LaTeX

document markup language

LaTeX is a computer program used for making articles, books and math formulas look good. LaTeX is well-suited for expressing mathematical formulas on electronic devices in a more human readable format, by showing them in a way similar to how they would be written by hand.

LaTeX
Original author(s)Leslie Lamport
Repository
PlatformCross-platform
TypeTypesetting
LicenseLaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)
Websitewww.latex-project.org

LaTeX is used for making mathematical formulas for some articles on Wikipedia, in addition to being used within academic circles.

The writer types their article into a plain text document. A plain text document cannot have styled text, like bold or italic. When the writer wants to write styled text, they use special LaTeX commands that start with a backslash (\). For example, the command for bold text is \textbf{This text is bold}.

After the writer is finished writing the article, they tell LaTeX to read the document. After LaTeX is done, LaTeX makes a file that can be printed. The command \textbf{This text is bold} would print as This text is bold.

LaTeX was first made in the early 1980s by Leslie Lamport at SRI International, who published its first manual in 1986.[1] The current version is LaTeX2e (styled \LaTeXe), which has been active since 1994.[2]

LaTeX project logo bird
LaTeX project logo bird

Example

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The example below shows the LaTeX input and its corresponding output:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\title{\LaTeX}
\date{}
\begin{document}
  \maketitle
  \LaTeX{} is a document preparation system for the \TeX{}
  typesetting program. It offers programmable desktop publishing
  features and extensive facilities for automating most aspects of
  typesetting and desktop publishing, including numbering and
  cross-referencing, tables and figures, page layout, bibliographies,
  and much more. \LaTeX{} was originally written in 1984 by Leslie
  Lamport and has become the dominant method for using \TeX; few
  people write in plain \TeX{} anymore. The current version  is
  \LaTeXe.

  % This is a comment; it will not be shown in the final output.
  % The following shows a little of the typesetting power of LaTeX:
  \begin{align}
    E &= mc^2                              \\
    m &= \frac{m_0}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}
  \end{align}
\end{document}
 

Academic contributions to LaTeX

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In order to support mathematical typesetting, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) has made the AMS-LaTeX package.[3] AMS also founded MathJax, a Javascript extension to display mathematical formulas on web browsers, with the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.[4]

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References

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  1. Leslie Lamport (April 23, 2007). "The Writings of Leslie Lamport: LaTeX: A Document Preparation System". Leslie Lamport's Home Page. Retrieved 2011-08-17.
  2. "The Definitive, Non-Technical Introduction to LaTeX, Professional Typesetting and Scientific Publishing". Math Vault. 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2020-08-07.
  3. Grätzer, G. (2013). Math into LATEX: An introduction to LATEX and AMS-LATEX. Springer Science & Business Media.
  4. "MathJax: About Us". MathJax. 2020-08-07. Retrieved 2020-08-07.

Further reading

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  • Van Dongen, M. R. (2012). LATEX and Friends. Springer Science & Business Media.
  • Grätzer, G. (2014). Practical LaTeX. Springer.
  • Datta, D. (2017). LaTeX in 24 Hours: A Practical Guide for Scientific Writing. Springer.