I use LaTeX a lot. And every time I work with other people, I notice things people to weirdly when using LaTeX, not pushing it to its full potential or simply doing things that are “dangerous.” Of course, not dangerous in the sense of physically hurting anybody, but in risking a non-robust document, weird typesetting, or simply an unpleasant document. Thus, I decided to collect this list of “best practices” so that I can refer to it and, of course, to make these things more well-known.

If you want to contribute, feel free to create an issue or submit a pull request. Thanks to Heiko who helped extending this list.

Note that this is a bit different from my LaTeX tips & tricks and a lot more basic, although I will refer to said page from time to time.

But even with these best practices, remember:

You cannot use LaTeX correctly. Use can just use it less wrong.

Best Practices

General

  1. Compile your document with as few warnings as possible as they actually tell you useful information about your document. Use silence‘s \WarningFilter if you want to ignore specific warnings to get a cleaner output. Go to full explanation.
  2. Use an acronym package to automatically introduce acronyms appropriately. Use acronym if you just need the handling (for small documents such as papers) and glossaries if you need a glossary (for large documents such as theses).
  3. Format your source code. Even though LaTeX is not a programming language (yes, it is Turing complete, no, that does not qualify it as a programming language), it is still vital that the document is maintainable. Go to full explanation.
  4. Read documentation. Most packages have an excellent and extensive written documentation that contains everything you might need. Check out, for instance, the documentation of glossaries and glossaries-extra. It is extensive (combined, 1766 pages), and extremely well-written.
  5. Use todonotes and \todo to denote todos in the document. If your document class does not have wide margins, put \setuptodonotes{inline} in the preamble.
  6. Never allow compilation errors to persist in your document. If you are using Overleaf, change Try to compile despite errors to Stop on first error in the menu next to the Recompile button to remind you of this. Go to full explanation.
  7. Do a clean compile (i.e., delete all auxiliary files) from time to time to check everything is working. Even better, set up continuous integration.
  8. Use a build tool such as arara or latexmk for building large documents to prevent forgetting crucial steps (e.g., generating glossaries, running BibLaTeX, etc.). Makefiles might also work for small documents.
  9. Know the difference between \input and \include, and use both of them appropriately. Go to full explanation.
  10. Instead of formatting dates and times manually, use datetime2. It respects the language and locale of the document and ensures consistent formatting.

General Typesetting

  1. Handle inter-word and inter-sentence spaces correctly. Use \ and \@ if necessary. Go to full explanation.
  2. Know the difference between hyphen (-), en- (–) and em-dash (—) and use all three appropriately. Go to full explanation.
  3. Decide whether to reference equations every time (and treat them like non-floating figures) or embedding them into the text (treating them as inline math). In any case, be consistent (and respect the journal‘s guidelines).
  4. Configure custom hyphenation for words unknown to babel if necessary.
  5. Use csquotes for placing quotation marks. Only use " and ' in the code, never ‚, ‘, ’, „, “, ”, or similar.
  6. Use \textsuperscript and \textsubscript for super- and subscripts within text, respectively. Do not use ‘sppontaneous math mode.’
  7. Use \emph instead of \textit, \textbf, or similar for emphasizing. \emph is made for emphasizing, can be configured globally, and toggles the font style rather than setting it (i.e., withing an italic text, emphasized words will become straight).
  8. Place a ~ between \cite and the previous word to produce a no-break blank (i.e., a blank where no line break will take place). Otherwise, teh citation might be on the next line which looks weird.
  9. Use microtype for microtypography (protrusion and expansion). It enhances your document a lot while being barely noticable.

Layouting

  1. Do not ignore over-/underfull h-/vbox warnings. That warning is literally telling you that your document looks shitty somewhere. Go to full explanation.
  2. Touch layouting only if absolutely necessary. Avoid \vspace, \hspace, minipage, etc. In almost all cases, LaTeX knows what it is doing and you should rather adjust text length/figure size/etc. to get the desired result.

Math

  1. Do not use \frac in text/inline math mode. It gets too compressed, increases the line height, and makes the document look horrible. Instead, simply use a /.
  2. Use \prescript (or so) instead of ^2T_1; the latter binds to the wrong symbol
  3. Do not use ^2T_1 and similar to typeset ²T₁, instead use \prescript{superscript}{subscript}{arg} for super-/subscripts before a symbol, e.g., \prescript{2}{}{T}_1. Go to full explanation.
  4. Be aware of cool features such as \underbrace, \mathclap, \phantom, etc. Go to full explanation.
  5. (Debatable) Prefer \( … \) over $ … $ and prefer \[ … \] over $$ … $$. The dollar notation is a TeX primitive and not meant to be used in LaTeX documents.
  6. Use \DeclareMathOperator rather than retyping an operator over and over again as this is prone to induce typos. Go to full explanation.
  7. Use siunitx for units, numbers, ranges, uncertainties, etc. Got to full explanation.
  8. Use physics package for easier calculus and all kinds of physics typesettings. Go to full explanation.
  9. Do not use \text for “operators,” instead use \mathrm. Example: Use \( D_\mathrm{KL} \), not \( D_\text{KL} \). Go to full explanation.
  10. Use left/right versions of symbols, e.g., \lvert and \rvert instead of \vert whenever semantically reasonable. Go to full explanation.
  11. Use mathtools instead of plain amsmath as it fixes lots of amsmath‘s bugs and adds extra functionality.
  12. Do not rely on paranthesis auto-scaling (\left and \right), it looks horrible most of the time as the scaling is quite primitive. Instead, use \big, \Big, \bigg, and \Bigg and their respective left/right versions \[lr]big, \[lr]Big, \[lr]bigg, and \[lr]Bigg. It is also possible to create bigger versions.
  13. Do not use “plain symbols” such as ||/.../etc.. Instead use \Vert/\dots/etc. Go to full explanation.
  14. Do not use \[ … \] or $$ … $$, use an equation environment instead.
  15. know the differences between equation, gather, and align

Referencing

  1. Label equations only when they are references. This can be done automatically.
  2. Do not use plain \refs, use zref-clever and \zcref or at least \autoref. Go to full explanation.

Figures

  1. Figures belong in figure environment, tables in table environments, listings in the respective listing environment, etc. Go to full explanation.
  2. Never place figures within text, they should float to the top (or bottom) of the page. Let LaTeX handle this. Go to full explanation.
  3. Figures, tables, algorithms, listings, etc. are floating objects. Do not enforce figure placement, LaTeX knows what it is doing. Go to full explanation.
  4. If a small image is tightly bound to a piece of text and does not carry meaning in itself, it is not a figure. Place it in a center environment and keep it where it is.
  5. Center captions if they are below one line long and left-align them if they are more than one line long. Do so by adding \captionsetup{singlelinecheck=on} in the preamble.

Tables

  1. Use booktabs instead of standard tabulars. Go to full explanation.
  2. Use threeparttable to add notes to a table (similar to footnotes in normal text, but withing the floating environment). Go to full explanation.
  3. Use siunitx for formatting numbers in tables (such that they align at the decimal point, the uncertainty, or both). Go to full explanation.

Full Explanations

Some of the above items need a longer explanation, which is contained in this section. Note that this section does not contain all best practices and for an exhaustive read, go here.

General

Compile With as Few Warnings as Possible

TODO

Handling Acronyms: acronym

TODO

Handling Acronyms: glossaries

TODO

Code Formatting

TODO

Never Allow Errors to Persist

TODO

Difference Between Input And Include

TODO

General Typography

Handling Inter-Word And Inter-Sentence Spaces

TODO

Hyphen, En-, and Em-Dash

TODO

Layouting

Do Not Ignore Over-/Underfull hbox And vbox Warnings

TODO

Math

Use \prescript

Classic super- and subscript, i.e., ^ and _, bind to the symbol before them such that A ^1T_2 would be rendered as A¹ T₂, not A ¹T₂. \prescript is from the mathtools package and there are other packages available that do a similar thing, but mathtools is often loaded anyways.

Cool Math Features

TODO

Use \DeclareMathOperator

TODO

Use siunitx For Units

TODO

Use physics Package

TODO

Do Not Use \text For Operators

Using \text changes the font family to the document’s text family while \mathrm retains the math font but removes spacing that would otherwise be placed between letters. Note that for actual text, \text can still be used and \mathrm removes all spaces (which should never be used in math operators anyway).

Use Left/Right Versions of Symbols

TODO

Do Not Use Plain Symbols

TODO

Referencing

Do Not Use Plain \ref

TODO

Figures

Figure Placement

TODO

Tables

Use booktabs

TODO

Use threeparttable For Notes

TODO

Use siunitx For Tables

TODO

Notes

This is an unstructured list of things that will be added to list of best practices, but they are not yet formulated well enough. For completeness and transparency, I will keep them here.

  • a multi-line equations that should get a single number should be an aligned environment inside one equation
  • prefer tikzplotlib over pgf over pdf over png when building figures
    • really never use png
    • tikz renderings can be cached to speedup compilation time
  • place every sentence on a new line to make finding compiler errors easier (opinionated)
  • \/
  • Use the biblatex package with the Biber backend instead of natbib (or even bibtex directly)
  • use xspace for proper spacing after a stop
  • Typeset numbers in math font (using siunitx) off they are ‘technical.’ E.g., `we used a learning rate of \num{0.12} and we are 14 people in our lab.``
  • Know that you can tell latex to just compile some \includes while still reading the aux file for labels, saving a ton of compilation time during writing
  • don’t define labels multiple times (ideally create labels in the moment you want to reference them)
  • make sure no figures is left unreferences
  • make sure no unresolved references remain (read the warnings)
  • whenever you feel like you need a [vh]space, think again; you probably do not need it
    • want to space out two parts of an equation? use align
    • \quad and \qquad are also great alternatives to provide typographically sound spacing
  • use linewidth not textwidth