LaTeX for Undergrads

In this guide

1. The Case for LaTeX: Why plain-text typesetting outperforms word processors for engineering coursework.
2. Environment Setup: Getting started with a LaTeX distribution and configuring your editor.
3. Core Foundations: Compiling a minimal document and understanding the separation of preamble and content.
4. Workflow Optimization: Automating continuous compilation with latexmk and citation management with biblatex + Zotero.
5. Project Architecture: Structuring scalable, multi-file documents with a reusable preamble.
6. Templates and my Thesis.cls. A ready-to-use template for your thesis, with a document to get you started.

It’s already been 2 years since I started writing my thesis. Since then, I’ve successfully submitted and defended it and gotten my degree. I first got into LaTeX by reading the wonderfully written and, from my point of view, immaculate articles of Gilles Castel. I had been using vim for the better part of 5 years back then, so his workflow did not require much tinkering on my part. It was something I could easily replicate on my own system. The school of engineering quickly helped me realize that, while taking notes on my computer was a piece of cake back in those COVID days, it was not optimal for me: in class I was not able to quickly capture sketches (without focusing too much on those and sacrificing understanding). I turned to a more conservative solution of handwritten notes which I could easily then integrate with my much simpler org-mode. Still, LaTeX knowledge and experimentation is what allowed me to have consistently high-quality reports, without ever (except for one, very particular course) having to force myself through the tedious process of creating a presentable office doc.

First, two easy examples for you:

• This blog post was automatically turned to this guide using my LaTeX preamble
• This sample thesis PDF was generated with less than 40 lines of LaTeX

At first, let’s try to only focus on the facts:

1. Reusability: Since you’re writing in plain text you can easily share snippets across your works without having to manually adjust preferences such as fonts, colors and generic structure. I’ll build on this in the preamble section.
2. Version control: You can use git and have it all nicely tracked. No more files named report.doc, report1.doc, report1.final.doc, report1.final.final.doc¹ (and you can also upload them on GitHub and include them on your vanity page)
3. Predictability: This one is counterintuitive but LaTeX is ridiculously simple for 99% of the time (statistics source: my imagination). It is difficult to properly set up, but after that, it is deceptively easy.
4. Maths and Equations (and Bibliography): If you need maths in a report, don’t even try to use Word. Just use LaTeX.
5. Beauty and Consistency: I do not need to build on this, but all my reports look consistently beautiful. There is something so nice about having a signature in your work (without even trying).

Seriously, I do not see a good reason why not. But, once again, you might not be convinced. I know I would need something more tangible. I suggest that you take a look at the following image 1. These are the first pages of different projects I undertook while an undergraduate. Notice the similarities among all of those and be aware that I never worked manually on creating the table of contents (toc) nor did I mess around with the placement of the title… LaTeX handled most of this stuff for me.

If you’re still not convinced, well, take a look at the following repos I have published on GitHub. I am not particularly proud of the work behind the scenes (I don’t even remember most of it), but you can see LaTeX work in action: the reports look consistently high-quality.

• MicroProcessors notes (useful for the exams)
• Optimization Techniques repo
• Algorithm Design and Analysis repo

An interesting bit from Wikipedia: on pronunciation

The characters ’T’, ’E’, and ’X’ in the name come from the Greek capital letters tau, epsilon, and chi, as the name of TeX derives from the Ancient Greek: τέχνη (’skill’, ’art’, ’technique’); for this reason, TeX’s creator Donald Knuth promotes its pronunciation as tɛx (tekh).

If you’re following this article like a tutorial, this would be a good time to take a step back and test your environment. Copy the following into a latex file, read it and then use the commands found above to produce a PDF.

• Before getting overloaded, open this cheatsheet.
• All lines starting with % are comments, make sure to use them wisely in your own work as well. They are not shown in the end result.
• Make sure to fool around: add some lists, add bold, italics, images. Everything you’d normally do in a report. The cheatsheet I linked is more than enough.
• Try to write an equation or two!

% !TeX program = xelatex
% Try with book, report, article
% notice the differences
\documentclass[12pt]{report}

% You can play around with this one too
\date{\today}

% Add your name here
\author{Chatziiola}

\title{Hello World}

\usepackage{graphicx} % includegraphics, for images

% If you do not begin your document then nothing will be produced.
\begin{document}

\maketitle % comment this line out, see the output

% It is very easy to add sections
% \chapter{Chapter title}
% \section{This is a section}
Hello world

\begin{equation}
  E = mc^2
\end{equation}

\end{document}

If you take a quick look at the piece of code you’ll see that we can split it in three:

• The documentclass line
• Before the document environment
• The document environment

\documentclass[12pt]{report}

The documentclass line is something you will usually ignore. Going in depth here, would be way too time-consuming, so let’s consider it out of scope. You only need to know that:

• [these,are,optional,arguments]{not-optional}.
• there are different classes such as book, report, article
• some optional arguments, such as a4paper, 12pt⁴, are widely universal.

% A minimalistic preamble
\date{\today}
\author{Chatziiola}
\title{Hello World}

% you can use \usepackage{package}
\usepackage{graphicx} % allows you to use \includegraphics{} for images

That second part⁵ is often called the preamble. I’ve kept it simple in the example but it does not need to be like that: my thesis preamble was more than 100 lines long. In it you:

• \usepackage{package}
• configure fonts, margins, colors and every other property you can think of.

\begin{document}

\maketitle % comment this line out, see the output

% It is very easy to add sections
% \chapter{Chapter title}
% \section{This is a section}
Hello world

\begin{equation}
  E = mc^2
\end{equation}

\end{document}

The last part is the document itself. You can use environments and commands (if you have properly included their packages) and practically everything you write there will be visible to the resulting document.

I’m sure some of you have already guessed why I broke the document down like that. The goal is the separation of structure and content. In your preamble you want to carefully define everything that should be consistent across your different projects: fonts, margins, macros, colors, packages available. That will allow you to reuse it, without needing to reinvent the wheel every time.

That’s my final tip to connect the dots. In LaTeX you can reuse whole files by using \input{filename} and \include{filename} statements.

A sample preamble you can use is this one:

% !TEX program = xelatex
% TODO add this to a file called preamble.tex

% Your name probably does not change across documents :P
\author{YOURNAME}

% this is a minimal configuration. feel free to expand
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{wrapfig}
\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{capt-of}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{
  margin=2.5cm,
  includeheadfoot
}

\usepackage{fontspec}

% Add your own fonts
% Tinos: available from google fonts
\setmainfont{Tinos}
\newfontfamily\greekfont{Tinos}

\usepackage{xcolor}
% define your own colors
\definecolor{YOURCOLOR}{RGB}{69,69,69}

\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
  colorlinks=true,
  citecolor=YOURCOLOR,
  linkcolor=YOURCOLOR,
  filecolor=YOURCOLOR,
  urlcolor=YOURCOLOR,
}

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[L]{\textcolor{YOURCOLOR}{\rightmark}}
\fancyhead[R]{\textcolor{YOURCOLOR}{YOUR NAME}}
\fancyfoot[C]{\textcolor{YOURCOLOR}{\thepage}}

\usepackage{titlesec}
\titleformat{\section}
  {\normalfont\Large\bfseries\color{YOURCOLOR}}{\thesection}{1em}{}
\titleformat{\subsection}
  {\normalfont\large\bfseries\color{YOURCOLOR}}{\thesubsection}{1em}{}
\titleformat{\subsubsection}
  {\normalfont\normalsize\bfseries\color{YOURCOLOR}}{\thesubsubsection}{1em}{}
\titleformat{\chapter}[display]
  {\normalfont\huge\bfseries\color{YOURCOLOR}}{\chaptertitlename\ \thechapter}{2em}{\Huge}

% This is for justification purposes
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
\justifying
\sloppy
\setlength{\parindent}{2em}
\setlength{\RaggedRightParindent}{\parindent}

Having a preamble, your documents can start looking more like:

% !TeX program = xelatex
\documentclass[12pt]{article}

% Configuration is hidden in here
\input{preamble.tex}
\title{YOUR TITLE}

\begin{document}
% Your content
\end{document}

For some reason I get a feeling of satisfaction when reading papers and being able to see the sources, or coming across blogs like gwern.net that document their inspiration. When I took up latex I saw that I could do that very easily. All I had to use was a package like biblatex (please do not go for bibtex, you’ll regret it down the line), have a .bib file and have my references…

It can be that simple, but not if you decide to manually write your entries.

This bib entry does not have many fields nor is it particularly complex. Most of the entries I used on my thesis have 2 or 3 times the size. I did not add them manually. I used Zotero, per this guide. In essence, you install Zotero locally, then the browser plugin, and whenever you find a good article or book, you use your plugin to create an entry on your Zotero library. Then inside Zotero you can export your selected library to biblatex (and keep it updated!), thus automating the creation of your .bib file.

If you follow this workflow, then you do not need to change anything⁶, other than

• \usepackage[...]{biblatex} to actually use biblatex.
• \addbibresource{your-bib-file.bib}, to select your bibliography file.
• use \cite to make your citations
• use \printbibliography to have a beautiful bibliography (with backlinks) automatically created for you

Take a look at this snippet (it will not compile as is):

% ...

% use this in the preamble
\usepackage[backend=biber, style=numeric, sorting=ynt]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{your-bib-file.bib}

%...

% main document
\begin{document}

blah blah blah\cite[p.4]{LamprinosChatziioannou2022}. Yes I truly said that.

\printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]

\end{document}

At this point you should get the picture. Your directories should look like that:

preamble.tex % Common across projects, no need to copy
thesis-or-big-project/
├── master.tex
├── thesis.bib
├── figures/
└── chapters/
    ├── 01_introduction.tex
    └── 02_methodology.tex
small-project/
├── report.tex
├── figures/
└── references.bib

• Knuth’s Interview: TeX origins
• Castel’s preamble
• Greek LUG archive: has some material on LaTeX