Queens College Mathematical Society

Typesetting Mathematics

Typing up a Mathematics paper generally means using LaTeX2_ε, a logical markup language for the TeX engine that produces high quality, well structured, aesthetically pleasing documents. LaTeX is the academic standard for papers in Mathematics and Physics, and learning to use it efficiently and comfortably is a useful skill for any undergrad to develop.

Before you get started, you need to get the TeX engine and hopefully some kind of frontend on your computer. The TeX engine and almost every frontend program that works with it is free. Depending on your operating system, you may have a lot of different choices about exactly what to install.

LyX is a cross-platform document processor with a friendly GUI and a helpful installation process that will link you to all the pieces you need as you go. It's a good place to start, and plenty functional for more advanced users.

Windows users may prefer the proTeXt build. The installation guide there will get you quickly up and running with the Texnixcenter frontend.

MacTeX is a solid LaTeX build for the Macintosh OS. The installation guide on tug.org should make it easy to get up and running.

Most Linux distributions come with some kind of LaTeX build already available, usually TeXLive or Kile. These are both plenty functional as well.

Of course, you can always forego any frontend and just use a plain old text editor and then run your input files through the TeX engine, but there's really no reason to make things so difficult on yourself.

Now that you've got LaTeX and TeX all set up on your computer and you're ready to start typing up papers, what do you do?

There are a variety of online guides available to help familiarize you with the LaTeX markup language. The Not So Short Introduction is a fairly comprehensive introduction and also works as a useful reference after you're comfortable with writing documents in LaTeX. There is also a helpful online guide at The Art of Problem Solving but it is no longer maintained or updated.

It is strongly recommended that you use the AMSMath package if you're going to be typesetting mathematics in LaTeX. The previously mentioned guides will explain installing and activating packages, and the user guide for the amsmath package is available online, and very useful for certain mathematics symbols. Algebraists frequently having to typeset commutative diagrams may also find this guide by J.S. Milne useful.

You might also want to check out our working copy of a "tutorial" .tex file. It's a heavily commented .tex source file which should guide you through some of the bare basics of writing in LaTeX. Hopefully other such files will be forthcoming and this one will fill out as well. You can find it by clicking here.

And that's about it. You're all set to type up your papers, and submit them to our (hopefully) growing archive of student papers.