LaTeX looks intimidating from the outside; in practice a working paper is a handful of patterns you reuse forever. This lesson builds a minimal document and names each part, so the rest of the track has vocabulary to stand on.

Step 1 — The skeleton

Every LaTeX document has the same three-part shape. Create a new LaTeX document in Writano and type:

\documentclass{article}
% preamble — packages and setup go here

\begin{document}
Hello, world.
\end{document}
  • \documentclass{article} picks the overall layout. article is the default for papers; classes like report and book add chapters.
  • Everything between \documentclass and \begin{document} is the preamble — setup only, no visible text.
  • Only what sits between \begin{document} and \end{document} is typeset.

Press Compile (⌘↵) — you have a PDF.

Step 2 — Title, author, sections

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\title{My First Paper}
\author{Your Name}
\maketitle

\section{Introduction}
LaTeX numbers the sections for you.

\section{Method}
Add a \subsection{Setup} inside a section for a second level.

\end{document}

\maketitle renders the title block from \title and \author; sections and subsections number themselves, and renumber themselves when you reorder — that is the point of the whole system.

Step 3 — Emphasis, lists, and comments

Text can be \textbf{bold} or \emph{emphasised}.

\begin{itemize}
  \item A bullet item
  \item Another one
\end{itemize}

\begin{enumerate}
  \item Numbered instead
\end{enumerate}

% anything after a percent sign is a comment and never typeset

The \begin{…}…\end{…} pair is called an environment — lists, figures, tables, and equations all use this shape, so once you can read one you can read them all.

Step 4 — Packages

Extra abilities come from packages loaded in the preamble with \usepackage. The ones you will meet first:

\usepackage{amsmath}   % better math (next lesson)
\usepackage{graphicx}  % include images
\usepackage{biblatex}  % bibliographies

Writano’s compiler ships a complete LaTeX distribution, so \usepackage just works — nothing to install.

Tip: In Writano you don’t have to start from a blank file — the visual editor writes this same LaTeX for you, and the Templates gallery has complete documents to take apart. Reading the source of a template is the fastest LaTeX lesson there is.