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LaTeX

Why use LaTeX

During university, you'll inevitably need to write lab reports, course papers, and thesis documents. If you're still using Word for typesetting, you may encounter these frustrations:

  • Tedious formula editing, poor formatting
  • Messy reference management
  • Spending excessive time adjusting formatting
  • Format errors during collaboration

LaTeX is a typesetting system widely used in academia, excelling at mathematical formulas, references, and complex layouts. Almost all top CS conferences and journals (IEEE, ACM) require LaTeX submissions.

Professional mathematical typesetting

LaTeX's mathematical typesetting is its greatest strength. Whether it's simple fractions, integrals, or complex matrices and equations, LaTeX produces beautiful results.

Automated reference management

With BibTeX and LaTeX, citation and formatting of references is fully automated — no more manual adjustments.

Consistent formatting

LaTeX is template-based. As long as the content is correct, the formatting will be correct. No more manual adjustments to fonts, line spacing, or margins.

Standard for academic writing

CS academic papers are almost exclusively written in LaTeX. Learning LaTeX early benefits future research work.

Getting started

Using Overleaf (recommended for beginners)

Overleaf is an online LaTeX editor. No installation needed — just open a browser.

  1. Register an Overleaf account
  2. Choose a template (e.g., IEEE Conference, Article, etc.)
  3. Edit directly in the browser with real-time preview

Local installation

For local use, TeX Live (cross-platform) or MiKTeX (Windows) is recommended:

# Windows (via Scoop)
scoop install texlive

# macOS
brew install --cask mactex

# Linux (Ubuntu)
sudo apt install texlive-full

For local editing, VS Code with the LaTeX Workshop extension is recommended.

Basic syntax

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\title{My First LaTeX Document}
\author{Author Name}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
This is a document written in LaTeX.

\section{Mathematical Formulas}
Inline formula: $E = mc^2$

Display formula:
\begin{equation}
    f(x) = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} e^{-x^2} dx = \sqrt{\pi}
\end{equation}

\end{document}

Common commands cheat sheet

Document structure

\section{Heading 1}
\subsection{Heading 2}
\subsubsection{Heading 3}

Math formulas

$x_i$          # Subscript
$x^n$          # Superscript
$\frac{a}{b}$  # Fraction
$\sum_{i=1}^{n}$  # Summation
$\int_{a}^{b}$    # Integral

Lists

\begin{itemize}
    \item First item
    \item Second item
\end{itemize}

Inserting images

\usepackage{graphicx}
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth]{image.png}

Other resources