Computation for Linguists

LaTeX, Day 1 — Structure, Sections, Labels, TOC

Dr. Andrew M. Byrd

2025-08-27

Review Quiz

  • What did we talk about in Monday’s class?

What’s LaTeX?

A latex glove.

LaTeX

[ˈle͡ɪ.tʰɛk̚] (most common); also [ˈlɑ.tʰɛk̚], [lɑ.ˈtʰɛk̚], [lɑ.ˈtʰɛx]

but NOT

LaTeX

  • = a markup language:

    • adds special instructions to text to let a computer know how to display, structure or describe it

      • “make this a heading”

      • “make this italicized”

      • “put this into a list”

  • In a couple weeks we’ll be working with a second markup language, HTML.

LaTeX

  • Completely free to use!

  • Originally designed for mathematicians and computer scientists, but linguists have long recognized its usefulness.

  • Great for:

    • Funny scripts – IPA, non-Roman alphabets, etc.

    • Difficult to construct charts and illustrations, esp. syntactic trees

    • Knowing precisely where your texts and images will go

Typesetting Linguistics using LaTeX

crazy syntax tree

Typesetting Linguistics using LaTeX

    æ̃nd͡ʒɹu bɹ̩d

Typesetting Linguistics using LaTeX

syllable tree

Getting set up with LaTeX

  • Visit https://www.overleaf.com/

  • Create an account

  • Press the button “New Project”

  • Select “Example project”

  • Call the document “example_project”

The Basics of LaTeX

All documents need to be assigned a class. You also must “begin” and “end” that document.

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} 

\begin{document}

BLAH BLAH BLAH

\end{document}
  • Google “LaTeX classes”. How many are there? What is the documentclass you would use for a presentation?

How LaTeX works

Everything before “\begin{document}” is called the preamble. This is where we declare the document class, load packages, and input information like the title and author.

\documentclass{article}

% Language setting
% Replace `english' with e.g. `spanish' to change the document language
\usepackage[english]{babel}

% Set page size and margins
% Replace `letterpaper' with `a4paper' for UK/EU standard size
\usepackage[letterpaper,top=2cm,bottom=2cm,left=3cm,right=3cm,marginparwidth=1.75cm]{geometry}

% Useful packages
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true, allcolors=blue]{hyperref}

\title{Your Paper}
\author{You}

How LaTeX works

Notice the text preceded by “%”. These are called comments. What do you think they do?

\documentclass{article}

% Language setting
% Replace `english' with e.g. `spanish' to change the document language
\usepackage[english]{babel}

% Set page size and margins
% Replace `letterpaper' with `a4paper' for UK/EU standard size
\usepackage[letterpaper,top=2cm,bottom=2cm,left=3cm,right=3cm,marginparwidth=1.75cm]{geometry}

% Useful packages
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage[colorlinks=true, allcolors=blue]{hyperref}

\title{Your Paper}
\author{You}

Activity

  • Return to “Home” in Overleaf.

  • Create a new project, called “301-LaTeX-practice”

  • Now edit the file main.tex.

    • \documentclass{article} ← sets document type
    • \author{your name}; \date{\today}
    • Make sure \begin{document} and \end{document} are in your file. Immediately after \begin{document}, add \maketitle.
    • Add Hello world! between those sections
    • Press “Recompile”. What happens?

Activity, Part 2

  • Within main.tex, edit the document as follows:

    • First, change \documentclass{article} to \documentclass{article. and then “Recompile”. What happens?

    • Change \date{\today} to \date{today} and then “Recompile”. What happens?

    • Get rid of \end{document} and then “Recompile”. What happens?

    • Change Hello world! to Hello world? What happens?

Commands

Things that begin with a “\” are called commands.

  • These can have no argument (they’re avalent, if you will), like “\today”.

  • Many require arguments (like intransitives, transitives, etc.), like:

    \documentclass{}, \author{}, and \date{}
    • One of the most common reason for code to break in LaTeX is if a bracket isn’t closed, so always be on the lookout for that!

Commands

  • Some commands even allow for optional arguments (options), which are place immediately before the command inside square brackets:

    \documentclass[option1,option2]{article}

  • Visit this site to see what types of options documentclasses can have. Modify your main.tex with these options to experiment.

    • Which do you think you’ll use most often?

Environments

Environments, like “document”, have a \begin and an \end.

\begin{environment}
stuff inside the environment
\end{environment}

What’s wrong with this code?

  • Create a new .tex file in your project, called “working_code”. Copy and paste your working document’s code into this file.

  • Now copy and paste this code into your main.tex doc and select “recompile”. What happens? How should you fix it?

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article} 
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} 
\begin{document (Type your content here.) 
\end{document}
  • When you’re finished, copy and paste your code from “working_code.tex” into main_tex. Press “save” / “recompile”.

Additional Features

Now return to to your “example_project”. There are lots of features in this document. Scan the code, and identify how to do the following:

  1. Title

  2. Abstract

  3. Links (url, labels)

  4. Graphics (figures)

  5. Sections & Subsections

Identify their type: commands or environments?

Labels & URLs

\section{Methods}
\subsection{Stage 1}
\label{sec1}
Text here.

\section{Results}
Referring to section~\ref{sec1}
on page~\pageref{sec1}.

I found this by using \href{https://google.com}{Google}.

Graphics

To include an image, use a figure environment.

  • Visit this site to see what types of options figures can have.

  • Download “atom.png” from here.

  • Place “atom.png” in your “301-LaTeX-practice” project folder.

  • Modify your main.tex to include “atom.png” as a figure. Add a caption and resize it.

Sections & Subsections

To create a subsection of a section, you add “sub” to the name of that section: section –> subsection; subsection –> subsubsection. How many sections deep can we go?

\section{Introduction} This is the introduction.   
\section{Methods}  
\subsection{Stage 1} First part of the methods.   
\subsection{Stage 2} Second part of the methods.

Table of contents

With sections, you can create a table of contents. Place this command right after \maketitle.

\maketitle 
\tableofcontents

Final Activity

Modify “main.tex” in “301-LaTeX-practice” to have the following:

  1. A title, abstract.
  2. Sections, subsections, and a table of contents.
  3. A link to an outside website within a url.
  4. An internal label to refer to another part of your document.