A COMPLETE STEP BY STEP GUIDE TO LEARN LATEX
Getting Started with LaTeX
Learn LaTeX from basic to advance level
This is part 2 of the article series on getting started with LaTeX and explains how to create tables and lists in LaTex.
Part 1 of this article series covers basic software installation and how to compose a simple document in LaTeX.
Create Tables
In LaTeX, we can use table, tabular, or a combination of both environments to create tables. The tableenvironment provides additional functionality such as positioning, caption, label, and reference for the table. Whereas, the actual contents go inside the tabular environment.
We will start creating the very simplest table and then gradually develop it according to our choice. A simple table can be created using the tabular environment which is the default method to create tables in LaTeX. The following block of code creates a very simple table with three columns and text-centered.
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{c c c}
aa & bb & cc \\
11 & 22 & 33
\end{tabular}
\end{center}The { c c c } specifies the number of columns and position of text inside the columns. We can also use l and rto align the text to left and right, respectively. The & is used to mark the column and \\ is used to insert a new row.
Let’s add some styles to our table to keep the information organized. We will add vertical lines to the columns to separate them from each other by using { |c|c|c| }. Also, we will add a horizontal line at the top and bottom of the table with the use of \hline.
The code at this point will look like this:
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
\hline
aa & bb & cc \\
\hline
11 & 22 & 33 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}Positioning, Caption, Label, and Reference the Table
To add additional features like positioning, caption, label, and reference to the table, we will be using tableenvironment that acts as a wrapper for the tabular environment.
For positioning the table, we need to put the table inside table float environment.
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
\hline
aa & bb & cc \\
\hline
11 & 22 & 33 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}[h!] will place the table here overriding the default LaTeX behavior. You may find the details of other specifiers here.
Similarly, we can add a caption and label using \caption{} and label{} commands respectively within the same table environment. The \ref and \label then can be used to reference the table inside the document.
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{A Simple Table with Caption and Label}
\label{table1}
\begin{tabular}{ |c|c|c| }
\hline
aa & bb & cc \\
\hline
11 & 22 & 33 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}Finally, create a list of tables by using the \listoftables after the \begin{document}.
Create Lists
In this section, we will take a look to create different types of lists and how to customize list styles.
In general, we can create the following different types of lists in LaTeX:
- Unordered lists
- Ordered lists
- Nested lists
Unordered Lists
In LaTeX, an unordered list is created using the itemize environment and then place each entry inside the environment using \item.
\begin{itemize}
\item The un-numbered item in the list
\item Another un-numbered item in the list
\item One more un-numbered item in the list
\end{itemize}Ordered Lists
An ordered list can be created using the enumerate environment and then placing the entries inside the environment.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The first item in the list
\item The second item in the list
\item The third item in the list
\end{enumerate}Nested Lists
In LaTex, a list can contain another list as its item. In other words, we can create nested lists in LaTeX. The following block of code shows an example of a nested list:
\begin{enumerate}
\item The first item in the list
\item The second item in the list
\begin{enumerate}
\item sub-item a
\item sub-item b
\item sub-item c
\end{enumerate}
\item The third item in the list
\end{enumerate}Customizing List Style
Unordered List
By default, LaTeX uses a black dot for bullet points in an un-numbered list. This default behavior can be changed to bold dash, dash, and asterisk in the following way:
\begin{itemize}
\item[--] Dash item
\item[$-$] Bold Dash item
\item[$\ast$] Asterisk item
\end{itemize}Ordered List
The numbering style for the ordered list can be changed to Roman, Arabic, and Alphabetical using the enumitem package as given below.
\documentclass[12pt, letter]{article}
\usepackage{enumitem}
% other packages\begin{document}
\begin{enumerate}[label=\roman*]
\item The first item with Roman numbers
\item The second item with Roman numbers
\item The third item with Roman numbers
\end{enumerate}\begin{enumerate}[label=(\arabic*)]
\item The first item with Arabic numbers
\item The second item with Arabic numbers
\item The third item with Arabic numbers
\end{enumerate}\begin{enumerate}[label=(\alph*)]
\item The first item with Alphabetical numbers
\item The second item with Alphabetical numbers
\item The third item with Alphabetical numbers
\end{enumerate}\end{document}
Download the example project files from this GitHub repo, open main.tex file in Texmaker, and click on the Run button, and voila 🎉.
In the next part, we learn about how to create a Bibliography in LaTeX.
