Learning the basicsGetting started with LaTeXAn example

An example

Without worrying about the details, you can get a general idea of what LaTeX markup looks like from the following short LaTeX source file: 

\documentclass{article}
\setlength{\textwidth}{5cm}
% the above command makes a narrow
% page width for demonstration purposes
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\section{Getting started}
Learning the news of 
Napoleon's defeat at 
Borodino, Talleyrand is
supposed to have said:
\begin{quote}
\emph{Voil\`a le commencement de la fin.}
\end{quote}
In English, this means: 
``This is the beginning of the end.''
\end{document}

example The figure shows the printed output that LaTeX produces from this source file. Observe that the output looks much different from the input source file. A backslash signifies a LaTeX formatting command; the control sequences starting with backslashes do not appear in the output. None of the font changes or line breaks is declared explicitly in the source file.


logo The Math 696 course pages were last modified April 5, 2005.
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Learning the basicsGetting started with LaTeXAn example