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L^ATEXis a document preparation system that can do almost anything. I will present just the bare minimum. For more information and better explanations consult the manual.

A document must begin with

  \begin{document}

and ends with

 \end{document}

Before the

 \begin{document}

line you may include a number of lines to set up new commands, change the margins, etc. This section is called the preamble. (I will provide all of this in the template file.)

To get text nicely printed out in paragraphs you just type it in. A blank line after a block of text causes a new paragraph to be started. You may force a line break with a

 \\

at the end of a line.

If you want to do much else you will need to use commands that begin with a backslash

  \

This generally signals a L^ATEX keyword. It may also be used in front of most characters that have L^ATEX special meaning to display that character.

Two simple examples are how to center and emphasize italicize text. To center a line of text use the center environment:

\begin{center}
Line of Text 1\\
Line of Text 2\\
\end{center}

This will produce:

Line of Text 1
Line of Text 2

L^ATEXhas a large number of environments to achieve various effects. We will see several more

To emphasize text use and

 \em

For example,

 {\em Emphasis}

produces: Emphasis

A useful fact is that a backslash followed by a space forces a space.