Writing articles

If you’re diving into research or getting started with writing scientific articles, LaTeX is your friend. LaTeX (pronounced “LAY-tech”) is not just any tool—it’s a powerful typesetting system that helps you create beautifully formatted documents, perfect for academic and scientific writing. In our lab, we almost exclusively use LaTeX for most of the documents.

Why Choose LaTeX?

  • Polished Documents: It makes your research papers and lab manuals look super professional with neat equations, figures, and references.

  • Focus on Content: You get to focus on what really matters—your research—without getting bogged down by formatting headaches.

  • Collaboration Made Easy: LaTeX plays well with others. It’s perfect for working on documents with classmates or colleagues, thanks to its compatibility with tools like Overleaf.

Task
  1. Head over to Overleaf and sign up—it’s free!
  2. Click on “New Project” and choose “Blank Project”. This sets you up with a clean slate to start writing your document.
  3. Overleaf shows your document in two parts: on the left, you write your LaTeX code (don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds!), and on the right, you instantly see how it looks as a document.

To get started with LaTeX in Overleaf, follow the tutorials below

For more detailed tutorials, please see the Overleaf Documentation

Resources

These are some of the books (&video) which have personally helped to write better:

  1. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, Joseph M
  2. They Say I Say by Graff and Birkenstein
  3. University of Manchester, Academic Phrasebank

University Chicago Writing Workshop

Task
  1. Go through the book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, Joseph M.
  2. Watch the video LEADERSHIP LAB: The Craft of Writing Effectively in the above set of videos.