Latex

LaTeX is a document writing system that is fantastic for writing scientific documents. Students, however, often get nervous or scared by it since it looks a little like programming, and they would rather stick with Word or similar word processors. Yes, LaTeX is like writing html code. But the dividends for learning and using LaTeX are very much make it worth it. Honestly, if you learn just a few methods, like adding references, figures, and tables, you will know 90% of what you need to know.

Word is fine for short documents, but can be a real pain for larger scientific documents, like a journal article, thesis, or dissertation. A few problems with Word:

• Word gets slow for large documents or with large images.
• Word does not handle sharing images between different programs very well.
• Getting the formatting of a Word document right can be time-consuming and a hassle.
• Endnote is a decent reference manager, but can slow down Word, especially for a large number of references.
• Endnote can be buggy.
• Sorting/cleaning references from collaborators with Endnote can be a real hassle.
• Adding equations to a Word document can be time-consuming and a hassle.
• Collaborations with Word can be a hassle. Email someone a file, wait for their updates, revise, send another file, back and forth, etc.

I once had a large Word document where one of the Endnote references became corrupted. Endnote wouldn't compile the bibliography. I couldn't figure out which reference was bad so I had to manually delete references and try to compile the bibliography until I found the bad reference. Uggh! I recall in grad school one student had several hundred references in a word document and the story was that it would take an hour to compile the bibliography every time he wanted to see his updated bibliography. Uggh!

In contrast, LaTeX has many great features:

• LaTeX files are plain text files, meaning they can be edited by any text editor (vim, emacs, notepad, Notepad++, etc.)
• Since LaTeX files are plain text, reading and editing them is fast, even for large documents.
• Image files are kept separate from the text document, so updating figures is easy (no need to copy/paste into a document, just change the image file).
• If there is a problem with your document (e.g. bad reference) you will get an error message telling you where the problem is.
• Adding equations is easy once you learn the format.
• Collaborations are easy with Overleaf, which is like Google Docs for technical documents. Real-time editing with multiple authors!
• There are many different LaTeX editors (not just one like Word) so you can pick whichever one you like best.

The two main reasons I love LaTeX are that it is fast and easy to collaborate with others (using Overleaf). This makes writing scientific documents much faster compared to Word. If you are going to spend months, possibly years, writing a document, why not speed it along?

I'll add that many people argue that LaTeX makes more beautiful documents than Word. This may be true, but less of a concern to me since many times documents (like journal articles) will be reformatted upon being published.

Bottom line - learn LaTex! Don't be afraid of the learning curve since it will help your work a lot. Start today by creating a document in Overleaf!