Introduction

$\LaTeX$ is a software system for typesetting documents. It uses a macro language called tex.

Installation

Online

Overleaf

Offline

Your tex code goes inside files with extension .tex.
To produce PDF files from these files, you will need a tex distribution installed on your system.
Some popular options are:

For VS Code, use the LaTeX WorkShop extension.

Syntax

%This is a comment

\command[optional parameters]{required parameters}

\begin{environment}
\end{environment}

Environments are areas within your document. They can be nested and should be closed as they were opened.

The Correct way.

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

The Wrong way.

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

$tex_e_environment_nesting.svg$

Basic Structure

\documentclass{document_class}
% preamble area
% document appearance control commands goes here
\begin{document}
    Hello World.
    % document content goes here
\end{document}

Following table is present on Wikipedia

Class	Description
`article`	For articles in scientific journals, presentations, short reports, program documentation, invitations, …
`IEEEtran`	For articles with the IEEE Transactions format.
`proc`	A class for proceedings based on the article class.
`minimal`	It is as small as it can get. It only sets a page size and a base font. It is mainly used for debugging purposes.
`report`	For longer reports containing several chapters, small books, thesis, …
`book`	For books.
`slides`	For slides. The class uses big sans serif letters.
`memoir`	For sensibly changing the output of the document. It is based on the `book` class, but you can create any kind of document with it.
`letter`	For writing letters.
`beamer`	For writing presentations (see LaTeX/Presentations).

Additional Features

The document can contain additional features, for which we need to use \usepackage command.

\usepackage[optional parameters]{package_name}