27 Tips & Tricks

This section covers some useful tips & tricks and extensions of the previously discussed functionalities of LaTeX.

27.1 Page Dimensions

The package geometry provides an interface to change global parameters of the document and adjust various page dimensions. This can be done by either loading the package using \usepackage{geometry} and then by using the command \geometry{options} in the preamble of the document, or more concisely by specifying the options when loading the package, by \usepackage[options]{geometry} – these are equivalent and can be used interchangeably, although the majority of LaTeX users seem to prefer the latter since it’s shorter. The options are comma-separated parameters that you may want to adjust, such as the paper size (a4paper, a3paper, legalpaper, etc.), textwidth and textheight (which are self-explanatory) or margin (which sets all the margins to a certain length).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[a4paper, margin = 2in]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[10-15]
\end{document}

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{a4paper, margin = 2in}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[10-15]
\end{document}

These two are equivalent.

The list of some basic parameters is shown in Table 27.1. Each of them can be set using different LaTeX length units such as cm or in. The total size of the page is divided into the text body and margins, which have separate parameters – this is shown in Figure adopted from the geometry package documentation, which discusses the intricacies of different parameters at length.

Table 27.1: Geometry Options

Parameter	Description
textwidth and textheight	Width/height of the body
width and height	By default, the same as textwidth and textheight. If includehead = true, includefoot = true or includemp = true, they include header, footer and margin sizes respectively.
top, bottom, left, right	Size of specific margins
margin	Size of all margins
headheight	Height of the header
footsep	Spacing between the top of the footnote and the bottom of the text
footskip	Distance between the bottom of the text and the bottom of the footnote \

You can also change page dimensions mid-document, using the \newgeometry{options} command in your document with the options listed above. Then, using \restoregeometry will restore the parameters of all pages set after \newpage or \clearpage to those set in the preamble. This is demonstrated in the example.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage[a4paper, textheight = 28cm, 
textwidth = 20cm]{geometry}


\begin{document}
    \lipsum[10-15]
    \newpage
    \newgeometry{textheight = 20cm, textwidth = 10cm}
    \lipsum[10-15]
    \newpage
    \restoregeometry
    \lipsum[10-15]

\end{document}

27.2 Styling

27.2.1 Page number

\pagenumbering{style} – determines numbering style from the page it’s used on. Note that whenever you use this command, the page numbering starts from the beginning. Styles that can be used include arabic, alph (lowercase letters), Alph (uppercase), roman (lowercase roman numerals), Roman (uppercase roman numerals).

27.2.2 Header and footer style

\pagestyle{style} sets the automatic styling of the header and the footer from the page it’s used on. The footer and header’s behaviour is also determined by the documentclass of the document. The default value of style is plain, which puts a plain page number in the footer of each page. Other possibilities include:

• empty – nothing in either the header or the footer
• headings – running headings of the current section and page number

A more useful alternative is offered by the fancyhdr package. It implements new pagestyle, fancy and allows you to control the left, right and central elements of the footer and header with simple commands in the document preamble. For example, \rhead{text} sets the right footer and \cfoot{text} sets the central footer. Their usage, along with some other useful styling tools, is shown in the example.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\title{\vspace{-10ex} Essay title}
\author{John Doe, John Smith and Stan Kowalski}
\date{}

\pagenumbering{roman} %lowercase roman numerals for page numbers
\renewcommand{\thesection}{\Roman{section}} %change section numerals to roman

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{} %reset defefault header and footer
\lhead{\nouppercase{\leftmark}} %section name in the upper header
\rhead{Doe et al.} %author name on the right side of the header
\rfoot{\thepage} %page number on the right side of the footer


\begin{document}
    \maketitle
    \section{Introduction}  
    \lipsum[1-3]
    \newpage
    \section{Body}  
    \lipsum[1-10]
    \newpage
    \section{Conclusion}
    \lipsum[1-5]
\end{document}

27.3 Shortcuts and Special Escapes

27.3.1 Shortcuts

Texstudio also comes with multiple keyboard shortcuts which make preparing documents in LaTeX slightly faster. Some of the most useful shortcuts are listed in Table 27.2. 

Table 27.2: Shortcuts in TeX Studio

Shortcut	Description
Ctrl/cmd + I	Italics, i.e. \textit
Ctrl/cmd + B	Bold, i.e. \textbf
Ctrl/cmd + Return	Newline \\
Ctrl/cmd + Shift + I	New \item in itemize environment
Ctrl/cmd + E	New empty environmnent

27.3.2 Special Escapes

Some of the characters such as “$”, “%”, “#” or “_” have a special meaning in LaTeX and by default are interpreted as elements of the syntax, rather than the text. You can override it by using the “escape” signs, which is the backslash “\”. So, for example, if you want to compile “15%”, you need to typeset “15\%” to escape the percentage character. To escape the backslash itself, use the tag \textbackslash.