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LaTeX documents are often used in publishing. These tips, guides, and more will tell you everything you need to start making use of LaTeX.
If you've spent any time in academia or the academic publishing world, you've probably heard of LaTeX (pronounced "LAY-tech").
But what, exactly, is LaTeX? What are some of its uses? And how can you learn to use it?
We'll walk you through the basics to help you get started. Then we'll show you where to find great LaTeX tutorials and resources and point you toward some free LaTeX software.
Put simply, LaTeX is a typesetting and document preparation system that "includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation."
For most people, it means that you can use LaTeX to create documents with text and formatting that would be difficult in a standard word processor.
Let's use the quadratic equation as an example. Here's what I typed in LaTeX:
Getting that equation to display nicely in Microsoft Word would be a pain. In LaTeX, it just took me a couple lines of text. But LaTeX can do a whole lot more than mathematical equations. It can handle non-Roman alphabets, tables of contents, lists, bibliographies, references, and even formulaic drawing.
If you're writing with LaTeX, you usually don't have to worry too much about typesetting. You'll probably use it more for equations and the like. But by tagging the items in your document (sections, figures, titles, and so on), you give an editor or publisher the ability to apply styles and formats to the entire document at once.
"LaTeX 2e defines 'structured' files in which the various elements (title, authors, headings, etc.) are easily identified. This is crucial for the future, when we may need to migrate tens of thousands of articles into new formats. AMS journals are already posted on line, with full bibliographic data in HTML."
Formatting and typesetting with LaTeX is a bit like using HTML and CSS . If you correctly tag everything with HTML, all you need to do is make one or two changes in CSS to apply them across your entire HTML document.
LaTeX documents obviously have advantages for mathematicians and anyone else who uses equations in their writing. The systems is commonly used for documents in physics, statistics, computer science, engineering, and other fields that need to write down a lot of equations.
But it's also used by linguists, economists, philosophers, children's book authors, anthropologists, theologians... and just about anyone else you can think of.
That's not to say that it's for everyone, though.
If you want something that you can learn and use right away, LaTeX may not be for you. It's a markup language , and it will take time to learn more than the basics. You'll have to do a lot of research on how to solve specific problems.
That said, after you've learned it, it'll save you a lot of time. Automatically generated tables of contents and bibliographies alone will save you hours. And if you design documents, you'll be amazed at how much easier it is in LaTeX than Word or LibreOffice .
LaTeX is based on the TeX document formatting system, which has been around since 1978. Some version of LaTeX will likely stick around for a long time, so it's a great format to store documents in.
Taking a look at LaTeX basics can be intimidating. It looks like learning a new coding language . But there aren't as many commands to learn (at least at first).
Let's take a look at a quick example to start. I'll use LaTeX Base , a free online LaTeX editor. I recommend using it while you're learning.
To open the document, I'll declare a document class:
There are many LateX document classes , but article is a common one.
After that, I'll add the document title, the author's name, and a date:
Now, you'll notice that none of this information is currently displayed in my document (the preview is on the right side of the screen):
That's because this information is considered part of the preamble , which doesn't appear in the LaTeX document.
Want to make it show up in the document? It's easy. Just use the following line:
Note that \maketitle must be between the document's beginning and ending to work.
Within the body of the document, you can type plain text to insert it:
And for a bulleted list, use the following syntax:
Here's what it looks like in the editor:
To create a numbered list, use enumerate instead of itemize .
Let's add a section heading to make sure readers know that this is the introduction:
I've added a numbered section heading. LaTeX will automatically insert sections into a table of contents, if we want one.
As you can see, using LaTeX is straightforward---if you know the markup you need. That's where tutorials and documentation come in.
For the most part, learning to use LaTeX is all about finding the right information when you need it. You can start with plain text, then look up what you need for a section or sub-section heading.
Then you can find the information on how to insert a figure. Or a footnote. Or an entire bibliography. The best way to learn it is one step at a time.
To that end, here are some LaTeX resources that will help you out.
One of the best introductions to LaTeX for beginners is Learn LaTeX in 30 Minutes by ShareLaTeX, an online LaTeX editor.
It goes over some of the basics that we covered above, as well as intermediate topics like mathematical equations, text formatting, comments, and figure captions.
Andy Roberts has a series of articles on LaTeX that will walk you through everything from the most basic setup all the way through figures and captions. It's not clear if he regularly updates this, but it appears to be up-to-date at the time of this writing.
Overleaf, another free online LaTeX editor, also has a good LaTeX tutorial that will teach you the basics. They call it an "interactive" tutorial, but it's really just a sequence of slides. That being said, it's a comprehensive introduction to a lot of the commands you might want to try with LaTeX.
Whether you decide to use the above LaTeX tutorials or not, you're going to need to reference documentation at some point.
LaTeX, an aptly titled book on Wikibooks , is a great place to start. It's a comprehensive guide to the LaTeX system that includes everything from tables of contents to indices. Errors and warnings, algorithms, theorems, advanced mathematics, and anything else you could possibly want in LaTeX are included.
And because it's on Wikibooks, it's super easy to search.
The official documentation from latex-project.org is another good resource, though it's not exactly user-friendly. The documentation is split up into different documents meant for different people in the writing, editing, and typesetting processes.
The Not So Short Guide to LaTeX 2e is exactly what it sounds like: a (very long) guide to LaTeX. And while you could use it as a tutorial, as it does cover all of the basics, the massive size of this guide makes it better as a reference.
Finally, the guides section of ShareLaTeX is another good option. The resources there are somewhere between tutorials and references, and are great for when you have questions.
LaTeX isn't a standalone piece of software. It runs on top of an older system called TeX. Many pieces of TeX software support LaTeX.
The official LaTeX project page recommends the following:
There are also a number of LaTeX online editors that you can use without downloading any software:
With the resources, tools, tutorials, and tips above, you can get started with LaTeX right away. It takes a while to get used to it, but once you do, you'll be creating and formatting documents much more efficiently. You could continue making professional documents in Word , but why would you after you've seen what LaTeX can do?
Dann is a content strategy and marketing consultant who helps companies generate demand and leads. He also blogs about strategy and content marketing at dannalbright.com.
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Tim Fisher has more than 30 years' of professional technology experience. He's been writing about tech for more than two decades and serves as the VP and General Manager of Lifewire.

Some TEX files are LaTeX source documents.
Open one with a text editor, like Notepad++ .
Convert to PDF, TXT, or MD with CloudConvert .

Can you open TEX files on mobile devices?

Can you download TEX files from Overleaf?

Can you download .TEX files from ShareLaTeX?

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This article explains two file formats that use the TEX file extension, plus how to open your file on your computer and how to convert it to a different file format.

A file with the TEX file extension is most likely a LaTeX source document file created by LaTeX that's used to define the structure of a book or other document, like whether to make it into an article format, letter format, etc.

These are plain text files that might include not only text characters but also symbols and mathematical expressions.

Other TEX files are most likely images used by some video games to store the texture of objects so they appear differently than other 2D or 3D objects. Dead Rising 2 and Serious Sam are two examples of video games that use this type of texture file.

It can be easy to confuse a TEX file with a TXT file, but they're not necessarily the same thing.

LaTeX documents can be viewed and edited in any text editor, since they're just plain text files. Notepad in Windows, Notepad++ , and Vim and are some examples of text editor programs .

While these files are completely compatible with a text editor, they're usually only utilized within the context of a program that's meant specifically to work with LaTeX documents. On Windows, macOS, and Linux, this might be TeXworks or Texmaker . Windows users could instead use LEd (LaTeX Editor) as a TEX file viewer and editor, or proTeXt .

Some LaTeX documents use the LTX file extension instead, but they can open with the same software programs that work with TEX files.

Texture files that use the TEX file extension might be able to open with a generic image viewer like IrfanView , but you probably have to first rename the file to something that the program supports, like PNG or JPG.

If a generic image file opener doesn't read the file, you can try a program meant specifically for opening the video game's texture files. For example, Dead Rising 2 Tools should be able to open TEX files used with that game (though you might have to first rename it to use the .BIG file extension for the software to recognize it).

You might have luck using a program from Croteam , the creators of Serious Sam , to open that kind of TEX file.

Since some texture files are actually saved in the DirectDraw Surface (DDS) file format, a tool like XnView MP , Windows Texture Viewer , or GIMP might be able to open one. Keep in mind, however, that it's possible this will only work if you rename the *.TEX file to have the *.DDS file extension so those programs can actually recognize the file.

Windows Texture Viewer downloads as a RAR file that you'll need a file extractor like 7-Zip to open. To use DDS files with GIMP requires the DDS Plugin .

CloudConvert should be able to convert TEX to PDF if you need to save the document to a more popular format. You can also do this with pdfTeX .

If your TEX file includes an equation that you want to convert to PNG, use latex2png or iTex2Img . Both are online converters that have you paste the LaTeX code into a text box to produce an image that you can then save to your computer.

The Texmaker program can convert a TEX file to a number of other TeX-related file formats like BIB , STY, CLS, MP, RNW, and ASY.

You can most likely use one of the texture file viewers from above to convert that kind of file to a different format. If that doesn't work, try renaming it so it uses the .JPG or .PNG extension, and then convert it with a free image file converter .

Lots of file formats use just a few letters for their file extension, so it's easy to confuse them with each other if you misread the file extension. Double-check your file to make sure it ends with ".TEX" and not something similar.

For example, if the programs above aren't working to open your texture file, you might instead be dealing with a Wii texture file that uses the TEX0 file extension. Those can open in BrawlBox, a tool included in BrawlTools .

Or, you might instead have a plain text file that uses the .TXT or .TEXT suffix, and that's why it won't open. Plain text files open with a text editor, so you can't try to read one with a texture image viewer, for example.

EXT is another file extension that could easily be misread as TEX. If you have one of these files, you have either a Norton Commander Extension file or a generic email attachment, neither of which are related to LaTeX or textures.

If it's not a TEX file that you have, research the file extension you do have to learn more about how to open or convert it. If you do in fact have a TEX file that doesn't open with the programs from above, use a text editor to read the file and see if there are any phrases or words that help identify what format your file might be in; this can help you find the program responsible for opening it.

Yes. Much like you can view other plain-text files, like TXT files, on mobile devices, TEX files can be opened the same way. Plain-text support is a core component of modern mobile operating systems.
Yes. You can download PDFs or the project in its entirety , packed in a ZIP file, from ShareLaTeX.

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Loading [MathJax]/jax/output/HTML-CSS/fonts/TeX/fontdata.js
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
  Hello World!
\end{document}
% Valid:

\begin{document}
  \begin{environment1}
    \begin{environment2}
    \end{environment2}
  \end{environment1}
\end{document}

%Invalid:

\begin{document}
  \begin{environment1}
    \begin{environment2}
  \end{environment1}
    \end{environment2}
\end{document}

% Invalid:

\begin{document}
  \begin{environment1}
\end{document}
\end{environment1}

% Also invalid:

\begin{environment}
  \begin{document}
  \end{document}
\end{environment}
\documentclass{article}

\title{My first document}
\date{2013-09-01}
\author{John Doe}

\begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \newpage

  Hello World!
\end{document}
\documentclass{article}

\title{My first document}
\date{2013-09-01}
\author{John Doe}

\begin{document}
  \pagenumbering{gobble}
  \maketitle
  \newpage
  \pagenumbering{arabic}

  Hello World!
\end{document}

© 2022 Copyright LaTeX-Tutorial.com
Creating documents with LaTeX is simple and fun. In contrast to Word, you start off with a plain text file (.tex file) which contains LaTeX code and the actual content (i.e. text). LaTeX uses control statements, which define how your content should be formatted. Before you can see what the final result looks like, the LaTeX compiler will take your .tex file and compile it into a .pdf file. A basic example document can be created with the following code:
Once you translated this code into a PDF document, you will find the text:
along with the page number at the bottom, which is added automatically when using the article class.
Let us now take a closer look at how the magic happens. As you can see, you will find a few statements beginning with a backslash \ in the code example above. This tells LaTeX that this is not actual text, that you want to see printed in your document, but instead is an instruction or command for the LaTeX compiler. All commands share the following structure: \commandname{option} . The first part indicates the name of the command and the second part in braces sets an option for this command. The options vary from command to command and you will learn some of them later on in this tutorial.
Most of the time, the commands are pretty self-explanatory: \documentclass{article} and what’s even greater, you don’t have to remember all of them, because you can later just copy and paste them from previous documents. Now let’s take a little closer look at the command \documentclass{article} The command is obviously named documentclass and it does exactly that, it sets the document class (to article).
LaTeX uses document classes, to influence the overall layout of your document. For instance, there’s one class to layout articles, one class to layout books (called book) and many more, which we probably don’t need. In my tutorials, I will always use the class article . Feel free to play around and try different document classes anyway and see what happens!
This second example differs slightly from the first one, since this command involves a \begin and \end statement. In fact this is not a command, but defines an environment. An environment is simply an area of your document where certain typesetting rules apply. It is possible (and usually necessary) to have multiple environments in a document, but it is imperative the document environment is the topmost environment. The following code shows how environments can be used:
There are numerous choices for environments and you will most likely need them as soon as you introduce large parts of mathematics or figures to your document. While it is possible to define your own environments, it is very likely that the environment you desire already exists. LaTeX already comes with a few predefined environments and even more come in so called packages, which are subject to another lesson later on.
Let’s try out a few more commands to make our document more interesting:
Obviously the statements \title, \date and \author are not within the the document environment, so they will not directly show up in our document. The area before our main document is called preamble . In this specific example we use it to set up the values for the \maketitle command for later use in our document. This command will automagically create a titlepage for us.
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