LaTeX in 10 minutes | Absolute beginners guide | STEM Skills with Dr. Sally

Are you an absolute beginner but need to learn LaTeX FAST? In only ten minutes, we'll create a template in Overleaf that you can re-use forever, containing all the things you really need to know as a STEM student. Achieving success with LaTeX is easier than you think, and well worth the time investment!
In this video, we'll learn how LaTeX files work together, and how to create & structure documents. Then we'll start playing with some of the important packages every scientist needs in their pocket!
MY WEBSITE
Don't panic if you can't keep up with the video, you can find the final code on my website. I have also written a bunch of free guides aimed at student scientists:
soswriting.co.uk/latex-for-sc...
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Introduction
0:25 Overleaf overview
1:06 Unlockable account bonuses (Overleaf)
3:23 Detour #1: LaTeX file overview
4:21 File handling in Overleaf
4:53 Detour #2: main.tex structure
5:59 Line-by-line breakdown (starting w/ document class)
6:44 Encoding packages
7:17 Creating a title
8:08 Placeholder text using Lipsum
9:00 Creating and using additional files
10:41 Margin control with Geometry
11:55 Table of contents with clickable/colour links
OVERLEAF LINKS
overleaf.com
overleaf.com/for/universities
overleaf.com/user/bonus
CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network) LINKS
ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
ctan.org/pkg/geometry
ctan.org/pkg/hyperref
CREDITS
* All still images and videos are used under license and were obtained from pexels:
www.pexels.com/
* Audio recording and cleanup was done in Audacity:
www.audacityteam.org/
* Screen capture was done using OBS Studio:
obsproject.com/
* Video production was done using Canva...:
www.canva.com/join/wkp-vqw-xfp (using this referral link to sign up to Canva will get you a free premium thingy)
* ...and kdenlive:
kdenlive.org/en/
#LaTeXTutorials #STEMskills #PhDMadeEasy

[@soswriting]

What do you think is the most intimidating thing about learning LaTeX? :O

[@j.adrianriosa.4163]

For me, to put things together in a proper way. Like, one can put together a kludge that looks ok in the pdf, but is a total mess in the source code.

[@soswriting]

@@j.adrianriosa.4163 That's a great point! That's why I use \include{} so much, it's like the LaTeX equivalent of tidying your room by stuffing all the mess under your bed. If you can't see it, it doesn't exist right? :D

[@Simpsonsfanable]

I just read and helped formatting my girlfriends Bachelor thesis in Word. It was horrible. Now I’m watching this video to reminisce on those sweet past memories of writing my Master thesis in LaTeX. So beautiful

[@soswriting]

Ooof, I don't envy you having to do that 😂 I hope you managed to get it done though!

[@j.adrianriosa.4163]

That was beautifully clear!

[@soswriting]

Thank you for saying so! And thanks for watching :D

[@s.h.i2553]

Exciting!!!👍👍

[@soswriting]

Thanks for watching :D

[@FiruNazgulio]

Great video. I avoided learning LaTeX during my bachelor's in physics because I was sure I was gonna end up getting a job at some private sector business. Now I have said job and it turns out they want to use LaTeX for project documentation lol. Btw I had no issues with reading the text on the screen.

[@soswriting]

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you managed to get the job you were looking for! You can probably get around not knowing LaTeX in the short term if you use Sphinx + Markdown (pandoc will allow you to convert md to LaTeX), but if you can invest the time to learn LaTeX it will allow you get a lot more out of Sphinx in the longer term. At least they're not making you use any expensive proprietary software!

[@apaksoy]

Great video and a start. Wish it were available in 1080p resolution. A bit difficult to read the writings in the video with 720p even in full screen. Letters still readable but look slightly fuzzy. (13" 2019 MacBook Pro).

[@soswriting]

Thanks for the feedback, that's really helpful for me to know. I'll see what I can do about it, I might have to re-render and upload it again. Since this video, I've been trying a couple of different ways of making the writing more visible because I thought the text was a bit small. I'm now using a combination of capturing only the part of the screen I'm typing in (Overleaf), and using Canva to create the text deliberately so I can more easily highlight the bits I want to. It takes a lot longer to produce videos that way than how I made this first one but I think it's visually clearer. I'd be curious to know if you find it helps or not :)

[@Vicarra]

Nice one 🙂 i like the fact that it's short, i find it really hard to pay attention in long classes

[@soswriting]

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! :D I used to find that was the case for most of my students. I'm going to try and keep future videos shorter than this one

[@CaptZenPetabyte]

Its a shame my university (at Masters level) doesnt accept PDFs and still requires DOCx, and Pandoc *still* cant output a decent Word file for the tutors to use or for assessment submission, otherwise I *would* have been using LaTeX even in my under grad

[@rysan3262]

I really loved the video and the way you explain it. Its the first time I hear about LaTeX and I'm considering to use it for my academic stuff. Hoping to see a tutorial of how to customize the commands output; like in "\tableofcontents", that I want another name for the table in the pdf

[@soswriting]

The beauty of LaTeX is that literally everything can be customised. The problem is that there are multiple ways to do most of this customisation lol. But, for changing the name of the table of contents, you can use the command enewcommand{\contentsname}{I want to call my TOC something else}. Renewcommand is a very versatile command that will allow you to apply new rules to the formatting of the whole document. \contentsname tells the compiler to change the name of the table of contents, and in the second squiggly bracket, you put whatever you want to replace "Table of contents" with. If it's because you're writing the document in a language other than English though, you might want to look into the "babel" package which, if I remember right, will automatically translate a lot of the output into whatever language you set (which is more useful if you want to change more than just the TOC display name). I hope this helps! Thanks for watching :D

[@rysan3262]

Thanks a lot! It sure helps :) And, yeah, I'm writing in another language xD

[@soswriting]

@@rysan3262 This is where you can find the documentation about Babel www.ctan.org/pkg/babel But if you get stuck or run out of time then the first option I mentioned will also work :) good luck!

[@marujadelpopolo]

My supervisors don't use LaTeX and that is a big issue! I want to use LaTeX, but they need to use it as well

[@soswriting]

Yeah it's a big problem! The best thing to do is to sit them down and show them how Overleaf works, so they can at least collaborate on the same documents as you (without them providing their comments in word and making you convert them all the time!)

[@theGerry000]

Hotpink is not an option 😞I'm sure management will be glad thanks for these.

[@soswriting]

Ah, but it is! They just call it "magenta" for some reason

[@theGerry000]

@@soswriting oooo Thank you 🙂

[@soswriting]

No problem! And if you want even more colour options, you can always use the xcolor package (www.ctan.org/pkg/xcolor) which will let you mix your own custom colours, or use even more presets (via the optional arguments dvipsnames, svgnames, or x11names). The documentation is very good, but if you get stuck let me know :)

[@tawstah1417]

6:28