# An Introduction to LaTeX - Material for the year 2020-2021

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2020-2021
Lecturer(s):
Dr Richard Earl
General Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites. The course is mainly intended for students writing a Part B Extended Essay or a Part C Dissertation but any students are welcome to attend the two lectures given in Michaelmas Term. Note that there is no assessment associated with this course, nor credit for attending the course.

Course Term:
Michaelmas
Course Overview:

This short lecture series provides an introduction to LaTeX.

\LaTeX $\,$ is a markup language, released by Donald Knuth in 1984 and freely sourced, for the professional typesetting of mathematics. (It is based on the earlier \TeX $\,$ released in 1978.) A markup language provides the means for rendering text in various ways - such as bold, italicized or Greek symbols - with the main focus of \LaTeX $\,$ being the rendering of mathematics so that even complicated expressions involving equations, integrals and matrices and images can be professionally typeset.

Learning Outcomes:

Following these introductory lectures, a student should feel comfortable writing their own \LaTeX $\,$ documents, and producing professionally typset mathematics. The learning curve to producing a valid \LaTeX $\,$ document is shallow, and students will further become familiar will some of the principal features of \LaTeX $\,$ such as chapters, item lists, typesetting mathematics, including equations, tables, bibliographies and images. Then, with the aid of a good reference manual, a student should feel comfortable researching out for themselves further features and expanding their \LaTeX $\,$ vocabulary

The Department has a page of \LaTeX $\,$ resources at https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/it/faqs/latex which has various free introductory guides to \LaTeX.