Basic LaTeXAug 28, 2013
LaTeX is a popular markup language for typesetting documents in the academic/research community. This is the template I use to quickly get started on a LaTeX document without trying to remember all the modules and headers I need to make it look right. There are also a few formatting "reminders" built in. Feel free to use, modify.
On some GNU/ Linux distributions (e.g., Ubuntu), you can drop this in your Templates folder and it will show up in the Right Click → Create new menu.
Template
\documentclass[11pt,letterpaper]{article}
%DOCUMENT INFORMATION
\title{Document Title}
\author{First Author Name \and Second Author Name}
\date{\today}
%PACKAGES
\usepackage{graphicx} % for images
\usepackage{fullpage} % 1" margins
\usepackage[breaklinks=true,colorlinks=true,linkcolor=black,urlcolor=blue]{hyperref} % for clickable links
\usepackage{amsmath} % for equations
\usepackage{embedfile} % for attaching the .tex file to the PDF
\embedfile{\jobname.tex} % embed the source
%NOTES
% To generate the table of contents, compile the document TWICE
% without deleting the temporary .aux files
% DOCUMENT
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\tableofcontents % Compile TWICE without deleting .aux file!
\section{Section Name}
Paragraph text. Link to \url{http://www.cornell.edu} using \verb+\url+.
\subsection{Subsection Name}
Paragraph text. Link to \href{http://www.cornell.edu}{www.cornell.edu} using \verb+\href+.
\subsubsection{SubSubSection Name}
Paragraph text with footnote\footnote{This is is a footnote.}.
\paragraph{Paragraph Name}
Paragraph text.
\section{Including Images and Text}
\subsection{Images}
Since we want to keep this to one file, we'll wrap the command to include
an external image in a code (``verbatim") environment. To actually include
the image, get rid of the \verb+begin{verbatim}+ and \verb+end{verbatim}+.
Make sure the images are in the same folder as the .tex file, or specify a
path.
\begin{verbatim}
\begin{figure}[t]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=.5\textwidth]{filename.jpg}
\caption{This is a caption.}
\label{imagelabel}
\end{figure}
\end{verbatim}
\subsection{Other LaTeX files}
You can break up the document into multiple files and combine the documents
with \verb+\input{filename.tex}+. This is useful if multiple people are
contributing to a paper and are each in charge of a section.
\section{Further Reference}
\url{http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/}
\end{document}