Guidelines

General

• LaTeX is (mainly) a language for describing the structure of a document, not its visual appearence.
• The visual appearance is determined by document styles and parameters (easy to replace/configure).
• Do not abuse LaTeX commands for visual formatting.
• Supports great mathematical typesetting.
• Various backends, most widely used: pdflatex

pdflatex main.tex
bibtex main (BibLaTeX: biber main)
pdflatex main.tex
pdflatex maintex

Resources

• The LaTeX project
• Getting LaTeX
  
• LaTeX@TU Graz
• Tutorial für Einsteiger
  
• CTAN: documentation of LaTeX packages
  
• l2tabu: obsolete packages and commands
  
• StackExchange: questions and answers
• The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List
  

Useful Document Classes

• KOMA-Script: scrartcl, scrreprt, scrbook (replacing: article, report, book)
• Documentation
  
• Springer LNCS: llncs2e.zip
• Elsevier: elsarticle.cls, documentation
• The Beamer Class
  
• Documentation
  

Useful Packages

• fontenc and inputenc: font encoding and input encoding
• newtxtext and newtxmath: new versions of Times-like fonts
• babel: multilingual support
  
• graphicx: enhanced graphics support (\includegraphics)
  
• hyperref: internal and external links in generated PDF file (\href and \url)
  
• csquotes: configurable quotes (command \enquote)
  
• verbatim: enhanced "verbatim" environment
  
• listings: source code listings
• amsmath, ntheorem, amsfonts: mathematics
  
• algorithm, algpseudocode: pseudocode
  
• biblatex: a modern replacement for bibtex
  
• nag: warning about obsolete LaTeX commands
  

Common Mistakes

• Not using "inputenc" and "fontenc"

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

• Using \\ to end/separate paragraphs
• Empty lines separate paragraphs; the document style determines how far they are apart.
• Using "..." to quote phrases
• Correct (in English): ``....'' (two single back quotes and two normal quotes)
• Best: \enquote{...} (can be configured)
  
• Using - to denote range ("3-5"):
• "-" is intra-word-separator, "--" denotes range, "---" denotes dash in sentence.
• Using just "." to denote abbreviation ("St. Joseph")
• Write "St.\ Joseph" to avoid interpretation of "." as end of sentence.
• Consider "St.~Joseph" when appropriate: ~ is a space where no linebreak will happen.
  
• Inlining tables or pictures in text.
  
• Use the "table" and "figure" environments.
  
• Trying to manually place figures by "\begin{figure}[h]"
• Let LaTex place the figure, only move the environment within text to "suggest" places
• Writing  "see the figure below"
• The figure is not placed where the environment appears in the source code
• Writing "see Figure 5"
  
• Use \label, \ref, \pageref
• Writing "see Figure \ref{myfig}"
• Write "see Figure~\ref{myfig}" to avoid possible line break after "Figure".
  
• Forgetting the math mode ("we then have a+b=c").
• "we then have $a+b=c$"
  
• Using $var$ to denote a multi-letter variable
• Denotes product of three variables v a r
• Use $\mathit{var}$
• Writing manually reference section (the "\thebibliography" environment)
• Use bibtex (command "bibtex") or  biblatex (command "biber")
• Using "title = {My Title}" in bibtex
• Use "title = {{My Title}}" to preserve capitalization.
• Having unresolved references or citations:
• Look at the LaTeX warnings!
  
• Forgetting to update references or citations:
  
• After last change, run latex at least twice.
• Note warnings about possibly modified references.
• Hardcoding frequently occurring patterns/notations in paper.
• Use "\newcommand" to introduce named macros.
• Manipulating page sizes manually.
• If you really have to, use KOMA-Script's "DIV=<Nr>" option.
• Having (in the final document) line or page overflows/underflows.
• Note the warnings. Underflows may be forgivable, overflows are not.
• Having spelling errors in the final document.
• Use a spelling checker! (Linux: "ispell")