Nicolás Brailovsky

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Basic structure

So, what’s the most basic structural elements for any document you write? Paragraphs, of course. I ussualy use LyX for writing paragraph-based documents (i.e. most of them) and presentations don’t have many, so perhaps this is the structural element I use the least. Oh, wait, there’s no element, just a “\n\n”. Point for LaTeX (take that, HTML).

You’ll also need to put titles, sections, subtitles and all that stuff to give your document a nice structure. Well, that’s easy too, just use

• \section{name}
• \subsection{name}
• \subsubsection{name}

Easy, right? Check the example at the end of the post. There are some other commands you’ll use in any LaTeX document:

• Footnotes
  1. \footnote{ Footnote text }

  Just write your text, it’ll be there when you compile the document

• Vertical skip
  1. \bigskip

  Because, some times, LaTeX default formatting won’t be enough.

• Align text Center:
  1. \begin{center}TEXT\end{center}

  Right:

  1. \begin{flushright}TEXT\end{flushright}

  Again, some times you may need it. Not too often, though.

You should now be able to write your first LaTeX document, starting from a template (always start with a template… it’s easier). I’m attaching to this post an example document in LyX, LaTeX and its compiled pdf, in case you’re wondering what does it look like in the end. For the next entry: some “advanced” tips and tricks, now let’s see an example LaTeX document:

You can download the compiled document from this link. May be it doesn’t look too useful (I’d use LyX instead) but soon we’ll start doing some cool stuff LyX can’t handle. Keep tuned for the next LaTeX article.