LaTex is the most used markup language for scientific writing. Almost all those fancy papers that you find on ResearchGate, arXiv and the thousands of journals that publish scientific researches were written using LaTex, and they look damn good. If you want to wrap your research in a nice layout you probably want to start using LaTex as well, but starting the journey can be really time consuming, especially if nobody told you a few tricks. If you started using LaTex for your publication but you feel that your results are underwhelming even though you are putting your best efforts into it, this article is for you. I will share 5 super easy tricks that will boost your LaTex productivity (without need to actually learn anything about LaTex itself!).

As I told you, the tips I am going to share have nothing to do with the LaTex language itself, but rather with how to setup your workspace and what software tools you can leverage to take away some pain from your first drafts. Be sure to visit the links, as they will bring you directly where you need to be! Without further ado, let’s dig into the 5 tips that will kickstart your LaTex journey.

1: use a cloud-based editor LaTex is infamous for being a real hassle to install on different machines. Today, the need for local installation is really not a thing anymore. Thanks to cloud-based editors, like OverLeaf, what divides you from your first LaTex article is really a simple signup procedure. The biggest advantage of using a cloud-based editor is that all your articles (and resources such as images and references) are neatly stored in the cloud, so you will never lose your work no matter what happens to your machine.OverLeaf also makes it super easy to collaborate with other editors to the same article, which is very convenient. Oh and no worries, the basic version of OverLeaf is completely free of charge :)

2: don’t write tables yourself Ok, you started working on your first article and you need to write a table. You search online for a guide and… yea, it’s a real mess. LaTex tables are known to be very hard to craft from scratch, which is why you definitely shouldn’t! Take a look at this awesome website: it gives you the possibility to define the required table using a graphic editor and to generate the corresponding LaTex code for you to copy-paste in your article. This simple trick saved me so much time that I am ashamed I didn’t know it was there for the first couple years with LaTex. Well, now you don’t need to go through that hell.

3: use a bibliography manager Ok, so now you want to cite someone else’s work in your own. LaTex will help you a great deal in this otherwise tedious work. Indeed, it is one of the main reasons LaTex became so popular in the first place. LaTex handles citations using an external file characterized by the .bib extension. In such a file, the user can insert a set of references to the works to be cited in a structured format of the form key: value. By default, one would have to find such entry for each of the papers, books and other resources to be cited, copy-paste it in the .bib file and enjoy the result. The problem is that finding the correct entry on the net is not always easy, and when you have hundreds of works to cite it can become really cumbersome. Luckily, softwares like Mendeley and Zotero can help you dealing with bibliographies in a much simpler way: by drag-and-drop all the files containing the resources to be cited, these bibliography managers authomatically generate the complete .bib file for you. Trust me when I say you will love it.

4: if you struggle with maths, ask an online editor Maths is hard, everybody knows that. But when you have to write each and every single formula by yourself in LaTex, it can become a real hassle. While it is definitely a good idea to learn how to write mathematical formulas in LaTex (after all, it is one of the main advantages of writing LaTex altogether), a no-code editor can really take away lots of pain during the first attempts, and at the same time it speeds up your learning! Like for tables generators, multiple options are available online. I used this one, and it really made my learning a lot simpler by giving me the right answers right away.

5: when nothing else works, consider using a no-code editor Have you tried all the previous points? Nothing seems to work? No worries, learning a markup language takes time, especially if you are not accustomed to using similar tools such as HTML. If this is the case, you can consider the possibility of moving away from a plain LaTex editor such as OverLeaf in favor of a low-code solution. In my early LaTex days, Lyx did great job for me in this sense. With Lyx you have access to an intuitive GUI (Graphic User Interface), similar to what you are accustomed to in Microsoft Word, while being able to access and manipulate the underlying LaTex code at the same time. This solution comes with pros and cons: in particular, it doesn’t offer a cloud-based storage so you will have to do some installations and to make sure that your work doesn’t get lost by mistake.

These were the 5 tips that will kickstart your LaTex journey. I hope this article’s content will help you in you quest to become a real LaTex expert and, if you find other tricks along the way, please share them with the community as well! Peace!

LaTex is the most used markup language for scientific writing. Almost all those fancy papers that you find on ResearchGate, arXiv and the thousands of journals that publish scientific researches were written using LaTex, and they look damn good. If you want to wrap your research in a nice layout you probably want to start using LaTex as well, but starting the journey can be really time consuming, especially if nobody told you a few tricks. If you started using LaTex for your publication but you feel that your results are underwhelming even though you are putting your best efforts into it, this article is for you. I will share 5 super easy tricks that will boost your LaTex productivity (without need to actually learn anything about LaTex itself!).

As I told you, the tips I am going to share have nothing to do with the LaTex language itself, but rather with how to setup your workspace and what software tools you can leverage to take away some pain from your first drafts. Be sure to visit the links, as they will bring you directly where you need to be! Without further ado, let’s dig into the 5 tips that will kickstart your LaTex journey.

1: use a cloud-based editor LaTex is infamous for being a real hassle to install on different machines. Today, the need for local installation is really not a thing anymore. Thanks to cloud-based editors, like OverLeaf, what divides you from your first LaTex article is really a simple signup procedure. The biggest advantage of using a cloud-based editor is that all your articles (and resources such as images and references) are neatly stored in the cloud, so you will never lose your work no matter what happens to your machine.OverLeaf also makes it super easy to collaborate with other editors to the same article, which is very convenient. Oh and no worries, the basic version of OverLeaf is completely free of charge :)

2: don’t write tables yourself Ok, you started working on your first article and you need to write a table. You search online for a guide and… yea, it’s a real mess. LaTex tables are known to be very hard to craft from scratch, which is why you definitely shouldn’t! Take a look at this awesome website: it gives you the possibility to define the required table using a graphic editor and to generate the corresponding LaTex code for you to copy-paste in your article. This simple trick saved me so much time that I am ashamed I didn’t know it was there for the first couple years with LaTex. Well, now you don’t need to go through that hell.

3: use a bibliography manager Ok, so now you want to cite someone else’s work in your own. LaTex will help you a great deal in this otherwise tedious work. Indeed, it is one of the main reasons LaTex became so popular in the first place. LaTex handles citations using an external file characterized by the .bib extension. In such a file, the user can insert a set of references to the works to be cited in a structured format of the form key: value. By default, one would have to find such entry for each of the papers, books and other resources to be cited, copy-paste it in the .bib file and enjoy the result. The problem is that finding the correct entry on the net is not always easy, and when you have hundreds of works to cite it can become really cumbersome. Luckily, softwares like Mendeley and Zotero can help you dealing with bibliographies in a much simpler way: by drag-and-drop all the files containing the resources to be cited, these bibliography managers authomatically generate the complete .bib file for you. Trust me when I say you will love it.

4: if you struggle with maths, ask an online editor Maths is hard, everybody knows that. But when you have to write each and every single formula by yourself in LaTex, it can become a real hassle. While it is definitely a good idea to learn how to write mathematical formulas in LaTex (after all, it is one of the main advantages of writing LaTex altogether), a no-code editor can really take away lots of pain during the first attempts, and at the same time it speeds up your learning! Like for tables generators, multiple options are available online. I used this one, and it really made my learning a lot simpler by giving me the right answers right away.

5: when nothing else works, consider using a no-code editor Have you tried all the previous points? Nothing seems to work? No worries, learning a markup language takes time, especially if you are not accustomed to using similar tools such as HTML. If this is the case, you can consider the possibility of moving away from a plain LaTex editor such as OverLeaf in favor of a low-code solution. In my early LaTex days, Lyx did great job for me in this sense. With Lyx you have access to an intuitive GUI (Graphic User Interface), similar to what you are accustomed to in Microsoft Word, while being able to access and manipulate the underlying LaTex code at the same time. This solution comes with pros and cons: in particular, it doesn’t offer a cloud-based storage so you will have to do some installations and to make sure that your work doesn’t get lost by mistake.

These were the 5 tips that will kickstart your LaTex journey. I hope this article’s content will help you in you quest to become a real LaTex expert and, if you find other tricks along the way, please share them with the community as well! Peace!