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What is LaTeX and why do

linguists love it?
Ive been posting recently about how I use LaTeX for drawing
syntax trees and typing IPA symbols, but I realize that not
everyone is familiar with it. Ive only been using LaTeX for all

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tic
All the linguistic
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FAQ
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What is LaTeX?
LaTeX, pronounced /ltk/ or /letk/, not /letks/, is a
totally free method of typesetting that produces advanced,
customizable, and very nice-looking documents. You format
your document in LaTeXs markup syntax (like writing in
HTML, Markdown, or wiki syntax) and then you use a
compiler to output a pdf (like you would output a webpage
using HTML etc).

About

#long reads

everyone is familiar with it. Ive only been using LaTeX for all
my linguistics stuff for a year and a half, but I was a huge fan
within weeks and I wish Id started earlier. Im still learning
as I go, but here are some things about LaTeX, getting
started, and why/how linguists use it.

This means that you need to use commands (which begin

with a backslash: \) instead of buttons/menus like a word
processor, but it also means that you can do lots more cool
things and people can write extra packages and share them
for even more advanced functions.
How to use LaTeX

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Probably the easiest way to see what LaTeX looks like is by

looking at a demo document from a free online LaTeX editor
like writelatex.com (Try it! It wont bite!). If you plan to
actually use LaTeX a lot, you probably want to download a
free program bundle (MacTeX for Mac or MikTeX for
Windows) instead. You can also read more complete guides
to LaTeX made by other people, but I think its better to try
things first than to try to read a whole guide.

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Ive made a sample document with a few demos of things

that linguists do in LaTeX, which you can download here as
.tex (input) and here as .pdf (output). (Test things out for
yourself by deleting the demo writelatex source file and copypasting my tex file in there instead).
Why do linguists use LaTeX?
You may have noticed that its easier to take notes about
linguistics by hand than it is on a computer, because there
are so many symbols and diagrams that are used in linguistics
that are really difficult to make in a word processor.
But because LaTeX is free, open-source, and highly

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But because LaTeX is free, open-source, and highly

customizable, many wonderful people have written packages
for anyone to use that let you type linguistics symbols (IPA
and semantics), draw trees, and make automatically
formatted and numbered example sentences.(See a sample
document here.)

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LaTeX is also popular among academics in general,

particularly scientists, because its very good at displaying
mathematical symbols and many academic journals use it for
typesetting. You may spend a fair bit of time googling your
problems at first (there are lots of resources to google for!),
but you will probably spend less time in the long run fiddling
with multiple programs and dragging things over by 1 pixel.

Elsewhere

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If youre just starting out in linguistics and doing problem

sets, you probably dont want to bother with LaTeX, but if
youre writing papers or a thesis, particularly something that
has several drafts, then it might be something to consider.
(Note: Im not going to volunteer to answer LaTeX techsupport questions here, since there really are a ton of
resources out there and everything I learned I discovered
from googling, so you can too. Theres also a great LaTeX

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from googling, so you can too. Theres also a great LaTeX

forum at StackExchange where you can post questions.
Google is pretty good at knowing that youre interested in the
typesetting program, but unfortunately tumblr tags arent
case-sensitive soyoull probably have better luck
elsewhere.)

Tags: #linguistics
#long reads

#LaTeX

#IPA

#syntax trees

#Resources

#typing linguistics

1 year ago 101 notes

COMMENTS

2 Comments

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kljunar

2 years ago

Thanks for recommending this post, it was rather helpful. I like your comment about tu
1
Stife

Reply Share

8 months ago

This was a lifesaver. I've used LaTex for math papers but trying to switch to linguistic w
head until I came across this article. Thank you.

Reply Share

ALSO ON ALL THINGS LINGUISTIC

WHAT ABOUT SIGNED MAGIC

Linguistics in Cabin Pres

3 comments 4 months ago

3 comments

allthingslinguistic Very cool! Thanks for telling me

Emmapic

about it, I'll have to check

same

allthingslinguistic: linguisticsyall: Why You...

How to explain linguistics

1 comment 4 months ago

1 comment

laMudri Tom Scott's solo career looks promising! He

Stan_Dubinsky

still does Computerphile,

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This is from a while ago, but I really cant stress how much
easier LaTeX is in the long run. You will save hours...
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