LaTeX is a powerful editing tool for preparing documents in the sciences, computing, and engineering. You can use it to create a variety of document types, from short letters to entire books. But to make sure your work turns out as intended, you’ll need to understand LaTeX document classes.
All LaTeX documents must include the documentclass markup tag. This controls the overall layout of the document, with different classes offering different default settings.
The documentclass markup always appears at the beginning of the document and allows you to pick the overall document type. For instance, we could set a document up as follows:
This would produce a document formatted as an article (essentially, this covers any short document without chapter breaks). We will run through some common document classes below.
There are actually dozens of LaTeX document classes from which to choose. But most of these are specific to particular journals or universities, so you won’t need to use them.
However, it is useful to know some widely used classes. These include:
Document Class
Standard Usage
article
beamer
book
IEEEtran
letter
memoir
proc
report
slides
Most of these classes also offer a range of options so you can change the general layout and font size. However, if you pick the right class for your document, the default settings will usually suffice.
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