A Brief Introduction to LaTeX

The typesetting system LaTeX has become an essential part of daily life in the STEM sector. It is often required as the standard for writing lab reports, theses, and scientific publications for renowned academic journals. Consequently, LaTeX is one of the soft skills that many natural scientists and engineers must acquire during their studies.

"A Brief Introduction to LaTeX" was developed between 2006 and 2009 as a series of lecture notes and is not intended to be a comprehensive reference work. Instead, the book aims to provide an easy introduction to the language and its basic elements for beginners who have had no prior contact with LaTeX and are now looking to take their first steps. Furthermore, the book also offers some insights into advanced techniques.

What you will learn in this book:
- Creating simple documents with LaTeX,
- Typesetting mathematical formulae,
- Using lists and tables,
- Using floating objects with figure or table captions and cross-references,
- The correct use of citations and bibliographies with BibTeX and BibLaTeX,
- Fundamentals of academic writing,
- Designing presentation slides with LaTeX,
- Basics of graphic design with TikZ and PGF,
- Creating interactive PDF documents,
- and several further techniques.