Essential LaTeX: Just What's Needed

This is mainly for any of the people I have class with, but maybe it will help others too.

• Template:
  \documentclass{article}
\addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{-.875in}
\addtolength{\evensidemargin}{-.875in}
\addtolength{\textwidth}{1.75in}
\addtolength{\topmargin}{-.875in}
\addtolength{\textheight}{1.75in}
\begin{document}
.......
\end{document}

  With the exception of the \end line these need to be the first lines of your document. The \addtolength lines manipulate the document's margins (which, default, are massive) to be something more appealing (~1"), in my opinion.

• Beginning:
  By default latex indents so, in order to bring stuff as far left as possible we'll use \noindent and conversely \indent. Also, latex doesn't read the newlines in the .tex file, you must specify a 'return' with \\. So, an example header would look like:
  .......
\noindent
Stew Dent \\
\#123456789 \\
5/5/2010 \\
CS251-S10 \\
6.3: 1, 4, 5cd, 9ab, 12abcd \\
........

  Also, should it come to it, if you need to force a page break then you can use \newpage.

• Common Connectives:
  I'll only list out the common connectives we've used so far. Now, in order for these to be used they need to be surrounded on either end by dollar signs '$'. So, in order to get A ∨ B the corresponding latex code would look like: $ A \vee B $.

  LaTeX	Translation
  \vee \wedge \rightarrow \neg \not \equiv	∨ - Disjunction ∧ - Conjunction → - Implies ¬ - Not / - "Does not" (something like '\not =' would produce a '≠') ≡ - Equivalent

• Tables:
  This is a pretty substantial part to doing formal proofs. First, an example:
  ......
\begin{tabular}{ r@{. }l r }
\hline
\multicolumn{3}{|c|}{ $ \hspace{2.5cm} A \rightarrow \neg False \hspace{2.5cm} $ } \\
\hline
1 & $ A $ & [P] \\
2 & $ \indent\indent \neg \neg False $ & [P] \\
3 & $ \indent\indent False $ & [2, DN] \\
4 & $ \neg False $ & [2,3, IP] \\
* & QED & [1,4, CP] \\
\end{tabular}

  Notice: \hline creates a horizontal line and \multicolumn.... produces a section that spans multiple columns to create headers, etc. In the example the table is formatted much like a formal logic proof:

       A → ¬F
------------------
1. A          [P]
2.    ¬ ¬F    [P]
3. .............
*. QED        [1,4, CP]


• Finalizing:
  Alright, now that you've got your assignment.tex file we can 'compile' and convert it to something more standard, like a PDF file. I'm assuming you've got latex installed on your respective system so simply run latex assignment.tex in order to have the file converted into a DVI file, then run:
  $ dvipdf assignment.dvi assignment.pdf