To help readers know what to expect, keep track of what’s happening
To help writers organize their ideas, express them clearly
“Formal” vs “Rigorous”
Rigor = sound logic
Formal = following conventional forms of reasoning, expression
Writing tools: I recommend LaTeX or Word
LaTeX as a tool for writing math
Basic concepts
Authors say what things are (e.g., titles), not how they look (e.g., 14
point bold Times New Roman)
Document = Preamble (definitions) +
Body (content)
Structure of document described as possibly nested
environments for paragraph-like things
(e.g., tables, lists, displayed equations, theorems, etc.)
Delimited by begin and end commands
Except for paragraphs themselves, which are plain text separated by
blank lines
Other commands describe word-level structure
Lots of more (or less) WYSIWYG tools for LaTeX
Demo: a very simple LaTeX document that nonetheless
produces text
Copious online tutorials on LaTeX, e.g., search “latex tutorial”
I like “The
Not-So-Short Introduction to LaTeX2e” at http://mirror.jmu.edu/pub/CTAN/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
although it’s a combination of introduction and reference