Maths

There's more to maths typesetting than meets the eye. Many conventions used in the typesetting of plain text are inappropriate to maths. L^ATEX goes a long way to help you along with the style. For example, in a L^ATEX maths environment, letters come out in italics, `-' as `-' (minus) instead of the usual `-' (dash), `*' becomes *, ' becomes ' and spacing is changed (less around `/', more around `+').

Many of the usual L^ATEX constructions can still be used in maths environments but their effect may be slightly different; eg \textbf{ } only affects letters and numbers. `{' and `}' are still special characters; they're used to group characters.

As usual in L^ATEX you can override the defaults, but think before doing it: maths support in L^ATEX has been carefully thought out and is quite logical though the L^ATEX source text may not be very readable. It's a good idea to write out the formulae on paper before you start L^ATEXing, and try not to overdo the use of the `\frac' construction; use `/' instead.