Introduction to \LaTeXe}
\newcommand{\txsit}[1]{The \emph{#1} Short
Introduction to \LaTeXe}
\newenvironment{king}{\begin{quote}}{\end{quote}}

Figure 5.1: Example Package.

Writing a package consists basically in copying the contents of your doc-

ument preamble into a separate file with a name ending in .sty. There is
one special command,

\ProvidesPackage{package name}

for use at the very beginning of your package file. \ProvidesPackage tells
LATEX the name of the package and will allow it to issue a sensible error
message when you try to include a package twice. Figure 5.1 shows a small
example package which contains the commands defined in the examples
above.

5.2 Fonts and Sizes

5.2.1 Font changing Commands
LATEX chooses the appropriate font and font size based on the logical struc-
ture of the document (sections, footnotes, . . . ). In some cases, one might
like to change fonts and sizes by hand. To do this, you can use the com-
mands listed in Tables 5.1 and 5.2. The actual size of each font is a design
issue and depends on the document class and its options. Table 5.3 shows
the absolute point size for these commands as implemented in the standard
document classes.

{\small The small and

\textbf{bold} Romans ruled} The small and bold Romans ruled all of
{\Large all of great big great big Italy.
\textit{Italy}.}

One important feature of LATEX 2ε is, that the font attributes are inde-
pendent. This means, that you can issue size or even font changing com-
mands and still keep the bold or slant attribute set earlier.
5.2 Fonts and Sizes 67

In math mode you can use the font changing commands to temporarily
exit math mode and enter some normal text. If you want to switch to another
font for math typesetting there exists another special set of commands. Refer
to Table 5.4.
In connection with the font size commands, curly braces play a significant
role. They are used to build groups. Groups limit the scope of most LATEX
commands.

He likes {\LARGE large and

{\small small} letters}. He likes large and small letters.

The font size commands also change the line spacing, but only if the
paragraph ends within the scope of the font size command. The closing
curly brace } should therefore not come too early. Note the position of the
\par command in the next two examples. 1

1
\par is equivalent to a blank line

Table 5.1: Fonts.

\textrm{...} roman \textsf{...} sans serif

\texttt{...} typewriter
\textmd{...} medium \textbf{...} bold face
\textup{...} upright \textit{...} italic
\textsl{...} slanted \textsc{...} small caps
\emph{...} emphasized \textnormal{...} document font

Table 5.2: Font Sizes.

\tiny tiny font \Large larger font

\scriptsize
\footnotesize
very small font
quite small font
\LARGE very large font
\small small font \huge huge
\normalsize normal font
\large large font \Huge largest
68 Customising LATEX

Table 5.3: Absolute Point Sizes in Standard Classes.

size 10pt (default) 11pt option 12pt option

\tiny 5pt 6pt 6pt
\scriptsize 7pt 8pt 8pt
\footnotesize 8pt 9pt 10pt
\small 9pt 10pt 11pt
\normalsize 10pt 11pt 12pt
\large 12pt 12pt 14pt
\Large 14pt 14pt 17pt
\LARGE 17pt 17pt 20pt
\huge 20pt 20pt 25pt
\Huge 25pt 25pt 25pt

Table 5.4: Math Fonts.

Command Example Output

\mathcal{...} $\mathcal{B}=c$ B=c
\mathrm{...} $\mathrm{K}_2$ K
P2
\mathbf{...} $\sum x=\mathbf{v}$ x=v
\mathsf{...} $\mathsf{G\times R}$ G×R
\mathtt{...} $\mathtt{L}(b,c)$ L(b, c)
\mathnormal{...} $\mathnormal{R_{19}}\neq R_{19}$ R 6= R19
\mathit{...} $\mathit{ffi}\neq ffi$ ffi 6= f f i
5.2 Fonts and Sizes 69

{\Large Don’t read this! It is not Don’t read this! It is not true.
true. You can believe me!\par}
You can believe me!

{\Large This is not true either. This is not true either. But re-
But remember I am a liar.}\par member I am a liar.

If you want to activate a size changing command for a whole paragraph

of text or even more, you might want to use the environment syntax for font
changing commands.

\begin{Large}
This is not true.
But then again, what is these
This is not true. But then again,
days \ldots what is these days . . .
\end{Large}

This will save you from counting lots of curly braces.

5.2.2 Danger, Will Robinson, Danger

As noted at the beginning of this chapter, it is dangerous to clutter your
document with explicit commands like this, because they work in opposition
to the basic idea of LATEX, which is to separate the logical and visual markup
of your document. This means that if you use the same font changing
command in several places in order to typeset a special kind of information,
you should use \newcommand to define a “logical wrapper command” for the
font changing command.

\newcommand{\oops}[1]{\textbf{#1}}
Do not \oops{enter} this room, Do not enter this room, it’s occupied by a
it’s occupied by a \oops{machine} machine of unknown origin and purpose.
of unknown origin and purpose.

This approach has the advantage that you can decide at some later stage
whether you want to use some other visual representation of danger than
\textbf without having to wade through your document, identifying all the
occurrences of \textbf and then figuring out for each one whether it was
used for pointing out danger or for some other reason.

5.2.3 Advice
To conclude this journey into the land of fonts and font sizes, here is a little
word of advice:
70 Customising LATEX

!
Remember The MO RE fonts you
use in a document, the

more readable and beautiful it become . s

5.3 Spacing
5.3.1 Line Spacing
If you want to use larger inter-line spacing in a document, you can change
its value by putting the

\linespread{factor }

command into the preamble of your document. Use \linespread{1.3} for

“one and a half” line spacing, and \linespread{1.6} for “double” line
spacing. Normally the lines are not spread, therefore the default line spread
factor is 1.

5.3.2 Paragraph Formatting

In LATEX, there are two parameters influencing paragraph layout. By placing
a definition like

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\setlength{\parskip}{1ex plus 0.5ex minus 0.2ex}

in the preamble of the input file, you can change the layout of paragraphs.
These two commands increase the space between two paragraphs while set-
ting the paragraph indent to zero. In continental Europe, paragraphs are
often separated by some space and not indented. But beware, this also has
its effect on the table of contents. Its lines get spaced more loosely now as
well. To avoid this, you might want to move the two commands from the
preamble into your document to some place after the \tableofcontents or
to not use them at all, because you’ll find that most professional books use
indenting and not spacing to separate paragraphs.
If you want to indent a paragraph which is not indented, you can use

\indent

at the beginning of the paragraph.2 Obviously, this will only have an effect
when \parindent is not set to zero.
2
To indent the first paragraph after each section head, use the indentfirst package in
the ‘tools’ bundle.
5.3 Spacing 71

To create a non-indented paragraph, you can use

\noindent

as the first command of the paragraph. This might come in handy when
you start a document with body text and not with a sectioning command.

5.3.3 Horizontal Space

LATEX determines the spaces between words and sentences automatically.
To add horizontal space, use:

\hspace{length}

If such a space should be kept even if it falls at the end or the start of a
line, use \hspace* instead of \hspace. The length in the simplest case just
is a number plus a unit. The most important units are listed in Table 5.5.

This\hspace{1.5cm}is a space
This is a space of 1.5 cm.
of 1.5 cm.

The command

\stretch{n}

generates a special rubber space. It stretches until all the remaining space
on a line is filled up. If two \hspace{\stretch{n}} commands are issued
on the same line, they grow according to the stretch factor.

x\hspace{\stretch{1}}
x x x
x\hspace{\stretch{3}}x

5.3.4 Vertical Space

The space between paragraphs, sections, subsections, . . . is determined au-
tomatically by LATEX. If necessary, additional vertical space between two
paragraphs can be added with the command:

\vspace{length}

This command should normally be used between two empty lines. If the
space should be preserved at the top or at the bottom of a page, use the
starred version of the command \vspace* instead of \vspace.
The \stretch command in connection with \pagebreak can be used to
typeset text on the last line of a page, or to centre text vertically on a page.
72 Customising LATEX

Table 5.5: TEX Units.

mm millimetre ≈ 1/25 inch

cm centimetre = 10 mm
in inch = 25.4 mm
pt point ≈ 1/72 inch ≈ 13 mm
em approx width of an ‘M’ in the current font
ex approx height of an ‘x’ in the current font

Some text \ldots

\vspace{\stretch{1}}
This goes onto the last line of the page.\pagebreak

Additional space between two lines of the same paragraph or within a

table is specified with the

\\[length]

command.

5.4 Page Layout

LATEX 2ε allows you to specify the paper size in the \documentclass com-
mand. It then automatically picks the right text margins. But sometimes
you may not be happy with the predefined values. Naturally, you can change
them. Figure 5.2 shows all the parameters which can be changed. The fig-
ure was produced with the layout package from the tools bundle3 .
WAIT! . . . before you launch into a “Let’s make that narrow page a bit
wider” frenzy, take a few seconds to think. As with most things in LATEX,
there is a good reason for the page layout to be as it is.
Sure, compared to your off-the-shelf MS Word page, it looks awfully
narrow. But take a look at your favourite book4 and count the number of
characters on a standard text line. You will find that there are no more than
about 66 characters on each line. Now do the same on your LATEX page. You
will find that there are also about 66 characters per line. Experience shows
that the reading gets difficult as soon as there are more characters on a
single line. This is because it is difficult for the eyes to move from the end of
3
CTAN:/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/tools
4
I mean a real printed book produced by a reputable publisher.
5.4 Page Layout 73

6
4i i
5 i
6 i
2

? ?
?
6 ?Header
6
6 6

Margin
Body i
7
Notes

-  9i
 10i -
3i
- 

 i
8 -

? ?
 1i- Footer
i
6
11

1 one inch + \hoffset 2 one inch + \voffset

3 \evensidemargin = 70pt 4 \topmargin = 22pt
5 \headheight = 13pt 6 \headsep = 19pt
7 \textheight = 595pt 8 \textwidth = 360pt
9 \marginparsep = 7pt 10 \marginparwidth = 106pt
11 \footskip = 27pt \marginparpush = 5pt (not shown)
\hoffset = 0pt \voffset = 0pt
\paperwidth = 597pt \paperheight = 845pt

Figure 5.2: Page Layout Parameters.

74 Customising LATEX

one line to the start of the next one. This is also the reason why newspapers
are typeset in multiple columns.
So if you increase the width of your body text, keep in mind that you
are making life difficult for the readers of your paper. But enough of the
cautioning, I promised to tell you how you do it . . .
LATEX provides two commands to change these parameters. They are
usually used in the document preamble.
The first command assigns a fixed value to any of the parameters:

\setlength{parameter }{length}

The second command adds a length to any of the parameters.

\addtolength{parameter }{length}

This second command is actually more useful than the \setlength com-
mand, because you can now work relative to the existing settings. To add
one centimetre to the overall text width, I put the following commands into
the document preamble:

\addtolength{\hoffset}{-0.5cm}
\addtolength{\textwidth}{1cm}

In this context, you might want to look at the calc package, it allows you
to use arithmetic operations in the argument of setlength and other places
where you can enter numeric values into function arguments.

5.5 More fun with lengths

Whenever possible, I avoid using absolute lengths in LATEX documents. I
rather try to base things on the width or height of other page elements. For
the width of a figure this could be \textwidth in order to make it fill the
page.
The following 3 commands allow you to determine the width, height and
depth of a text string.

\settoheight{command }{text}
\settodepth{command }{text}
\settowidth{command }{text}

The example below shows a possible application of these commands.

5.6 Boxes 75

\flushleft
\newenvironment{vardesc}[1]{%
\settowidth{\parindent}{#1:\ }
\makebox[0pt][r]{#1:\ }}{}

\begin{displaymath} a2 + b2 = c2
a^2+b^2=c^2
\end{displaymath} Where: a, b – are adjunct to the right angle
of a right-angled triangle.
\begin{vardesc}{Where}$a$,
$b$ -- are adjunct to the right c – is the hypotenuse of the triangle
angle of a right-angled triangle. and feels lonely.
d – finally does not show up here at
$c$ -- is the hypotenuse of all. Isn’t that puzzling?
the triangle and feels lonely.

$d$ -- finally does not show up

here at all. Isn’t that puzzling?
\end{vardesc}

5.6 Boxes
LATEX builds up its pages by pushing around boxes. At first, each letter is
a little box, which is then glued to other letters to form words. These are
again glued to other words, but with special glue, which is elastic so that a
series of words can be squeezed or stretched as to exactly fill a line on the
page.
I admit, this is a very simplistic version of what really happens, but the
point is that TEX operates on glue and boxes. Not only a letter can be a
box. You can put virtually everything into a box including other boxes.
Each box will then be handled by LATEX as if it was a single letter.
In the past chapters you have already encountered some boxes, although
I did not tell you. The tabular environment and the \includegraphics,
for example, both produce a box. This means that you can easily arrange
two tables or images side by side. You just have to make sure that their
combined width is not larger than the textwidth.
You can also pack a paragraph of your choice into a box with either the

\parbox[pos]{width}{text}

command or the

\begin{minipage}[pos]{width} text \end{minipage}

environment. The pos parameter can take one of the letters c, t or b to

control the vertical alignment of the box, relative to the baseline of the
76 Customising LATEX

surrounding text. width takes a length argument specifying the width of

the box. The main difference between a minipage and a parbox is that you
cannot use all commands and environments inside a parbox while almost
anything is possible in a minipage.
While \parbox packs up a whole paragraph doing line breaking and
everything, there is also a class of boxing commands which operates only
on horizontally aligned material. We already know one of them. It’s called
\mbox, it simply packs up a series of boxes into another one, and can be
used to prevent LATEX from breaking two words. As you can put boxes
inside boxes, these horizontal box packers give you ultimate flexibility.

\makebox[width][pos]{text}

width defines the width of the resulting box as seen from the outside.5 Apart
from the length expressions you can also use \width, \height, \depth and
\totalheight in the width parameter. They are set from values obtained
by measuring the typeset text. The pos parameter takes a one letter value:
center, left flush, right flush or s which spreads the text inside the box to
fill it.
The command \framebox works exactly the same as \makebox, but it
draws a box around the text.
The following example shows you some things you could do with the
\makebox and \framebox commands.

\makebox[\textwidth]{%
c e n t r a l}\par
\makebox[\textwidth][s]{% central
s p r e a d}\par s p r e a d
\framebox[1.1\width]{Guess I’m
framed now!} \par Guess I’m framed now!
\framebox[0.8\width][r]{Bummer, Bummer, I am to wide
I am to wide} \par
\framebox[1cm][l]{never never mind,
Can you
so am
readI this?
mind, so am I}
Can you read this?

Now that we control the horizontal, the obvious next step is to go for

5
This means it can be smaller than the material inside the box. You can even set
the width to 0pt so that the text inside the box will be typeset without influencing the
surrounding boxes.
5.7 Rules and Struts 77

the vertical.6 No problem for LATEX. The

\raisebox{lift}[depth][height]{text}

command lets you define the vertical properties of a box. You can use
\width, \height, \depth and \totalheight in the first three parameters,
in order to act upon the size of the box inside the text argument.

\raisebox{0pt}[0pt][0pt]{\Large%
\textbf{Aaaa\raisebox{-0.3ex}{a}%
\raisebox{-0.7ex}{aa}%
\raisebox{-1.2ex}{r}% Aaaaaaa he shouted but not even
\raisebox{-2.2ex}{g}% the next one ringline noticed that something
\raisebox{-4.5ex}{h}}} terrible had happened
h to him.
he shouted but not even the next
one in line noticed that something
terrible had happened to him.

5.7 Rules and Struts

A few pages back you may have noticed the command

\rule[lift]{width}{height}

In normal use it produces a simple black box.

6
Total control is only to be obtained by controlling both the horizontal and the vertical
...
78 Customising LATEX

\rule{3mm}{.1pt}%
\rule[-1mm]{5mm}{1cm}%
\rule{3mm}{.1pt}%
\rule[1mm]{1cm}{5mm}%
\rule{3mm}{.1pt}

This is useful for drawing vertical and horizontal lines. The line on the title
page for example, has been created with a \rule command.
A special case is a rule with no width but a certain height. In professional
typesetting, this is called a strut. It is used to guarantee that an element
on a page has a certain minimal height. You could use it in a tabular
environment to make sure a row has a certain minimum height.

\begin{tabular}{|c|}
\hline
\rule{1pt}{4ex}Pitprop \ldots\\
Pitprop . . .
\hline
\rule{0pt}{4ex}Strut\\ Strut
\hline
\end{tabular}
Bibliography

[1] Leslie Lamport. LATEX: A Document Preparation System. Addison-

Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, second edition, 1994, ISBN 0-201-
52983-1.

[2] Donald E. Knuth. The TEXbook, Volume A of Computers and Type-

setting, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, second edition, 1984,
ISBN 0-201-13448-9.

[3] Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach and Alexander Samarin. The LATEX
Companion. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1994, ISBN 0-
201-54199-8.

[4] Each LATEX installation should provide a so-called LATEX Local Guide
which explains the things which are special to the local system. It should
be contained in a file called local.tex. Unfortunately, some lazy sysops
do not provide such a document. In this case, go and ask your local
LATEX guru for help.

[5] LATEX3 Project Team. LATEX 2ε for authors. Comes with the LATEX 2ε
distribution as usrguide.tex.

[6] LATEX3 Project Team. LATEX 2ε for Class and Package writers. Comes
with the LATEX 2ε distribution as clsguide.tex.

[7] LATEX3 Project Team. LATEX 2ε Font selection. Comes with the LATEX 2ε
distribution as fntguide.tex.

[8] D. P. Carlisle. Packages in the ‘graphics’ bundle. Comes with the

‘graphics’ bundle as grfguide.tex, available from the same source your
LATEX distribution came from.

[9] Rainer Schöpf, Bernd Raichle, Chris Rowley. A New Implementation

of LATEX’s verbatim Environments. Comes with the ‘tools’ bundle as
verbatim.dtx, available from the same source your LATEX distribution
came from.
80 BIBLIOGRAPHY

[10] Graham Williams. The TeX Catalogue is a very complete listing

of many TEX and LATEX related packages. Available online from
CTAN:/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/catalogue.html

[11] Keith Reckdahl. Using EPS Graphics in LATEX 2ε Documents which

explains everything and much more than you ever wanted to know
about EPS files and their use in LATEX documents. Available online
from CTAN:/tex-archive/info/epslatex.ps
 Index

\!, 41 A4 paper, 10
", 19 A5 paper, 10
$, 35 accent, 21
\(, 35 acute, 21
\), 35 \addtolength, 74
\,, 36, 41 advantages of LATEX, 3
-, 20 æ, 21
−, 20 amsbsy, 46
\-, 18 amsfonts, 37, 53
–, 20 amsmath, 39–41, 43, 46
—, 20 amssymb, 37, 47
., space after, 23 \and, 25
. . . , 20 \appendix, 24
.aux, 13 \arccos, 39
.cls, 11 \arcsin, 39
.dtx, 11 \arctan, 39
\arg, 39
.dvi, 11
array, 42
.idx, 13
arrow symbols, 38
.ilg, 13
article class, 9
.ind, 13
\atop, 39
.ins, 11
\author, 25
.lof, 13
.log, 11 B5 paper, 10
.lot, 13 babel, 18, 22
.sty, 11 \backmatter, 25
.tex, 11 backslash, 6
.toc, 13 \backslash, 5
\:, 41 base font size, 10
\;, 41 \begin, 27
\@, 23 \bibitem, 57
\[, 36 bibliography, 57
\\, 17, 27, 28, 30, 72 \Big, 40
\\*, 17 \big, 40
\], 36 \Bigg, 40
~, 23 \bigg, 40
82 INDEX

\binom, 39 \atop, 39
blackboard bold, 37 \author, 25
\bmod, 39 \backmatter, 25
bold face, 67 \backslash, 5
bold symbols, 37, 46 \begin, 27
\boldmath, 46 \bibitem, 57
\boldsymbol, 46 \Big, 40
book class, 9 \big, 40
braces, 40 \Bigg, 40
\bigg, 40
calc, 74 \binom, 39
\caption, 33, 61 \bmod, 39
\cdots, 41 \boldmath, 46
center, 27 \boldsymbol, 46
\chapter, 24 \caption, 33, 61
\chaptermark, 59 \cdots, 41
\choose, 39 \chapter, 24
\ci, 63 \chaptermark, 59
\cite, 57 \choose, 39
\cleardoublepage, 34 \ci, 63
\clearpage, 34 \cite, 57
coloured text, 9 \cleardoublepage, 34
comma, 20 \clearpage, 34
command, 63 \cos, 39
commands, 6 \cosh, 39
\!, 41 \cot, 39
\(, 35 \coth, 39
\), 35 \csc, 39
\,, 36, 41 \date, 25
\-, 18 \ddots, 41
\:, 41 \deg, 39
\;, 41 \depth, 76, 77
\@, 23 \det, 39
\[, 36 \dim, 39
\\, 17, 27, 28, 30, 72 \displaystyle, 44
\\*, 17 \documentclass, 9, 11, 18
\], 36 \dum, 63
\addtolength, 74 \emph, 26, 67
\and, 25 \end, 27
\appendix, 24 \exp, 39
\arccos, 39 \footnote, 26, 61
\arcsin, 39 \footnotesize, 67
\arctan, 39 \frac, 39
\arg, 39 \framebox, 76
INDEX 83

\frenchspacing, 23 \log, 39
\frontmatter, 25 \mainmatter, 25
\fussy, 18 \makebox, 76
\gcd, 39 \makeindex, 58
\genfrac, 39 \maketitle, 25
\height, 76, 77 \mathbb, 37
\hline, 30 \mathbf, 68
\hom, 39 \mathcal, 68
\hspace, 65, 71 \mathit, 68
\Huge, 67 \mathnormal, 68
\huge, 67 \mathrm, 44, 68
\hyphenation, 18 \mathsf, 68
\idotsint, 41 \mathtt, 68
\iiiint, 41 \max, 39
\iiint, 41 \mbox, 19, 21, 76
\iint, 41 \min, 39
\include, 14 \multicolumn, 31
\includegraphics, 56, 75 \newcommand, 64, 65
\includeonly, 14 \newenvironment, 65
\indent, 70 \newline, 17
\index, 58 \newpage, 17
\inf, 39 \newtheorem, 45
\input, 14 \noindent, 71
\int, 40 \nolinebreak, 17
\item, 27 \nonumber, 43
\ker, 39 \nopagebreak, 17
\label, 25, 36 \normalsize, 67
\LARGE, 67 \overbrace, 38
\Large, 67 \overleftarrow, 38
\large, 67 \overline, 38
\LaTeX, 19 \overrightarrow, 38
\LaTeXe, 19 \pagebreak, 17
\ldots, 20, 41 \pageref, 25
\left, 40 \pagestyle, 13
\leftmark, 59 \par, 67
\lg, 39 \paragraph, 24
\lim, 39 \parbox, 75, 76
\liminf, 39 \parindent, 70
\limsup, 39 \parskip, 70
\linebreak, 17 \part, 24
\linespread, 70 \phantom, 43, 61
\listoffigures, 33 \pmod, 39
\listoftables, 33 \Pr, 39
\ln, 39 \printindex, 59
84 INDEX

\prod, 40 \textnormal, 67
\protect, 61 \textrm, 44, 67
\providecommand, 65 \textsc, 67
\ProvidesPackage, 66 \textsf, 67
\qquad, 36, 41 \textsl, 67
\quad, 36, 41 \textstyle, 44
\raisebox, 77 \texttt, 67
\ref, 25, 36 \textup, 67
\renewcommand, 64 \thispagestyle, 13
\renewenvironment, 65 \tiny, 67
\right, 40, 42 \title, 25
\right., 40 \tnss, 64
\rightmark, 59 \today, 19
\rule, 65, 77, 78 \totalheight, 76, 77
\scriptscriptstyle, 44 \underbrace, 38
\scriptsize, 67 \underline, 38
\scriptstyle, 44 \usepackage, 11, 22, 23, 66
\sec, 39 \vdots, 41
\section, 24, 61 \vec, 38
\sectionmark, 59 \verb, 29
\setlength, 70, 74 \verbatiminput, 60
\settodepth, 74 \vspace, 71
\settoheight, 74 \widehat, 38
\settowidth, 74 \widetilde, 38
\sin, 39 \width, 76, 77
\sinh, 39 comment, 7
\sloppy, 18 comments, 6
\small, 67 \cos, 39
\sqrt, 38 \cosh, 39
\stackrel, 39 \cot, 39
\stretch, 65, 71 \coth, 39
\subparagraph, 24 cross-references, 25
\subsection, 24 \csc, 39
\subsectionmark, 59 curly braces, 6, 67
\subsubsection, 24
\sum, 40 dash, 20
\sup, 39 \date, 25
\tableofcontents, 24 dcolumn, 31
\tan, 39 \ddots, 41
\tanh, 39 decimal alignment, 31
\TeX, 19 \deg, 39
\textbf, 67 delimiters, 40
\textit, 67 \depth, 76, 77
\textmd, 67 description, 27
 INDEX 85

\det, 39 thebibliography, 57
diagonal dots, 41 verbatim, 29, 60
\dim, 39 verse, 28
dimensions, 71 eqnarray, 42
displaymath, 36 equation, 36
\displaystyle, 44 equation system, 42
doc, 12 eucal, 53
document font size, 10 eufrak, 53
document title, 10 executive paper, 10
\documentclass, 9, 11, 18 \exp, 39
dotless ıand , 21 exponent, 38
double line spacing, 70 exscale, 12, 40
double sided, 10 extension, 11
\dum, 63
fancyhdr, 59, 60
ellipsis, 20 figure, 32, 33
em-dash, 20 file types, 11
\emph, 26, 67 floating bodies, 31
empty, 13 flushleft, 27
en-dash, 20 flushright, 27
Encapsulated PostScript, 55 foiltex, 9
\end, 27 font, 66
enumerate, 27 font encoding, 12
environments font size, 66, 67
array, 42 fontenc, 12, 23
center, 27 footer, 13
command, 63 \footnote, 26, 61
comment, 7 \footnotesize, 67
description, 27 formulae, 35
displaymath, 36 \frac, 39
enumerate, 27 fraction, 39
eqnarray, 42 fragile commands, 61
equation, 36 \framebox, 76
figure, 32, 33 \frenchspacing, 23
flushleft, 27 \frontmatter, 25
flushright, 27 \fussy, 18
itemize, 27
math, 35 \gcd, 39
minipage, 75, 76 \genfrac, 39
parbox, 76 German, 22
quotation, 28 GhostScript, 55
quote, 28 graphics, 9, 55
table, 32, 33 graphicx, 55
tabular, 30, 75 grave, 21
86 INDEX

Greek letters, 37 \label, 25, 36

grouping, 67 Lamport, Leslie, 1
language, 21
header, 13 \LARGE, 67
textttheadings, 13 \Large, 67
\height, 76, 77 \large, 67
\hline, 30 \LaTeX, 19
\hom, 39 LATEX 2ε , 2
horizontal LATEX 2.09, 2
brace, 38 LATEX3, 2
dots, 41 LATEX3, 4
line, 38 \LaTeXe, 19
space, 71 latexsym, 12
\hspace, 65, 71 layout, 72
\Huge, 67 \ldots, 20, 41
\huge, 67 \left, 40
hyphen, 20 left aligned, 27
\hyphenation, 18 \leftmark, 59
legal paper, 10
\idotsint, 41 letter paper, 10
ifthen, 12 \lg, 39
\iiiint, 41 ligature, 21
\iiint, 41 \lim, 39
\iint, 41 \liminf, 39
\include, 14 \limsup, 39
\includegraphics, 56, 75 line spacing, 70
\includeonly, 14 linebreak, 17
\indent, 70 \linebreak, 17
indentfirst, 70 \linespread, 70
index, 58 \listoffigures, 33
\index, 58 \listoftables, 33
\inf, 39 \ln, 39
\input, 14 \log, 39
input file, 7 long equations, 43
inputenc, 12, 22
\int, 40 \mainmatter, 25
integral operator, 40 \makebox, 76
international, 21 makeidx, 12, 58
italic, 67 makeidx package, 58
\item, 27 \makeindex, 58
itemize, 27 makeindex program, 58
\maketitle, 25
\ker, 39 margins, 72
Knuth, Donald E., 1 math, 35
 INDEX 87

math font size, 44 package, 7, 9, 63

math spacing, 41 packages
\mathbb, 37 amsbsy, 46
\mathbf, 68 amsfonts, 37, 53
\mathcal, 68 amsmath, 39–41, 43, 46
mathematical amssymb, 37, 47
accents, 38 babel, 18, 22
delimiter, 40 calc, 74
functions, 39 dcolumn, 31
minus, 20 doc, 12
mathematics, 35 eucal, 53
\mathit, 68 eufrak, 53
\mathnormal, 68 exscale, 12, 40
\mathrm, 44, 68 fancyhdr, 59, 60
\mathsf, 68 fontenc, 12, 23
\mathtt, 68 graphicx, 55
\max, 39 ifthen, 12
\mbox, 19, 21, 76 indentfirst, 70
\min, 39 inputenc, 12, 22
minipage, 75, 76 latexsym, 12
minus sign, 20 layout, 72
Mittelbach, Frank, 2 makeidx, 12, 58
modulo function, 39 showidx, 59
\multicolumn, 31 syntonly, 12, 14
verbatim, 7, 60
\newcommand, 64, 65 page layout, 72
\newenvironment, 65 page style, 13
\newline, 17 empty, 13
\newpage, 17 headings, 13
\newtheorem, 45 plain, 13
\noindent, 71 \pagebreak, 17
\nolinebreak, 17 \pageref, 25
\nonumber, 43 \pagestyle, 13
\nopagebreak, 17 paper size, 10, 72
\normalsize, 67 \par, 67
paragraph, 15
œ, 21 \paragraph, 24
option, 9 parameter, 6
optional parameters, 6 \parbox, 75, 76
\overbrace, 38 parbox, 76
overfull hbox, 18 \parindent, 70
\overleftarrow, 38 \parskip, 70
\overline, 38 \part, 24
\overrightarrow, 38 period, 20
88 INDEX

\phantom, 43, 61 \settowidth, 74

placement specifier, 32 showidx, 59
plain, 13 \sin, 39
\pmod, 39 single sided, 10
PostScript, 55 \sinh, 39
\Pr, 39 slanted, 67
preamble, 7 slides class, 9
prime, 38 \sloppy, 18
\printindex, 59 \small, 67
\prod, 40 small caps, 67
product operator, 40 space, 5
\protect, 61 special character, 21
\providecommand, 65 \sqrt, 38
\ProvidesPackage, 66 square brackets, 6
square root, 38
\qquad, 36, 41 \stackrel, 39
\quad, 36, 41
\stretch, 65, 71
quotation, 28
structure, 7
quotation marks, 19
strut, 78
quote, 28
\subparagraph, 24
\raisebox, 77 subscript, 38
\ref, 25, 36 \subsection, 24
\renewcommand, 64 \subsectionmark, 59
\renewenvironment, 65 \subsubsection, 24
report class, 9 \sum, 40
reserved characters, 5 sum operator, 40
\right, 40, 42 \sup, 39
right-aligned, 27 syntonly, 12, 14
\right., 40
\rightmark, 59 table, 30
roman, 67 table, 32, 33
\rule, 65, 77, 78 table of contents, 24
\tableofcontents, 24
sans serif, 67 tabular, 30, 75
Scandinavian letters, 21 \tan, 39
\scriptscriptstyle, 44 \tanh, 39
\scriptsize, 67 \TeX, 19
\scriptstyle, 44 \textbf, 67
\sec, 39 \textit, 67
\section, 24, 61 \textmd, 67
\sectionmark, 59 \textnormal, 67
\setlength, 70, 74 \textrm, 44, 67
\settodepth, 74 \textsc, 67
\settoheight, 74 \textsf, 67
 INDEX 89

\textsl, 67 WYSIWYG, 3
\textstyle, 44
\texttt, 67
\textup, 67
thebibliography, 57
\thispagestyle, 13
three dots, 41
tilde, 20, 38
tilde ( ~), 23
\tiny, 67
title, 10, 25
\title, 25
\tnss, 64
\today, 19
\totalheight, 76, 77
two column, 10

umlaut, 21
\underbrace, 38
underfull hbox, 18
\underline, 38
units, 71, 72
upright, 67
URL, 20
\usepackage, 11, 22, 23, 66

\vdots, 41
\vec, 38
vectors, 38
\verb, 29
verbatim, 7, 60
verbatim, 29, 60
\verbatiminput, 60
verse, 28
vertical dots, 41
vertical space, 71
\vspace, 71

whitespace, 5
after commands, 6
at the start of a line, 5
\widehat, 38
\widetilde, 38
\width, 76, 77
www, 20
90 INDEX