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.