How to use LaTeX and why all textbooks look the same

Science textbooks and papers all look pretty similar. The reason for that is LaTeX. It's a brilliant tool for scientific writing and in this video I explain why we use it and give a beginners tutorial about how to write in LaTeX.
NOTE: The Atom Editor has now been sunsetted and is no longer available. You can still edit LaTeX documents in Overleaf. I have since moved on to editing in the JetBrains IDEs - specifically using IntelliJ Idea Ultimate for LaTeX editing.
~~ If You're New~~
I'm Thomas, a 3rd year Astrophysics student studying at the University of St Andrews. This is my channel where I talk about science (specifically physics and astronomy) and make videos on life at university. If you have any questions about uni life please do post them in the comments below!
~~ Timestamps ~~
Introduction: 00:00
What is LaTeX?: 03:14
Start of Tutorial: 06:10
Editors: 06:42
Getting Started: 08:39
Fonts: 21:00
Protected Symbols: 22:35
Sections: 25:30
Equations: 27:20
Referrring to Equations: 29:40
Greek Letters: 32:50
Figures: 34:20
Conclusion: 39:25
~~ What You Need for LaTeX ~~
~ Online Only: www.overleaf.com
~ Offline (Run on your Computer): We're going to need a list.
TeXLive (Lets you compile): tug.org/texlive/acquire-netin...
An Editor - Many are available. I currently use IntelliJ Idea Ultimate as mentioned in the edit above (UPDATED DECEMBER 2023)
~~ Playlists ~~
University Videos: • University Videos
Short Science Series: • Short Science
Astro Videos: • Astro Videos
Physics Videos: • Physics Videos
Vlogs: • Vlogs
~~Contact Me~~
Twitter: @thomas_rintoul
Email: [e-mail]
~~My Gear~~
Camera: Canon EOS 70D
Lens: Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 USM
Microphone: Rode SmartLav+
Lighting: Raleno Softbox & On-Camera Soft Light

[@alexgodeye3031]

If this man keeps at it, he's gonna be huge as a KZbinr.

[@leohimself910]

A note on version control: At some point I putting my latex docs into a git repo, and I haven't been looking back ever since. You're able to recover your document, easily work on multiple machines and always check your repo for some things you've had in the doc at some previeous point. Just put your temp files etc in a .gitinore or so

[@liamoshea4299]

One of the nicest features of overleaf, as far as i am concerned, is its tight integration to github. Get the best of all worlds.

[@Ladas552]

Damn, so scientist are just programers who try to disect the overly complicated code of nature because some dude really liked the if statements

[@josephdevine7875]

Been looking for a video like this for a while, cheers 👍

[@piacere_lore]

Just found this video as I'm writing my undergrad thesis in astronomy, thanks a lot! Suuuper useful!

[@kelvinmalunga2387]

A really useful tool to exist on the internet indeed. Loved everything about the video. Thanks

[@zacharypalmertree]

This was a very useful video! I have been trying to setup Latex with Vim in WSL 2 Ubuntu with no success. This approach seems much more straightforward. Thank you.

[@eshabaweja]

Finally! Someone who explains each line of code from the creation of the .tex file to the end. Thank you :")

[@aric2]

Hey Thomas, just started to learn latex. Thanks for this awesome video!

[@Marco-kd7jk]

Great breakdown. Subscribed.

[@PeterPrevos]

LyX is a great LaTeX editor that makes it much easier to use.

[@markanderson8066]

I had the Haliday and Resnick Physics text asxa student. And Resnick was our lecturer! Great demos!

[@ThomasRintoul]

It's amazing how much more engaging lectures can be if you've got someone who can do good demos!

[@cheeseplated]

Didn't see it anywhere so for anyone wondering: utf-8 is a way if representing the text internally. If you dont specify it it may default to ASCII (i think?, don't quote me on this) Which doesn't have characters such as ü, ç, ß, etc. so they wont show up correctly. utf-8 has all those characters so it will work, nowadays comuters will usually default to more modern representations, but older languageslike LaTeX sometimes still need utf-8 manually specified.

[@AriHoresh]

My team and I are working on some open-sourced biology and chemistry books, and this video made things SO much easier for us. You are awesome, keep it up!

[@ThomasRintoul]

I'm so glad! This sort of thing is exactly why I made this video. So happy it was useful for you!

[@FlaminTubbyToast]

I would say that learning code makes learning latex Easier. Compiling/packages/and documentation, are fundamental concepts in code and they all play out here.

[@haraldurkarlsson1147]

I would tend agree although there are some differences of course. But the basic idea of writing short code and then compiling to spot errors. That habit serves one well in pretty much any language.

[@ThomasRintoul]

Agreed. I had been exposed to quite a few coding languages (Python, R, Maple) before I first used LaTeX. I attended a workshop taught by one of the lecturers in the School of Physics in St Andrews and it was definitely taught with the knowledge we at least knew a little about coding. It helps!

[@ARMAN12456]

Hi, thank you for your video. I've started using Atom for latex documentation. As soon as I run something, the PDF is being opened in the system PDF reader as well as in the atom window. Can you please let me know how to refrain from the system PDF reader?

[@trevinbeattie4888]

When I discovered these tools (way back in the 1990’s) I started learning TeX with the help of Donald Knuth’s “The TeXbook” and practiced writing documents with that before starting LaTeX. Raw TeX is much more low-level and doesn’t provide the uniform document styles LaTeX has, but I’m a software developer and doing it this way helped me understand how LaTeX works under the hood. The main thing I like about TeX is it’s a very stable language and well documented, unlike proprietary document formats like MS Word which seems to change every version or so and doesn’t always play nicely with 3rd-party editors.

[@ThomasRintoul]

Oh I basically use LaTeX for just about everything these days. It's just so much better than fighting with Word

[@mrphysics2625]

Hey dude Thank you for making this video. for whatever f****ing reason my physics program didnt teach us anything about LaTeX in undergrad.

[@IznbranahlGoose]

A friend of mine swears by Mathematica when it comes to writing documents. While Mathermatica is known for equation solving and programming you can also create publishable documents with it. I've tried it and it has a 'decent' WISIWYG interface for writing that includes equations however I found it rather lacking in publication ready tools. If they're there at all they're poorly documented.

[@FinancialEngineering-cp5ef]

Latex is great, but I would always recommend one to use a linux OS with vim or nvim as it just allows for greater freedom than these online latex editors.

[@SimonTiger]

Sublime is bad, it's not free while Atom and VSCode are. Btw I have also seen people use VIM which is popular on Linux and it's a text editor where you navigate around with the keyboard instead of the mouse. I don't use it but it's worth mentioning

[@jgchicken2133]

Hi, I use Vim with vimtex plugin and they works great! Vim with the right plugin is no worse than VSCode imo.

[@SpudMackenzie]

Sublime is good. It was my favorite editor during my undergrad. It's nagware so I only actually bought the license after like 10 years of use. It hits a good balance of being lightweight where atom and vscode definitely aren't while being more full featured than say notepad++ and less arcane than vim or emacs.

[@bogdanskout3326]

@@jgchicken2133 Have you ever tried emacs? 😂😂

[@jgchicken2133]

@@bogdanskout3326 My professor use eMacs but I prefer Vim, its more familiar to me

[@your-mom-irl]

VSCode is not free (as in freedom) Although there's a libre version called codium or vscodium. I tried and it's pretty good if you are used to that kind of editor, it's pretty much the samr as vscode just eithout the MS branding and telemetry

[@SimonTiger]

Oh, is % for comments? Because you just plopped in "% some text" without explaining it not far into the video

[@Andrumen01]

Word has become quite good at equations, the looks. The numbering of equations in Word is always a problem, though.

[@kenopyowo]

also the best ide on the market by far

[@TAP7a]

The handling of bibliographies is also incredibly tiresome in Word. Not as tiresome as formatting and numbering equations, because you only have to sort the bibliography once properly, but hardly frictionless. And images (with captions) are still... yeah. Word has come a long way, but it's still not LaTeX.

[@pra.]

Did you continue using Atom after it’s depreciation?

[@ThomasRintoul]

I moved on from it to using JetBrains IDEs like Idea Ultimate and Pycharm with an educational license. Sad to see it getting archived though

[@petebryan04]

what is the switches on the keyboard?

[@ThomasRintoul]

They are Cherry MX Browns

[@yolamontalvan9502]

Látex is a technology of the 80’s. But I would like to learn it if it is free. Thanks for the info. I tried PDF and PostScript to make graphics, but they were hard to learn. PostScript was OK but PDF was even harder because it is not a programming language like PostScript.

[@matteopiccioni196]

Bro atom is deprecated it will disappear soon

[@ThomasRintoul]

I know. This video is a couple years old now. It was nice while it lasted. The rest of the video is still accurate though.

[@ricseeds4835]

I'm sorry but can anyone read what he's typing?

[@thorstenwidmer7275]

yes, that is easy

[@theultimatereductionist7592]

I did my 274-page doctoral dissertation for Rutgers University in 2000 and published 8 peer reviewed math papers from 2001 to 2012 all in MS Word + Mathtype. I began with Mathtype in 1997. I've heard of tex/latex since I entered graduate school at Rutgers in math in 1988. I have never figured out how to use them. Tried over a dozen times. That is how worthless and user-unfriendly and horrible tex/latex are.

[@Coolblueocean2001]

Too long of an intro. Cut it short, and waste less time.

[@konsamtambradhwaja3870]

It's a very useful video! Thank you for making this video.💯❤

[@haraldurkarlsson1147]

As a Mac user I use TeXShop. TeXMaker which runs on both Mac and PC is also good but I prefer TeXShop.