LaTeX cheatsheet

15 July 2014

LaTeX is complicated. There are over a thousand packages and millions of ways of doing the same thing. I encountered a lot of problems while writing reports in LaTeX. I wrote this cheat sheet for myself to make my life a bit easier.

The basics

  • Enabling cyrillic fonts in LaTeX
  • A4, two side layout: \documentclass[12pt,a4paper,twoside]{article}
  • Page margins: \usepackage[top=1in,left=0.85in,right=0.85in]{geometry}
  • Easy way to write LaTeX (preserving case): \LaTeX
  • \newpage for page breaks

Sometimes you need to start numbering the pages from the second page. All you need to do is to disable page numbering on your first page and enable it later.

  1. On your title page: \pagenumbering{gobble}
  2. Page where numbering starts: \pagenumbering{arabic}

Indentation, margins, alignment

  • Vertical spacing: \vspace{1cm}. It will move your content 1 cm below
  • Horizonal spacing: \hspace{-1cm}. You can use any unit (cm, mm, in, pt, em). Negative values are allowed.
  • Disable force indentation: \noindent
  • Wrap code in \begin{center} \end{center} to make it centered

Lists and enumeration

  • itemize is an unordered list, enumerate is an ordered list
  • Each item starts with \item

Example: {% highlight latex %} \begin{enumerate} \item First \item Second \end{enumerate} {% endhighlight %}

PDFs and graphics

  • Use pdfpages package to include PDFs. Syntax: \includepdf[pages=1-6]{path.pdf}.
  • To include graphics use \includegraphics[width=5.6cm]{image.png}

Math

  • Wrap all math in dollar signs: $ math here $
  • LaTeX also supports multiline math code: $$ multiline math here $$. Your math text will be rendered on a separate line, centred
  • Subscripts are made by using underscores: $ x_i $
  • If you want a complex expression in your subscript, wrap it in curly braces: $ x_{a,b} $
  • The same applies for superscripts (powers): $ a^{b+c} $
  • You can combine both: $ a_{b+c}^{d+e} $
  • You can enable Greek letters in math mode: $ \Alpha \alpha $. The one that starts with a capital letter will be an uppercase alpha.

References