882k views

### “Correct” way to bold/italicize text?

Is either of these considered better/more readable/more "proper"/more conventional than the other for making text bold? If so, what is the reason? I like my text \textbf{bold} versus: I like my ...
20k views

### What are the most common mistakes that beginners of (La)TeX and Friends make?

I want to collect the most common mistakes, misconceptions, pitfalls, etc that (La)TeX and Friends users make. Please one answer for each mistake, misconception, pitfall, etc. I am only interested in ...
21k views

### Why is LaTeX so complicated? [closed]

I have been using LaTeX professionally almost every day for almost 10 years, so I think I can say that, by now, I more or less know what I'm doing. I also do a lot of ordinary computer programming, in ...
9k views

### Why can't the end code of an environment contain an argument?

Environments are allowed to have arguments, but reference to those arguments can only appear in the opening code of the environment, and not the closing code. What is the reason for this, and are ...
29k views

### How do I repeat a theorem number?

Often in my papers I want to mention theorems in the introduction that are introduced in more detail and proved in a later section. I'd like to include the statement of these theorems twice over, ...
34k views

### “Too many math alphabets” error

I just got the error Too many math alphabets used in version normal. on a document I'm editing. What can I do to fix this, other than stop using an alphabet? All I've found online is instructions ...
63k views

### How to construct a coloured box with rounded corners

Here is the specs of the box. Color of the bar rule should be: \definecolor{mycolor}{rgb}{0.122, 0.435, 0.698} Radius of the 4 corners of the box: 4pt Thick line = 0.5pt Text should be 6pt ...
35k views

### Changing style of Proof

I'm using the \begin{proof} of the amsthm package. And I want to change the style of the Proof word that is added in the beginning. By default it is italic, I want to make it bold. How can I do it?
5k views

### What do \@firstoftwo and \@secondoftwo do?

The LaTeX kernel uses these two all over the place. For example, apparently the correct way of defining something like \ifeq{\macro 1}{\macro 2}{true}{false} is (note Martin's response: each case ...
4k views

### Use Markdown-style formatting for bold and italic

I rather like the system here where *...* is italic, **...** is bold, and ***...*** is bold italic. Is it possible to do that in (La)TeX? A MWE that implements the first one: \documentclass{article} ...
1k views

### Is there any reason not to use \let to redefine a deprecated control sequence to the currently recommended one?

I understand that \bf and \it are both deprecated in the current version of LaTeX. To the best of my knowledge, the correct control sequences replacing them are \bfseries and \itshape. Is there any ...
36k views

### How to align text to the right in math mode?

I have a table of formulas, some have a description next to them, I want the equations to appear left flush and the text between parentheses right flush. I was writing it in the following way. \...
2k views

### Why are these commands considered as bad practice?

I was reading LaTeX: Do not use these commands, but the author didn't explain why they are bad. Could anyone help me understand. \\ (except inside a special environment like tabular, array, or ...