An Example Do
ument
Leslie Lamport
January 21, 1994
This is an example input le. Comparing it with the output it generates
an
show you how to produ
e a simple do
ument of your own.
An Example Do
ument
Leslie Lamport
January 21, 1994
This is an example input le. Comparing it with the output it generates
an
show you how to produ
e a simple do
ument of your own.
1 Ordinary Text
The ends of words and senten
es are marked by spa
es. It doesn't matter how
many spa
es you type; one is as good as 100. The end of a line
ounts as a
spa
e.
One or more blank lines denote the end of a paragraph.
Sin
e any number of
onse
utive spa
es are treated like a single one, the for-
matting of the input le makes no dieren
e to LATEX, but it makes a dieren
e
to you. When you use LATEX, making your input le as easy to read as possible
will be a great help as you write your do
ument and when you
hange it. This
sample le shows how you
an add
omments to your own input le.
Be
ause printing is dierent from typewriting, there are a number of things
that you have to do dierently when preparing an input le than if you were just
typing the do
ument dire
tly. Quotation marks like \this" have to be handled
spe
ially, as do quotes within quotes: \ `this' is what I just wrote, not `that' ".
Dashes
ome in three sizes: an intra-word dash, a medium dash for number
ranges like 1{2, and a pun
tuation dash|like this.
A senten
e-ending spa
e should be larger than the spa
e between words
within a senten
e. You sometimes have to type spe
ial
ommands in
onjun
-
tion with pun
tuation
hara
ters to get this right, as in the following senten
e.
Gnats, gnus, et
. all begin with G. You should
he
k the spa
es after periods
when reading your output to make sure you haven't forgotten any spe
ial
ases.
Generating an ellipsis . . . with the right spa
ing around the periods requires a
spe
ial
ommand.
LATEX interprets some
ommon
hara
ters as
ommands, so you must type
spe
ial
ommands to generate them. These
hara
ters in
lude the following: $
& % # f and g.
In printing, text is usually emphasized with an itali
type style.
A long segment of text
an also be emphasized in this way. Text within su
h
a segment
an be given additional emphasis.
