typesetting-latex

LaTeX Typesetting

LaTeX is the gold standard for professional typesetting — used for academic papers, technical books, theses, resumes, and presentations. This skill covers document structure, packages, math typesetting, tables, figures, bibliographies, beamer presentations, and CI/CD workflows.

LaTeX Document Structure

Minimum Working Example

% document.tex — A minimal LaTeX document
\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

\title{A Simple LaTeX Document}
\author{Jane Doe}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\section{Introduction}

This is the first paragraph of the document. 
LaTeX handles all the typesetting automatically.

\section{Methodology}

We describe our approach in this section.

\end{document}

Document Classes

% Available document classes with typical use cases

% Research articles and short reports
\documentclass{article}

% Books and long-form content
\documentclass{book}

% Reports and theses
\documentclass{report}

% Presentations
\documentclass{beamer}

% Letters
\documentclass{letter}

% Resumes/CVs
\documentclass{resume}

% IEEE conference papers
\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}

% ACM conference papers
\documentclass[sigconf]{acmart}

% American Mathematical Society
\documentclass{amsart}

% With options
\documentclass[
  11pt,              % Font size: 10pt, 11pt, 12pt
  a4paper,           % Paper size: a4paper, letterpaper, legalpaper
  twoside,           % Two-sided printing
  openright,         % Chapters start on right-hand pages
  draft,             % Draft mode with overfull boxes marked
]{report}

Preamble Organization

% preamble.tex — Clean preamble organization

% ---------- Encoding and Fonts ----------
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{lmodern}               % Latin Modern (enhanced Computer Modern)

% ---------- Page Layout ----------
\usepackage[
  top=2.5cm,
  bottom=2.5cm,
  left=3cm,
  right=2.5cm,
  headheight=15pt,
]{geometry}

% ---------- Language ----------
\usepackage[english]{babel}        % Language-specific rules
\usepackage{csquotes}              % Context-sensitive quotes

% ---------- Math ----------
\usepackage{amsmath}               % AMS math environments
\usepackage{amssymb}               % AMS symbol collection
\usepackage{amsthm}                % Theorem environments
\usepackage{mathtools}             % Math tool enhancements

% ---------- Graphics and Color ----------
\usepackage{graphicx}              % Include images
\usepackage[table,xcdraw]{xcolor}  % Color support
\usepackage{caption}               % Caption customization
\usepackage{subcaption}            % Sub-figures

% ---------- Tables ----------
\usepackage{array}                 % Advanced table columns
\usepackage{booktabs}              % Professional table rules
\usepackage{longtable}             % Multi-page tables
\usepackage{tabularx}              % Auto-width columns

% ---------- Hyperlinks ----------
\usepackage[
  colorlinks=true,
  linkcolor=blue!60!black,
  citecolor=green!40!black,
  urlcolor=blue!60!black,
]{hyperref}

% ---------- Bibliography ----------
\usepackage[
  style=ieee,
  sorting=none,
  backend=biber,
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

% ---------- Custom Commands ----------
\newcommand{\R}{\mathbb{R}}
\newcommand{\N}{\mathbb{N}}
\newcommand{\E}{\mathbb{E}}
\newcommand{\Var}{\operatorname{Var}}

% ---------- Theorem Environments ----------
\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}{Lemma}[section]
\newtheorem{corollary}{Corollary}[theorem]
\theoremstyle{definition}
\newtheorem{definition}{Definition}[section]
\theoremstyle{remark}
\newtheorem{remark}{Remark}[section]

% ---------- Metadata ----------
\title{Advanced Topics in Machine Learning}
\author{Jane Doe\textsuperscript{1} \and John Smith\textsuperscript{2}}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}