Before LaTeX
When most students and authors think about writing their notes, papers, or reports, the first typing environment that comes to mind is probably Word. Lately, many collaborative projects involve working on a Google Doc. I myself was a big fan of both and relied on them since middle school. I had heard about one friend of mine using LaTeX in high school, but the language eluded me. You had to be a coder to know how to use it? That was the scary part. In 11th grade, I even tried to download it onto my Mac, but once the blank page popped onto my screen I was terrified! How do I use this? There were not as many resources and tutorials for using it as there are now, so I was pretty much lost. I gave up within a day.
The Change
Fast-forward to 2020 and the entire software landscape has exploded. So has my love for LaTeX! I decided to revisit the recondite language over winter-break before my last undergraduate semester. Months before I had commenced a machine learning project, and with most of the coding complete, I was ready to write up my findings in an initial manuscript. With an eye for design, I wanted my work to look authentic. How could I convey what I was saying in a way that was clear, professional, and –dare I say it– fancy! The first thing that came to mind were some instructions from a journal my peer and I were submitting to. I remembered reading the instructions to the authors, and the editors had provided two options for manuscript formatting: a Word document template or LaTeX. For that prior submission we had used Word, so for this new one I aimed to try the alternative. That implied having to revisit the LaTeX monolith. This time was different, though. This time I had prior programming experience. This time there were hundreds of discussions on StackOverflow and many YouTube tutorials to act as my training wheels.
Before downloading LaTeX again, I tried to be a bit more careful. What environment would I use this time? I googled “Best LaTeX Environments” and by far the one popped up the most was Overleaf. Overleaf is unique in that it provides thousands of pre-made LaTeX templates for users to modify and edit. Beyond that, it stores the tex code in the cloud, allowing for collaboration with other authors and backup of precious files.
This one site motivated me to write not only that one manuscript as a .tex file, but also all of my class notes as well. It has a relatively shallow learning curve for beginners, and the example sites are helpful in terms of getting started. The documentation on Overleaf’s website is extensively detailed and honestly is still answering most of my questions to date. If the answer isn’t on the documentation, then searching your questions on StackOverflow is a great alternative.
Within a couple of days, my class notes evolved from amateurish to expert. Below is a snapshot from one of my biochemistry classes.
Drawbacks and Opportunities for Growth
While I admit LaTeX has elevated the way I write, it does have some major pitfalls. The most important one: Most of the world does not use it. It’s difficult to essentially talk to someone else if they aren’t familiar with your language. I will not be throwing out Word or Google Docs any time soon because of this very fact. I concede it’s difficult to get people from my and older generations to use this tool, but it’s not too late to educate the future. Teachers should be familiar with the language and give tutorials to their students on how to utilize the language.
Beyond a language barrier, most LaTeX software does not have real-time collaboration functionality. Overleaf does, but it’s only available through a paid subscription. I hope other environments can learn to make a transition to freeware.
Finally, perhaps most of the world is afraid to use it, because just like my 17 year-old self, they are terrified by code. Coding, specifically LaTeX, is not hard, but because pop-culture has juxtaposed it with nerdish characters, it has an infamous reputation. This is a mind-set that must change in our 21st century culture. Once we as a society make this change together we can all revolutionize the way we write.