LaTeX

As you may have seen, I like \(\LaTeX\). I encourage everyone to learn it.
In my opinion, an efficient way of learning is to start making a document and googling the things along the way.
To get started, I feel it’s enough to just see one code and its output to get a sense of how it works. That’s the point of this page.
I would suggest you to first make an account (for free) on Overleaf

I was a speaker at a \(\LaTeX\) workshop conducted by Curry Leaf. You can find the talk on YouTube here. The document used can be found at this link.

I think that that contains more or less everything basic needed to get started.

A more comprehensive tutorial can be found here, made by Adway Girish.

After familiarising yourself with LaTeX on Overleaf, you may move to an offline medium. For example, I use Sublime Text for all my LaTeX documents. One of the benefits of this (other than internet independency) is the setup of many shortcuts. The packages that I have installed on Sublime Text for LaTeX uses are LaTeXTools and LaTeXYZ.

Lastly, almost every LaTeX’d PDF on my repositories/website also has the source code uploaded. Simply changing the .pdf to .tex in the URL would do the job.

Some more links:

• DeTeXify - draw a symbol and it gives you the command
• List of Mathematical Symbols - exactly what it sounds like

Some things to keep in mind:

1. Don’t put spaces before commas.
2. Use \cdots, \ldots, \vdots instead of manually making dots.
3. While we’re on this topic, use \cdots when putting dots between operators. For example, \(a_1 + \cdots + a_n.\) Use \ldots when listing something. For example, \(S = \{a_1, \ldots, a_n\}.\)
4. My personal suggestion for proof-writing: try to use words rather than making it concise using \(\exists\) and stuff. It improves readability.
5. Similarly, use the environment align* if you don’t need equation numbers. Only number those which you will refer to, later on.
6. Try to use display math \[ ... \] for important equations. This avoids clutter within sentences.
7. Use \[ ... \] instead of $$ ... $$.
8. Very important - If you refer to a function or a variable, ALWAYS use the $...$ environment even if it’s not “necessary”. $f$ and f look very different and that, in my opinion, is a sign of amateur writing.
9. Conversely, when you use functions like max, sup, min, write \max, \sup, \min while in math mode. These are recognised commands. If it’s something not recognised, use \text{...} or \operatorname{...}.
10. Use \displaystyle to keep the limits formatted nicely. This is difference between \(\lim_{n\to \infty}\) (\lim_{n\to \infty}) and \(\displaystyle\lim_{n\to \infty}\) ($$\displaystyle\lim_{n\to \infty}$$).
11. Use \| instead of ||.
12. Here are two posts from the MIT Confessions Facebook page which point out some more things: this and this.