Your first document

Your first LaTeX document

• LaTeX lets you make beautiful documents — reports, books, and especially maths.
• You write plain text with commands, and the computer turns it into a polished PDF.
• Your LaTeX is compiled on our server — press Run and the PDF appears next to your code.

The shape of every document

• Every document has two parts — a preamble and a body:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, world!
\end{document}

• \documentclass{article} is the preamble: it sets the kind of document.
• Everything between \begin{document} and \end{document} is the body — the part that actually appears in the PDF.

Now you try

• Below is a document skeleton. Add a greeting in the body.
• Press Run to compile it and see the PDF, then Check when you think it is right.

Common mistakes

• Text before \begin{document}. Only settings go in the preamble. LaTeX stops with ! LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}.

• A bare & or % in your text. & gives ! Misplaced alignment tab character &.; % gives no error but hides the rest of the line, because it starts a comment. Write \& and \%.

• Reading the last error first. One mistake can cause many messages. Fix the first line that starts with !, then run again.

• Check looks for the requested source constructs. Run compiles the document and previews it; use Run to catch TeX errors and inspect the result.