Common errors, common suggestions, and common non-errors. I like the historical perspectives, they remind me of when I lobbied to bring the word “coercedly” into the mainstream. It didn’t happen.

TeX for the impatient is a 300+ page PDF that doesn’t give you any idea how to install the program or even use it if you’re not on a *nix system. My tutorial is about 15 pages, it tells Windows and Mac users exactly where to download the needed programs, how to install them, how to use a frontend to create and process LaTeX documents, and everything else they need to know to make 80% of documents, referring them to search engines for the remaining 20%.

A lot of tutorials are like that, sadly. And they discourage learning. I think a good tutorial should be readable in about 20 minutes and serve two purposes: teach the basics and show how to go beyond them.

That’s what I went for in my tutorial. It briefly discusses what LaTeX is and how it works, then it shows in detail where to get it, how to install it, and how to get up and running, since newcomers will have no idea how to do any of those things if they aren’t Linux users. Then it covers the most common needs of technical writers: front matter, paragraphs, lists, tables, figures, annotations and equations. Along the way, it introduces packages (which vastly extend LaTeX’s capabilities, but are too numerous to quickly document) and special commands, clearly showing where more information can be obtained as users’ needs mature.

I think the advantage of short tutorials is that they make the task of learning a new system less daunting. You get the basics early on, you feel confident making most documents, and you aren’t overwhelmed with every little detail. That confidence makes you more likely to go on to learn the advanced functions as you need them.

Jensen Harris: An Office User Interface Blog:

Now, in Word 2007, a new kind of squiggle is being introduced: the blue squiggle. There’s a new feature in Office called “contextual spelling” and it’s designed to detect words that are correctly spelled but improperly used.

An example: it seems to me that 90% of the Internet world believes the English word lose is actually spelled loose.

“This is one battle I’m not willing to loose.”
“I need to loose thirty more pounds.”

1. Cool feature. Even I, with my perfect writing test scores, still make these stupid mistakes. For an example, see this.

2. Just yesterday I was thinking about writing a polemic about the proper way to spell “lose.”

3. Do these tools (spellcheck, google, etc.) make us smarter or stupider? I think it depends on the person. You can use them as tools to help you learn, or you can use them as crutches so you don’t have to worry about learning.

The last post inspired me. I have more than this, but these are the ones that come to mind now:

* “For all intensive purposes”

What the hell is an intensive purpose? It’s “for all intents and purposes,” genius. But since we’re nitpicking, why not avoid the cliche altogether.

* “Supposably”

I guess that something can be “supposable.” But that’s not what people mean when I hear them use this word. They mean “supposedly.” What’s the difference? If something is “supposedly” a certain way, the determination that it is that way was made by other people. If something is “supposably” a certain way, the determination is made by you. But when people invoke the work supposedly, it’s usually as a mild insult — insinuating that something presumed to be true was false.

I’m sorry for the blatant content theft, but these are good tips, and the actual site has a big pop up ad, so they were asking for it. You can find the original article here.

—

#1: Loose for lose

No: I always loose the product key.

Yes: I always lose the product key.
#2: It’s for its (or god forbid, its’)

No: Download the HTA, along with it’s readme file.

Yes: Download the HTA, along with its readme file.

No: The laptop is overheating and its making that funny noise again.

Yes: The laptop is overheating and it’s making that funny noise again.
#3: They’re for their for there

No: The managers are in they’re weekly planning meeting.

Yes: The managers are in their weekly planning meeting.

No: The techs have to check there cell phones at the door, and their not happy about it.

Yes: The techs have to check their cell phones at the door, and they’re not happy about it.
#4: i.e. for e.g.

No: Use an anti-spyware program (i.e., Ad-Aware).

Yes: Use an anti-spyware program (e.g., Ad-Aware).

Note: The term i.e. means “that is”; e.g. means “for example.” And a comma follows both of them.
#5: Effect for affect

No: The outage shouldn’t effect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn’t have any effect on users.

Yes: We will effect several changes during the downtime.

Note: Impact is not a verb. Purists, at least, beg you to use affect instead:

No: The outage shouldn’t impact any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage shouldn’t affect any users during work hours.

Yes: The outage should have no impact on users during work hours.
#6: You’re for your

No: Remember to defrag you’re machine on a regular basis.

Yes: Remember to defrag your machine on a regular basis.

No: Your right about the changes.

Yes: You’re right about the changes.
#7: Different than for different from

No: This setup is different than the one at the main office.

Yes: This setup is different from the one at the main office.

Yes: This setup is better than the one at the main office.
#8 Lay for lie

No: I got dizzy and had to lay down.

Yes: I got dizzy and had to lie down.

Yes: Just lay those books over there.
#9: Then for than

No: The accounting department had more problems then we did.

Yes: The accounting department had more problems than we did.

Note: Here’s a sub-peeve. When a sentence construction begins with If, you don’t need a then. Then is implicit, so it’s superfluous and wordy:

No: If you can’t get Windows to boot, then you’ll need to call Ted.

Yes: If you can’t get Windows to boot, you’ll need to call Ted.
#10: Could of, would of for could have, would have

No: I could of installed that app by mistake.

Yes: I could have installed that app by mistake.

No: I would of sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.

Yes: I would have sent you a meeting notice, but you were out of town.
Bonus peeve

I’ll just throw one more thing out here: My current burning pet peeve. At some point, who knows when, it became common practice to say that something is “hit and miss.” Nuh-UH. It can’t be both, right? It either hits or it misses… “Hit OR miss.” Granted, it’s a small thing, a Boolean-obsessive sort of thing. But it’s nonetheless vexing because it’s so illogical. Okay, that’s mine. If you’ve got a peeve of your own, share it in the discussion (or post a comment and tell me to get over it).

This is part of the first sentence of my last post:

…makes a very good argument very succintly

Which reminds me of a Mark Twain quote (I think this is paraphrased):

Replace every occurrence of the word 'very' with the word 'damn.' You won't change the meaning of your sentence, and your editor will be sure to delete the 'damn.'

So, Shuttleworth makes a damn good point, damn succinctly! The point of Twain's tip is to exclude words that aren't necessary and don't make your argument any clearer. This is something that I need to focus on as I prepare to go back to graduate school. I'm in constant pursuit of elegant, efficient prose.

This post introduces the LaTeX typesetting system. After digesting the information below, you’ll be able to:

• Download and install LaTeX on your PC or Mac
• Create basic documents using LaTeX
• Install new LaTeX packages
• Insert tables and figures into a LaTeX document
• Use LaTeX’s cross-referencing, footnote and basic bibliography features
• Insert equations into a LaTeX document

These topics cover the majority of tasks that most people need to do when writing a document. However, please note that while the LaTeX system makes it very easy to create professional-looking documents, it is both comprehensive and extensible. There are many topics that are not covered by this basic tutorial. Fortunately, LaTeX is very well documented. If you come across something that you can’t figure out how to do, ask your old friend Google for help.

What is LaTeX?

At its core, LaTeX is a typesetting system that allows authors to create highly polished documents without having to worry about formatting, page breaks, object positioning, or any other style concerns that distract authors from focusing on writing. LaTeX is pronounced “lay-tech,” as it is an extension of TeX (“tech”), the original typesetting system. You can read all about the history of TeX and LaTeX on Wikipedia.

LaTeX is used widely in a variety of professions. Mathematicians, physicists, economists, statisticians and other academics and professionals that regularly use mathematical notation in their documents often use LaTeX because of the ease with which it handles such notation. Many publishers use TeX-based systems for typesetting documents.

How does LaTeX work?

LaTeX differs from traditional word processors in two fundamental ways:

1. Generally, LaTeX documents are written using the easy-to-learn LaTeX markup language, rather than by using a graphical interface to apply styles[1].
2. LaTeX works with your document after you have entered your text. So unlike word processors, it can use information about the total length of your document, number of tables, etc. to find the optimal places for tables, figures, page breaks, etc.

The following is an example of a very basic LaTeX document:

\documentclass{article}
\author{Your Name}
\title{Test Document}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
This is a test document
\end{document}

With any LaTeX distribution, saving the above text as a .tex file and running LaTeX on that file would produce the following:

LaTeX is designed to create the same output on any system. So if you distributed the above text to anyone with a working LaTeX distribution, regardless of their particular system, they would get the exact same result. LaTeX outputs files in several formats, but the most popular is PDF.

Getting LaTeX

All you technically need to create LaTeX documents is a LaTeX engine — the binary files and libraries that will convert plain text tex files to polished pdf files. LaTeX can be run from the command line, so *nix and DOS aficionados will feel right at home. However, using a frontend for LaTeX can make things much easier. Most frontends are essentially text editors with functions to

• Compile documents with LaTeX without using the command line
• Facilitate writing in the LaTeX language (wizards for table creation, code completion, etc.)

In this document, I assume that you’ll need both a LaTeX engine and a frontend. There are many engines and frontends to choose from on every operating system. I’m going to describe how to install the most popular (and easy to install) open-source tools for OS X and Windows. The only difference between using the distributions that I describe and others is configuration and practical difference between applications, so feel free to try out other distributions.

On Mac OS X

Engine. gwTeX is a free and open-source LaTeX distribution for OS X that comes with a graphical installer. To install, you download the i-Installer application, select a mirror, then select the TeX package. Additional installation instructions are available on the download page. Once installation is complete, all you need is a frontend.

Frontend. TeXShop is a very popular LaTeX frontend for OS X. Installation requires a simple drag and drop to the /Applications folder. TeXShop is automatically configured to work with gwTeX, so if that’s the engine that you’re using, you’re set.

To test out your distribution, try saving the sample document above as a .tex file and running LaTeX on your document by pressing command-t. If everything is configured properly, a window will appear similar to the example output above, and a new PDF file (as well as a log file) will appear in the directory where your file is saved.

On Windows

Engine. MikTeX is a popular open-source distribution. To install, visit this page, download the executable, and follow the dialog. Additional installation instructions are on the download page.

Frontend. TeXnic Center is an open-source frontend with many helpful features. Installation is standard, just download and open the executable, which opens a wizard.

TeXnic center is automatically configured to work with MikTeX. To test out your setup, save the sample document above as a .tex file using TeXnic Center and select Build > Current file. If everything is set up properly, a new PDF file (along with a log file) will be created in the directory where your document is saved.

On Linux

Linux systems have their own application management utilities (apt-get or rpm, for example), and installation will depend on your particular Linux distribution. Ubuntu users can use the Synaptic Package Manager. Kile is a popular and easy-to-use frontend that works with both KDE and Gnome.

A note about file types

LaTeX can make several types of output files, including PDF and DVI (device independent) files. The type of output depends on whether PDFLaTeX is used to process the file, or another program. The default for the frontends defined above is to create PDF files, but be aware that changing these settings might affect the type of output created.

LaTeX basics

LaTeX commands

LaTeX commands generally begin with a backslash and take the form \command[options]{argument}. For example,

\section{Introduction}

would define a new section, named “Introduction.” The “%” character defines a comment, and everything from that character to the end of the line is commented out and will be ignored by LaTeX. To insert the “%” character into a document, escape it with a backslash: \%.

Quotes work a bit differently in LaTeX. To insert quote marks, use the form “text”. That is, the ` character (top left of the keyboard) twice, followed by the single quote character, ‘, twice.

The preamble

Everything before the line “\begin{document}” is part of the preamble. A typical preamble might look like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\title{Test}
\author{Test}
\date{}

In the example above:

• \documentclass{article} tells LaTeX that the document is an article. Other classes include book, letter and slides
• \usepackage{graphicx} tells LaTeX to use the graphicx package, which allows users to include many types of graphics in their documents. Packages are covered later on
• \title{} and \author{} obviously define the title and author
• \date{} tells LaTeX to leave the date blank. \date{April 2006} would print “April 2006″ as the date. Leaving the \date{} line out would cause LaTeX to use today’s date.

The \documentclass{} command has options. For example, \documentclass[11pt,twocolumn]{article} would organize body of the document into two columns. Note that options are separated by a comma. Other options include:

• oneside or twoside – change margins for a one or two-sided document
• landscape – change the document from portrait to landscape
• titlepage or notitlepage – define whether there is a separate title page, or if the title, author and date info are presented at the top of the article

The document body

Everything after the preamble and between \begin{document} and \end{document} is part of the document body. Most of a LaTeX document is simply plain text. To start a new paragraph, insert two carriage returns (blank lines). LaTeX will ignore one blank line. To force a line break, use \\.

Document structure

A document’s structure is defined using \section{} commands. LaTeX is strongly based on well-structured documents. The structure tags include:

• \section{Name}
• \subsection{Name}
• \subsubsection{Name}
• \paragraph{Name}

To insert an unnumbered section, use the command \section*{Name}. The section numbering will continue as normal with the next section, subsection, etc.

The \paragraph{} command doesn’t need to be included unless you want to insert a heading for a paragraph. The image below shows the different structure commands in use:

Environments

Environments are special blocks of text. For example, the itemize and enumerate environments create bulleted and numbered lists, respectively. The following markup:

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

\begin{enumerate}
\item First numbered thing
\item Second numbered thing
\end{enumerate}

Would produce a bulleted list followed by a numbered list.

Note that environments always begin with \begin{environmentname} and end with \end{environmentname}. They can be nested, so one item of a bulleted list might contain another bulleted list, or a numbered list, etc.

Other frequently used environments include:

• Quote: \begin{quote}…\end{quote} creates a section of indented, quoted text
• Verbatim: \begin{verbatim} … \end{verbatim} is similar to pre in HTML. In the verbatim environment, text is printed in a monospace font and special characters are ignored. Verbatim is useful for typing code tips
• Description: \begin{description} \item[First item] text \end{description} creates a list or items with bolded names and hanging-indented text after the item name

Modifying text styles

The basic idea behind LaTeX is to absolve the author of formatting duties. Nevertheless, it’s still occasionally necessary to manually format certain text styles.

• To insert bold text, use \textbf{text here}
• To insert italic text, use \emph{text here}
• To insert monospace text, use \texttt{text here} (the tt stands for teletype)
• To use verbatim text within a sentence, use \verb|your text here|. Note that any delimiter can be used, for example \verb+your text here+ will produce the same results

Packages

Packages extend LaTeX’s functionality. Package installation essentially consists of two steps:

1. Running LaTeX on the .ins file to produce .sty or .cls files
2. Copying the newly created files to an appropriate directory and updating the LaTeX database

However, there are exceptions. The filetypes .sty and .cls stand for style and class, respectively. If a package does not come as a .ins file, but rather a sty or cls file, it does not need to be processed with LaTeX, and you can skip directly to step two. Also, running LaTeX on a .ins file usually produces a .dtx file. This file can be processed with LaTeX to create a manual for the package.

Note: To process a package file (ins or dtx) with LaTeX, just open that file with your frontend and process it like you would a normal tex file.

OS X. To install a new package on your Mac using gwTeX, process the files as described above, and move the sty, cls and other files to ~/Library/texmf. If this directory does not exist, create it.

Windows. The easiest way to install a package on a PC using MikTeX is to use the MikTeX package manager, which is available through the Start Menu. Just open the package manager, select a mirror, and navigate to the package that you want to install. MikTeX will take care of the rest. Another nice feature of MikTeX is that if you are processing a .tex file that requires a package that isn’t installed on your machine, it will prompt you to download it.

Next, I discuss two popular packages: graphicx and geometry. These packages are already installed with gwTeX and MikTeX, so there is no need to download and install them.

The graphicx package

The graphicx package allows you to insert images into a LaTeX document. To use it, first use the command \usepackage{graphicx} in your document preamble. Then, to insert a graphic, use the command:

\includegraphics[options]{filename.png}

graphicx supports many filetypes, including PDF, PNG and JPG. The options include:

• width=Xin
• height=Xin
• scale=X (where x is between 0 and 1)

The geometry package

While formatting documents using LaTeX is easy, changing those default formats can be fairly difficult. The geometry package can make changing certain aspects of your document, including the margins, much easier. To change the margins to 1″ all around, for example, use

\usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}

Other packages

For just about every modification that you might want to make to a standard LaTeX document, there is a premade package to help you do so. To learn more about the packages described, or to download new packages, visit the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN).

Figures and tables

Figures and tables are LaTeX environments, however they have special attributes, such as the \caption{} command, which gives tables and figures names. They are called float elements, because their position in the final compiled document depends on LaTeX’s style algorithm.

Figures

To insert a figure, use

\begin{figure}[hbtp]
\caption{Figure name}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics{filename.pdf}
\end{center}
\label{your-reference-key}
\end{figure}

In the above markup,

• \begin{figure} simply tells LaTeX that there is a figure environment
• [hbtp] determines how LaTeX will place the figure (here (h), bottom (b), top(t), page(p)). LaTeX will first attempt to insert the figure at its insertion point in the tex file. If this is not possible due to space or other aesthetic considerations, it will try to place it at the bottom of the page, then at the top of the page, then on a special page reserved just for float elements. The order in which h,b,t and p are specified determines where LaTeX tries to place the float first. To force the graphic to appear in its original place, for example, you could put \begin{figure}[h], omitting b, p and t
• \caption{Figure name} specifies the name of the figure
• \begin{center} simply tells LaTeX to center the figure on the page. Don’t forget to end the centering environment before you end the figure environment
• \includegraphics{…} specifies the location of the file that is being inserted as a figure
• \label{your-reference-key} is a label that you can use to refer to the figure in the text. For example, if you label your figure “fig1″ then you can reference it later on by typing \ref{fig1}

Tables

A floated table in LaTeX consists of two environments: table, the actual floated entity in the text, and tabular, the data contained in the table. For example,

\begin{table}[hbtp]
\caption{This table is an example}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{c|cc}
First row, first column & First row second column & First row, third column \\ \hline
Second row, first column & Second row, second column & Second row, third column \\
Third row, first column & Third row, second column & Third row, third column \\
\multicolumn{3}{c}{…}
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\label{exampletable}
\end{table}

would produce

Everything except the code between \begin{tabular} … \end{tabular} is the same as the figure environment described above. Here’ s how the
tabular environment works:

• \begin{tabular}{c|cc} tells LaTeX to start a new tabular environment with three centered columns. The bar (“|”) after the first “c”, tells LaTeX that the first column has a vertical border. Using {lcrr} would create for columns, the first left aligned, the second centered, and the third and fourth right aligned
• Table cells are separated by “&” and table rows are separated by “\\”
• \hline creates a horizontal line
• \multicolumn{3}{c}{Text here} creates a row that spans all three columns, is centered, and contains the text “Text here”

There are more complicated options for creating and inserting tables, but the rules above cover about 90% of all table needs.[2]

Annotations

LaTeX is capable of automatically creating important annotations, such as footnotes, cross references, tables of contents and bibliographies. Note that, since the following commands require LaTeX to automatically number text elements, LaTeX must be run on your document twice for proper display.

Footnotes

To insert a footnote, simply type \footnote{Footnote text here}. LaTeX will automatically insert the footnote number and text.[3]

Cross references

To reference a labeled Table or Figure, use \ref{your-reference-key} where “your-reference-key” is the argument to the \label{your-reference-key} command in the table or figure environments.

Table of contents

To insert a table of contents, simply put \tableofcontents at the beginning of your document. (You must run LaTeX twice to get the table of contents and references to work correctly.)
Bibliography

To create a bibliography, insert a list of the citations at the end of your document, using the form:

\begin{thebibliography}{99}
….
\bibitem{key1} Disarray, General. 2006. “\LaTeX{}: from beginner to \TeX pert.” \emph{General Disarray Blog}. Available online at \textt{http://generaldisarray.wordpress.com}. ….
\end{thebibliography}

You must manually type the bibliography entries. To refer to an item within the text, use \cite{key}. The {99} tells LaTeX that there a maximum of 99 entries in the bibliography. LaTeX needs to know this so it can correctly justify the bibliography entries with their numbering on the left.

A more efficient way to create bibliographies is to use BibTeX, which allows you to maintain a database of citations and call them as needed in your bibliography. There are also graphical tools for managing your reference databases, so you don’t have to hard code the citations, and can easily change them to different formats. However, BibTeX is too complicated to explain in this document. For an introduction, see this page.

Inserting mathematics

There are several ways to include mathematical notation in LaTeX documents. The most common are inline notation and the displaymath environment.

Inline

To include some mathematical notation within a paragraph, without offsetting from the rest of the text, enclose the notation between dollar signs. For example, $a^2+b^2=c^2$ is our favorite theorem.

Display math

The displaymath environment lets you offset some mathematical notation from the rest of the document. The code

\[
a^2+b^2=c^2
\]

would create a paragraph break and center the equation on the page.

Equation

The equation environment can be used to place numbered equations in the text. For example,

\begin{equation}
a^2+b^2=c^2
\label{pythag}
\end{equation}

would offset the equation just like the displaymath version did, but it would have a number in parenthesis on the right, and you would by able to call it in the text by typing, for example, “as we see in equation \ref{pythag}…”

Equation array

The eqnarray environment allows you to align parts of equations at the equal sign. For example,

\begin{eqnarray}
a&=&b+c\\
d&=&e+f
\end{eqnarray}

would produce

Mathematical notation

There are many commands for inserting specific mathematical operators and symbols into equations. They can all be found online, and as always, use Google if you can’t figure out a specific command. The following are some common operators and commands:

Greek letters: Generally, just use the spelled-out letter. For example, \beta, \gamma and \epsilon. For upper case, use \Gamma.

Misc symbols: \leftarrow (use \Leftarrow for a double arrow), \rightarrow, etc., \leftrightarrow (<==>, if and only if), <, >, \leq (less than or equal to), \geq (greater than or equal to)

Indexing and exponents: Subscripts are denoted using the underscore (x_i) and superscripts use the “^” key (a^2). To type “i sub j comma k” you need to write “i_{j,k}” to tell LaTeX that the “j,k” comprises the entire subscript. The bracket characters are generic grouping operators in LaTeX, and they won’t appear in your document.

Some operators: \sum{1/x} or \sum_{i=1}^{\infty}{x_i}, \prod (the product), \coprod (the coproduct), \sin, \log, \max, etc.

Decorations: \hat{x}, \tilde{x} , \overline{x}, \underline{x}, \overrightarrow{x}, \overbrace{x}, \underbrace{x}, \vec{x}

Fractions: \frac{a}{b} puts a over b.

Brackets: For brackets use “(“, “[" or \lbrace and \rbrace for "{" and "}". However, if the notation that your typing is not inline, use \left( <math here> \right) or \left\lbrace <math here> \right\rbrace.

Matrices: To insert a matrix in either the display math or equation environments, use

\left[ \begin{array}{ccc}
a & b & c \\
d & e & f
\end{array}\right]

Note that the array environment is similar to the tabular environment described above. The code shown above would produce:

For help with other symbols and operators, see this page.

For further reference

The instructions above cover many of the basic functions of LaTeX, but there are many more. A good, thorough introduction is The Not-So-Short Introduction to LaTeX (pdf).

Download

This tutorial is available as a PDF file.

Notes

[1] Although commercial implementations of LaTeX, such as Scientific Word, do offer a graphical interface, and LyX is an open-source, LaTeX-based what-you-see-is-what-you-mean typesetting system that essentially uses a graphical interface to apply LaTeX markup to text.
[2] OpenOffice users can use Calc2LaTeX to convert between Calc spreadsheets and LaTeX tables. MS Office users can try Excel2LaTeX, which does the same thing, using Excel spreadsheets. Both utilities are cross-platform.
[3] To create an “attribution” footnote, where the first footnote is marked by an asterisk, use the \thanks{text here} command.

[Update: This article has been Dugg! If you're reading this, and about to flame about how OpenOffice or LaTeX is better, please read this first. Thanks. -John]

[Update: Since you're obviously in the mood for learning, you may want to give my Excel tutorial a read: Become an Excel ninja.]

[Update: You can download this tutorial as a pdf file.]

Most people use word processors like MS Word as they would a typewriter — manually making section headers bold and centered, inserting hard breaks between paragraphs, etc. This formatting method is fine for short documents, but for long documents that include multiple sections, figures, tables and other elements that need to be styled consistently throughout the text, it pays to learn Word’s advanced features.

These features are easy-to-use, but poorly documented and, in my experience, underused — even by professionals that frequently write long documents. This tutorial presents ten tips to help you start using Word the smart way.

1. Styles

The first five tips introduce and explain the use of styles in Word. Styles are user-defined formats that control the look and feel of paragraphs, characters, tables and lists. By creating styles and assigning them to the elements of your document, you can more easily control your document’s formatting.

In Windows, the Styles pane can be turned on by clicking on the “AA” button on the Formatting toolbar:

On the Mac, the Styles pane is one of the modules on the Formatting palette. On either OS, the pane looks something like this:

The functions of the different parts of the pane are obvious. Current style of selected text shows either the style currently in use, or a summary of the formatting if the selected text doesn’t use a style. The options under Pick style to apply are either default or user-defined styles. Using the List dropdown, you can change which styles are shown in the Pick style list.

Clicking on a style name applies that style to the selected text. Clicking on the Style type icon allows you to modify the style. The Modify Style dialog allows you to change every aspect of that style (font, paragraph formatting, and more, depending on the type of style selected).

For example, the next two images show the same text. The first has indented paragraphs; the second has unindented paragraphs with a 12pt space between them. Rather than creating this formatting manually, the entire page was changed from the 1st to the 2nd style by editing the Normal style from Paragraph: Indentation: First Line: .5in to no paragraph indentation, but Paragraph: Spacing: After: 12pt. Note that on the second example, while it looks like there is a blank line between the paragraphs, there isn’t — the cursor automatically goes from one paragraph to another, leaving a blank space that is the same height as a line of text between.

Okay, that introduces styles. Now on to the good stuff.

2. Header styles and the Table of Contents

If you wanted the first-level header for your document to be Times New Roman, 16pt, bold and centered, you could easily create a new style with that formatting. However, Word has 9 built-in heading styles. They may not look the way you want them to out of the box, but you can easily change them to reflect your preferred formatting.

Why use these styles? If you use the built-in header styles, Word will recognize the structure of your document. This means that Word will know that you are typing a header, a subheader, a subsubheader, etc. It also means that, when you’re done typing your document, you can create an automatic table of contents by selecting Insert > Field > Index and Tables > TOC. You can even have Word automatically number your headings by editing the numbering styles from the Modify Styles dialog.

3. Table styles

If you produce documents that contain many tables, you’re probably familiar with the tedium of formatting table after table after table. Using table styles can make this process substantially easier.

To create a default table style, modify the Table Grid style. When you edit a table style, you can define separate styles for the header row, even and odd rows, the left and right columns, etc. So if you want the header row to be bold with a double border, and the rest of the table to be normally weighted with no border, you can edit the Table Grid style so that any table inserted into the document will automatically have that form.

You can make additional modifications to the table after the general Table Grid style has been applied.

4. Character styles

Say, for example, you are creating a document that uses code examples (like HTML). You may want to set any code examples in a monotype font when referencing them within a sentence. The old-fashioned way to do this is to select Font > Courier New, type your code, then revert back to the old font. This can become tedious, and if you wanted to change the code tips to another font, you’d have to manually edit every instance of Courier New in your document.

Instead, you could create a new character style by selecting New Style from the Formatting pane and setting Style type to character. Change the font to Courier and now, anytime you want to refer to a piece of code within a paragraph, you can type the code fragment, select it, and select the style that you just created. Only the selected text will be changed.

The difference between a character style and a paragraph style is that choosing a character style only affects the selected text, while choosing a paragraph style changes all of the text in the paragraph containing the selection to that style.

5. Line and page breaks

Have you ever inserted a table or a graphic into a Word document only to find that a new page starts right after the heading but before the table or graphic? The natural thing to do in this situation is to insert an extra carriage return or a page break right before the heading to ensure that both the heading and the table/graphic appear on the same page, right? But what happens when, later on, you’re making changes and add a new paragraph before the table heading? Now there is too much space between the table header and the paragraph that precedes it. And before you can finalize your document, you have to visually inspect and manually edit every page of your document to make sure that there are no other instances of the same problem.

There is an easy, styles-based solution to this problem. First, define a new style for table/graphic headers (or use the automatic style, described in part 6). Then, in the Modify Style dialog, select Format > Paragraph and click on the Line and Page Breaks tab. Check the box marked keep with next. Now, if Word encounters a situation where the paragraph/table/image/etc. after the header is going to start on a new page, it will make sure that the header is also on the new page. This also works for section headers.

Also, in the Line and Page Breaks tab, note the Page break before option. Selecting this option will ensure that elements of the current style will begin a new page. This is useful if, for example, you want new Heading 1 elements to always start a new page.

6. Captions and cross references

Once again, imagine that you are creating a document with many tables. The low-tech way to number your tables is to hard-code the table numbers into their headers (“Table 1: Blah…”) and refer to tables using those manually assigned numbers (“Table 1 shows that…”). But what happens if, halfway through your document, you realize that you need a new table between Table 14 and Table 15. Now you have to renumber every table after Table 15. This could take a long time if you have, say, 50 tables, and the likelihood that you’ll miss an in-text reference is fairly high.

Word has an automatic table/figure numbering feature, however. Instead of manually creating a table header with a number, you could select the entire table, right click, and choose Caption. This will open a dialog that allows you to automatically insert a “Label-Number” caption, with control over the numbering format (“Table 1.3.4,” or “Figure 5″). The caption will automatically have Word’s built Caption style, which you can edit using the standard Modify Style dialog from the Styles pane. You can also choose whether the caption will be placed above or below the table or figure.

But what about those in-text references to tables and figures. Easy. Choose Insert > Cross reference and select the table or figure that you want to refer to. Word will automatically insert the text “Table X” (or “Figure X”) where X is the automatically generated number of the table or figure. You can even have Word insert the entire caption, if desired. The cross reference feature also works for numbered items, footnotes, endnotes, etc., and can save a lot of time for writers creating long documents.

Tip: Sometimes the fields that display the automatic references become incorrect when new tables, figures, footnotes, etc. are inserted. Although the document will print correctly, the on-screen display will be off. To force Word to update all of these cross-reference fields, click on Print Preview, then close preview to view your document.

7. Turn off auto formatting

A common complaint about Word is its tendency to automatically create numbered and bulleted lists. Sometimes users want to manually make a numbered list, or begin a sentence with the “-” character without beginning a new bulleted list that uses that character. Such formatting is very easy to turn off. Select Tools > AutoCorrect > AutoFormat to turn off/on automatic lists, smart quotes, character-based formatting, fractions, etc.

8. Character-based formatting

But before you go rushing to the Tools menu to turn off all of the automatic formatting, consider taking a moment to learn how such formatting works. If you understand it, it could save you a lot of time. For example, by typing text surrounded by asterisks (*like this*), you can have Word make your text bold. Or, by surrounding text with the underscore character, you can have work make the selected text italic. When you don’t have to take your fingers off the keyboard to apply formatting changes, you can work quite a bit faster.

9. Continue previous list

The main reason why people want to turn off automatic numbered lists is to insert indented or other text between list items:

This can be difficult using the automatic numbered (or bulleted) list feature because Word’s default behavior is to start item number 9 after you hit return, or to begin item 8a after you hit tab. However, by creating a list using the automatic numbering function, turning the list off after the desired list item, inserting whatever needs to go before the next item, then inserting a new list, and choosing Format > Bullets and numbering:

and selecting Continue previous list, you can force the list to start at the number of the item that you left off, +1.

10. Keyboard shortcuts

Finally, a few keyboard shortcuts that might save you some time:

• Cmd+T: Hanging indent (hit Cmd+T again to increase the hanging indent; hit Cmd+Shift+T to decrease/remove the hanging indent)
• Cmd+=: Subscript (hit Cmd+= again to revert to the normal font)
• Cmd+Shift+=: Superscript
• Cmd+Shift+L: Start a bulleted list (this can also be accomplished by starting the sentence with an asterisk, assuming that this hasn’t been turned off using the AutoCorrect menu)

Note: Replace Cmd with Cntrl for Windows.

Notes

• Most of these screenshots show Word running on Mac OS X, but the interfaces are very similar for recent versions of Word for Windows.
• I know, this is long, but it had to be written. I’m tired of having to collaborate with other authors that are still in the word processing Stone Age. These tips take about 5 minutes to learn, and they’ll save hours over the years.
• Word is far from the only system that offers these features. Similar functionality can be found in most word processing systems, including OpenOffice.org. If you really like logical markup and automatic formatting, consider learning LaTeX. I chose to write about word because (a) Word is the most common word-processing application and (b) it’s actually a pretty polished product.

Economist Allin Cottrell is an amazing guy. He wrote GRETL, an open-source, graphical, cross-platform econometrics package. He’s also the author of “Word Processors: Stupid and Inefficient,” a widely disseminated article in the LaTeX community. In the article, he essentially makes the case for using LaTeX over word. A case with which I almost whole-heartedly agree. The crux of his argument is that in LaTeX you compose — write the words and structure of your document — while in Word you typeset — fidget with formatting, etc.

It is right to prefer composition to typesetting if you are a serious author. Yes, typesetting matters because a readable document is more likely to be read completely. But form should really be an afterthought.

He acknowledges in his article that one can use the composition mode of writing in Word; the problem is that few do. Since Word is probably the most common format for collaborative writing, however, it pays to be able to use Word like a pro. And if you prefer composing to typesetting, then you need to learn to use Word like it was LaTeX. Here’s how:

Use the styles that are built in to word. When you want to insert your title, use the title style. When you want to insert a top-level header, use the Header 1 style, etc. Customize these styles to your liking, then save a blank document containing these styles as a Word template. That way you only have to mess with the typesetting component once. Making custom Word templates is actually much easier than creating custom style files for LaTeX (at least in my opinion).

LaTeX does a great job of formatting papers to look like journal articles. Many journals use LaTeX to make their articles, so this isn’t surprising. The default Word files aren’t so professional. These tips will help you make your document look more like the journals:

• Change the fonts for the header styles to Times New Roman. To do this, open the style palette, select the style you want to change, and click on modify. From this dialog, you can change the font face, size, weight, etc.
• In the same dialog, you can turn on automatic numbering. From the Format dropdown menu, select numbering, then select outline numbering. There are several styles to choose from (1, 1.1, 1.11; 1, 1.A, 1.A.1, etc.)
• Tell the header styles to change to normal paragraph styles upon a carriage return by setting “Style for following paragraph” to normal.
• Tell the normal style to change to a normal indented paragraph upon a carriage return by setting “Style for following paragraph” to normal indented. This way, the first paragraph after a header will not be indented, but every subsequent paragraph will, similar to the style in most books and journals.
• Set your table styles by selecting the Table Grid style. Within the style dialog, there is a dropdown menu named “Apply formatting to.” You can use this menu to change the formatting for header rows, left-most columns, etc. To apply this style, you must select your entire table, not just the next in the table, then click on the Table Grid style.
• Optionally, decrease the line width by changing the margins. Notice that most journals use much larger margins than Word. This is partially because reading long lines is tiring to the human eye.

These are just a few general tips that will help you have (a) more control over the formatting of your document and (b) a more automated writing workflow, so you’ll be able to focus on writing and not formatting, after the initial template is created. Learning how to use Word’s styles well is a good idea; you can format elements well beyond the ones outlined above. If you know how to customize styles, you’ll be able to quickly make global changes to your template, and never have to worry about manually formatting a long document again.

Should you use bulleted lists in your writing? I go back and forth on this thought. On the pro side, bulleted lists can make a document easier to scan and can make important points more obvious and easier to read. On the con side, using bulleted lists can be too much of a crutch. I frequently find that people include long bulleted lists instead of thinking and writing about the topic at hand.

To be clear, bullets serve two functions. In narrative, they offset the components of a list, making them easier to read. The same list could just as easily be inset, using semicolons to delimit the elements. In an outline, they simply substitute for numbered points (it’s easier to use bullets than numbers when you’re outlining, since you may not have all of the list points worked out). In outlines (or notes, lectures, etc.) there’s no problem with bullets, they just make things easier to read. The question at hand is whether they belong in formal writing.

The general consensus seems to be that bulleted lists are not acceptable in academic writing. According to the Chicago Style Manual:

The use of bullets (heavy dots) in place of enumeration is sometimes resorted to, but these may be considered cumbersome, especially in scholarly work” (314).

The APA style suggests that you abandon them completely.

Don’t include bulleted lists. If you cannot paraphrase, then include a table or appendix that presents your list of items.

I suspect that the disdain for bulleted lists in academic writing is partially due to tradition and partly an attempt to maintain a sense of narrative. Bulleted lists make it all too easy to stop writing and start dumping information on the page. And academic topics tend to yield a lot of information to be dumped. Getting rid of bullets is a good way of paring down your paper to the pith. (The same goes for numbered lists — it’s not the bullet character that offends, it’s the idea of simply listing off everything you need to say.)

In business writing, bullets seem to be a plus. Most business documents are written for speed and clarity. Nobody will complement you on your writing, and nobody will spend more that the absolute minimum amount of time reading what you wrote. So you might as well make your documents quickly scannable with bulleted lists.

Technical writing, such as manuals, how to’s, lecture notes, etc. — in my opinion — are the best place to use bulleted lists. In these contexts, the purpose of your communication is to very clearly document how to do something without going into endless detail. Using bulleted lists can be a great way to do this — they make important points stand out and they can help indicate an information hierarchy (which is traditionally done using headers, subheaders and pure sentence structure).

As far as other types or writing go… there are no rules. You can use them if you find them convenient. Bulleted lists are really popular on the web, though perhaps overused (even by me). Often they act more like graphics than writing elements — they are simply used to call attention to each piece of a seriated list. However, it might look weird to have bullet points in, say, a journal entry.

Given the above considerations of the types of writing for which bulleted lists are acceptable, I propose the following rule of thumb:

If your document can be classified as “literature” (academic literature, political literature, legal literature, literature in the traditional sense, etc.), do not use bulleted lists. Otherwise, use them sparingly.

Hopefully, the formulation of this rule will at least help me remember when to use them.