Why should I use LaTeX?

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Why should I use LaTeX?

I have heard a lot about

LaTeX

, but never used it myself.

It is mainly used for typesetting professional research papers. But I am not writing research papers.
Is LaTeX for me? If yes, why should I be shifting from OpenOffice to
word processing software to make all kind of report documents?

LaTeX

? What does

LaTeX

offer to the normal user who uses

{latex-misc}
edited Nov 7 '15 at 9:25

community wiki
6 revs, 6 users 62%
Lazer

18 Answers

Superficially, one of the advantages of LaTeX over other more traditional systems
(e.g. Word or OpenOffice) is the high typographical quality of the documents that
you'll be able to produce. This is particularly true for documents that are heavy on
mathematics, but documents for any other area could also take advantage of these
qualities.
A less obvious advantage, but much more important, is that LaTeX allows you to
clearly separate the content from the format of your document . As a writer
(scientist, researcher or not), this gives you the opportunity to focus on the what,
the creative part of your work, rather than the how is it going to look printed out in
paper (that is the work of LaTeX document class designers).
Now, you shouldn't use LaT eX if
You don't have time to learn it. Unlike most other point&click systems, LaTeX
does take some time to learn. There are of course many guides and tutorials
that can help you with this, but don't try to learn LaTeX if you have, say, less
than 24 hours to prepare a manuscript.
Your document is already written. Say, if you have already written your thesis
in Word, there isn't much point in trying to convert your document to LaTeX.
You can do it, but the results won't be pretty. LaTeX isnt just another document
type to Save-As, it's a complete system to help you write those documents.
What you care about is the design of the document. If you do care about
creating your own designs for your documents (rather than the content), LaTeX
is perhaps not the best system for you. There are a number of packages
(perhaps most notably memoir) that allow you to customize the look of your
document, but things are not always straightforward. Having said that, if you are
a designer, of course we would welcome your help in designing new document
classes and templates!
edited Jun 26 '15 at 7:18

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Juan A. Navarro

You write LaTeX is not a format to store documents which I don't think is strictly accurate. If you
have a LaTeX document from 20 years ago it will still compile and output identical (probably) results; cf.
a 20 year old MS Word document (this remark has already been made in other answers on this page)
Will Robertson Nov 24 '10 at 13:11

10 I didn't mean that you cannot use it to store documents reliably (of course you can!) What I tried to mean
is that it isn't just a file-format to Save as.. a document. It's not that you can choose between saving as
.doc or .tex, in a similar way in which you can choose between saving a picture in .png or .gif. LaTeX is
more than that. Juan A. Navarro Nov 24 '10 at 18:40

about Unlike other traditional systems, LaTeX does take some time to learn. actually, I find
learning Latex is easier and shorter than learning HTML5+CSS3+Javascript in order to generate a web
page. I use Latex to make a web page. I find it easier to use that and run the tex file by htlatex to get a
web page than having to learn all html+css3 commands and options needed to do the same using direct

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HTML. Nasser May 28 '13 at 8:46

Even with the point and clicks systems, I find Latex easier. I used FrameMaker, Word, played with
InDesign, Photoshop and many other such point and clicks systems. The problem is that there are so
many points and clicks and menus and submenus in these, one gets lost very quickly and ends up using
only 5% of them. I find Latex directive style more clear (except when I get a run away } and have to
find the matching pair, or when I get a syntax error and have to find which file caused it, then it gets
annoying at that moment :) Nasser May 28 '13 at 10:04

+1 for "You shouldn't use LaTeX if ... What you care about is the design of the document". Very
important point that too often gets neglected in the pray of LaTeX. I found LaTeX very frustrating in the
beginning because of this issue; today I am still sometimes puzzled how complicated even small design
wishes can be to implement. Nevertheless, I would never go back, as I am also still fascinated, how easy
really complex tasks can be carried out. Daniel Sep 20 '13 at 12:58

I don't intend this to be a complete answer to your question, but I don't believe
anyone else has yet brought up the topic of longevity.
TeX has been around for over thirty years, and the underlying language hasn't
changed very much in that time. Has anyone ever tried using Word 2007 to load a
file that was originally written in Word '97? Even if the file imports properly, chances
are some of the page/line breaks are going to be off, possibly skewing the entire
layout.
What if you had decided to write your document in Lotus Word Pro back in 1990?
Would you be able to view/edit that document today? These problems almost never
occur with (La)TeX.
A document that is typeset in (La)TeX today is likely to look exactly the same when
you re-typeset it 10, 20, or 30 years down the road. Since TeX is stored in a humanreadable plain text file, you also have the knowledge that you will always be able to
edit the file in the future.
edited Sep 20 '13 at 11:37

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dtech

+1 interesting point. David Z Aug 17 '10 at 4:14

11 Or, heaven forbid, a Word file made on a PC in Word for Mac! (even current versions for each platform
still have compatibility issues). drfrogsplat Aug 19 '10 at 2:39

That is one of the reasons I came to LaTeX! Serge Stroobandt May 28 '13 at 10:14

Well, that may holds for simple documents and plain TeX, but if you go the LaTeX route and start using
the newest and super-coolest packages, don't forget to archive them as well! I have had a lot of troubles
to get documents compilable again (not to speak of getting exactly the same output) that where less
than five years old, but used packages like biblatex the libertine font or microtype features.
Even with LaTeX, longevity is not granted for free! Daniel Sep 20 '13 at 12:46

@Daniel I agree, the only reliable way to achieve this is through special archive formats like PDF/A. Still,
it's much better than closed binary formats with which you'll have absolutely no chance. dtech Oct 9
'13 at 14:02

There are bound to be several answers to this question, and different aspects that
people highlight. I'll try to list a few. There are a number of webpages with detail on
the reasons to use LaTeX: I'll highlight a few.
LaTeX is a typesetting system, not a word processor. LaTeX uses source code to
generate a document: you edit one file and typeset it to a generate the output
(usually PDF nowadays). This is in contrast to a word processor, where you edit the
text as it appears. For a critique of word processors, look at
http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html.
LaTeX does things that word processors do not do but that well-designed published
material does do. For example, LaTeX uses a hyphenation algorithm which
generates well-spaced out justified paragraphs. It also uses ligatures where
applicable, which means that letters which 'go together' look better than if the letter
design is all done separately. See for example http://nitens.org/taraborelli/latex for
more details.
LaTeX is intended to focus on document structure rather than appearance. Of
course, some set up is needed to get the correct appearance, but once it is done
most of the source you write is focused on structure. For example, there are
commands such as \section for document structure rather than making everything
bold, italic or whatever. This structured approach helps when you want to do things
that are repetitive, as the formatting is always taken care of 'behind the scenes'.
There are a large number of add-ons to LaTeX (called packages) that are designed to
help with particular tasks. Many of these have an academic focus but this is not true
of every package. For example, the datatool package can be used to do
mail-merging from a list of names and addresses, which is common for business
documents.

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Joseph Wright

+1 for mentioning justification alone. Once you got used to the kind of justified text LaTeX + microtype
produces, you'll find everything produced by Word and LibreOffice plainly insulting. \begin{rant} And
that's even true for the rare occasions when people thought of manually activating hyphenation for their
text. Unfortunately, people are so getting used to badly justified text that they won't even notice that the
Kindle has no hyphenation and even Hollywood typographers will produce justified three-word wide
paragraphs with obviously horrible interword spacings. \end{rant} Christian Sep 20 '13 at 12:40
I don't like hyphenation personally, but I do like full-width justification, particularly when done with letter
spacing tweaks (but only 3% or so) as well as the usual word spacing tweaks. Like in InDesign. I'm just
starting into LaTeX. Wildcard Oct 18 '15 at 1:18

Regarding the benefits of LaTeX, some in short:

LaTeX provides very high quality and is extremely customizable.
It's extremely stable, no matter how complex the documents are.
It's free and Open Source, we can study and improve everything as we do on this
site.
LaTeX is portable concerning its implementation, your document source and its
output -- all is cross-platform.
It provides a logical approach do create documents instead of a physical,
enhancing consistency.
Your document is safe because the file format is open and there's no virus
threat.
I elaborated these points in this article: Getting Started with LaTeX.
If you have questions to any of these points, don't hesitate to ask.
edited Apr 10 '11 at 10:43

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Stefan Kottwitz

1 You could add, that it also has advantages for non-latin characters afaik. MostlyHarmless Apr 10 '11 at
10:48

I will echo Leo's point, about plain-text. Programmability and highest-quality are
perks, but the fact that the input is plain-text has one extremely important
consequence:

You are not at the mercy of buggy word-processing software, proprietary or

otherwise.
I once used MS Word happily, as this was a substantial improvement over
WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, and contemporary office suites offered e.g. by Lotus. But
whenever I tried to do anything modestly non-trivial, such as bullet points, it would
begin to exhibit what could at best be charitably termed "eccentric" behaviour.
Using Word to do anything more than a simple letter --- anything which involved a
list, or controlling varying font sizes, or tables (especially tables!) --- involved for
me a struggle against the software. And modern, well-meaning, open-source Office
clones are even worse: in trying to reliably imitate Word's codependent behaviour,
they have produced software with even more quirks against which I must fight.
With LaTeX, I can have documents which are as simple or as complicated as I like,
with all of the mark-up and structure plainly visible to me, and with reliable results
--- and I don't need anything more complicated than a text-editor to write the
source-file to produce a high-quality PDF. Furthermore, any text-editor will do.
For this reason alone, LaTeX is excellent!
answered Aug 22 '10 at 13:26

community wiki
Niel de Beaudrap

I agree completely, excluding that old MSWord was a substantial improvement over WordPerfect 5.1. Fran
Feb 6 '14 at 21:05

With LaTeX, you have the option to control "content" and "presentation" separate.
And you should.
You might compare it to HTML+CSS in a modern webpage: the content is stored in
the HTML file (pretty much everything after \begin{document} ), with style tags that
control what's the name of the format for the specific element, and CSS (the
preamble), where you define the styles that will render your document the way you

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want it - with these font shapes and sizes, with such and such margins, footnotes,
etc.
This way, if you decide at a later stage to reformat your document (e.g. different
figure caption styles, changed headers and numbering) you would only change this
in one place --- in the preamble. All occurrences of the corresponding styles will
change automatically.
It's not that you can't do the same in Word or OpenOffice.org, but in these programs
it's easier (and pretty much the norm) to get sloppy and just do quick manual
formatting with a shortcut instead of using proper style definitions and formatting
for all your document elements.
If you've ever struggled formatting a document for two or more printing medias (e.g.
two journals with specific stylistic guidelines) or paper formats. If you've ever
written anything over 50 pages (think master thesis), and you remember your
frustration making everything "just right" --- like table of contents, index, figure
and equation numbering, references --- you'd be reborn with LaTeX.
edited Feb 26 '12 at 19:08

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Martin Tapankov

3 Not only might you decide to reformat your document later, but you might start writing it without a
format in mind. I can imagine even a novel writer might want to just start writing, with no desire to format
the document outside of chapters, paragraphs and separating lines of speech. Much later on, the layout
can be decided and changed very easily to fit different forms (A4 drafts vs a custom size for a printed
book vs various eReader formats, with different indention/headings/etc for each). drfrogsplat Aug 19 '10
at 2:36

1 Good point, although having no format in the beginning can be a bit tricky for non-text elements (e.g.
figures), and you'd need some extra effort to make those scale transparently and be readable at the same
time. Martin Tapankov Aug 19 '10 at 5:33

plain text

programmability

and

highest-quality

output are what make me use LaTeX.

I used to think that for short one-off documents, word processors are better. But
since having a wiki live right inside my text editor (I use orgmode), this is no longer
the case. That is one can use LaTeX as the backend and use wiki markup as the
input language.
answered Aug 15 '10 at 12:21

community wiki
Leo Liu

1. I use LaTeX because it allows me not to think about the visual aspect of
documents. I get a high quality layout, even if boring, of aricle etc. but I don't
have to choose anything. Presentation may not have fancy animation but it will
have 'professional look' without work.
2. LaTeX allows typesetting math easily. Really - writing \alpha is quicker then
searching alpha symbol in GUI. Similary writing x^y is quicker then searching
power in list of symbols. I guess with AMS packages included LaTeX have much
more symbols then anything else.
3. PDF guarantees same-look on everything. You won't run into problem because
the computer you're useing don't have some fonts installed.
4. You can script it (program it)
5. It is plain text, open source and highly stable
6. It is standard (at least for many CS/Physics/Math... departments). When I want
to send an e-mail about math I use LaTeX because other side will probably
understend (1. because it is standard but 2, because it is intuitive)
7. It has many packages that allows vector graphics (tikz for example)
To conclude.
Use it if :
You type a lot of equation
You like plain text, stable formats
You don't want to bother with formatting documents
Don't use it if :
You want to control every graphical aspect of whole document (it is possible to
create custom layout but LaTeX is not designed to fine-tuning every page)
You are afraid of plain text (however - you can use some WYSIWYG)
You need to exchange documents with non-LaTeX people (for example someone
requires doc and it's final)

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Maciej Piechotka

2 I disagree with your first point against: in fact, it is also preferable to use LaTeX to fine-tune every detail;
this simply requires, as for the use of LaTeX in general, a bit of study. Ryan Reich Aug 25 '10 at 21:14

1 also the last can have a counter-point: some editors (like LyX) have alsto the .odt output option, and
maybe also .doc, or probably there is a way to have it with some extra compiler... clabacchio Jan 12 '12
at 12:13
you can do the second point in word as well. student Dec 19 '14 at 20:53

In addition, as LaTeX is coded in plain text, you can use collaboration software like
etherpad. But the biggest advantage is, that you can track all your changes with
regular revision control software (i.e. CVS, SVN, GIT, ...) and revert any changes.
I use LaTeX to create high quality vector graphics and math-plots (see: PGFplots and
TikZ )
edited Jan 26 '11 at 11:09

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xeroc

My reasons for coming to LaTeX were:

1. The excellent referencing system that never lets you down,
2. The fact that \section{} commands etc. are unnumbered in the source ; so I
can easily swap them around,
3. The consistency of the layout; It is really difficult to mess up the
typography. This lets you concentrate on the contents and does not distract
you by being concerned about the looks of the document.
4. Unlike MS Word, there is no invisible end of paragraph character that in a
spooky way contains all layout instructions.
5. Correct word splitting at the end of line in the language of your choice,
6. Have a file per chapter , move them around and join them together at the click
of a button.
7. Easily produce PDFs with hyperlinks, table of contents, indices, etc.
8. Unlike MS Word, guaranteed backward compatibility,
9. Typeset formulas.
10. Last but not least, since the advent of desktop publishing we all pretend we are
experts in the art of typography and page layout. The cruel reality is most of us
are not, nor are software houses like MicroSoft. LaTeX effortlessly brings back a
bit of civility to the world of printed documents, starting with giving the reader
a proper margin to place his thumbs.
answered May 28 '13 at 10:50

community wiki
Serge Stroobandt

3 You know, I never thought about our thumbs. That's really clever. Sean Allred Aug 6 '13 at 2:26

One of the reasons I keep coming back to LaTeX is that it does things for me that
would require the same (or more) amount of work in other programs. Just take a look
at how much simpler tables of contents, figure and heading numbering and headers
are in LaTeX, compared to the "standard" InDesign:
Figure Numbering in InDesign (and cross-references to them)
Multi-Level Automatic Numbering in InDesign
But so far this one is the best: Table of Contents:
InDesign Help: Creating a table of contents
There is also no automatic list of tables and list of images in InDesign (though you
can do that in Word or OpenOffice).
Why do we need a whole post on a site called "indesignsecrets" just for figure
numbering and cross-referencing?
Most of the time I've spent learning LaTeX was for something I really didn't need to
do, and I can assure you just with a few hours of LaTeX crash course anyone can do
most of their academic work.
EDIT Speaking of being at the mercy of buggy software, I just spent a full day's work
(and was paid for it) to format headings, quotations and table of contents of a

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thesis. Word crashed several times, making me lose a lot of work every time and
forcing to begin anew, saving my file at every modification. I inserted captions for
some 50 images one by one, but then Word repeatedly crashed after I had tried
inserting a simple "List of Figures".
LibreOffice doesn't even open the file, and crashes every time. iWork Pages opens it
but with weird formatting.
You would suppose that inserting figures with Word or Pages would just be easier
with a drag a and drop, but every time text flows with figures it makes formatting
both together a nightmare.
And on top of all that, I was supposed to do copy-editing work on that thesis
(grammar, spelling, style etc.). I wish I just had to read and mark spelling and
grammar errors, specially if it was a printed or a plain text file (and it would be
easier to read and correct a plain text file on screen).
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Joseph

1 Not to defend InDesign or anything, but creating a TOC is quite straightforward with it. If you want to get
hold of all minute details (e.g., paragraph styles for the TOC levels, dot leaders, etc.) you do need to read
all that stuff from the links you posted. And yet, if you want to have the same kind on control in LaTeX,
you'll also have to digest a bit of documentation (at least 25 pages in memman , for instance). NVaughan
Apr 23 '12 at 0:48

1 @Vaughan, If you use KOMA-script it's very easy to change your TOC. See \usepackage[tocgraduated]
{tocstyle} \usetocstyle{nopagecolumn} that does what most of books I've read do. But anyway, you have to
agree that there's not simple way to make a List of Figures or a List of Tables in inDesign. It's easier to do
it in LibreOffice or Word, and easier still to just write: \tableofcontents \listoffigures \listoftables and be
done with it. For me, LaTeX has always been about getting things done properly with the least effort.
Joseph Apr 23 '12 at 0:53
Should Adobe FrameMaker be part of the comparison as well? pluton Apr 23 '12 at 4:23
@Joseph, of course you can create publisher-standard TOCs with LaTeX without much ado and out-ofthe-box (with Koma-script, with Memoir, or with the standard classes---although I must confess I dislike
very much Koma-script's typography). But if you want to tweek the TOC's properties, that's where the
tricky part comes in. In InDesign, creating LOFs, LOTs, and LOLs is just as "easy" as creating TOCs. Just
specify different paragraph styles for each of the headings/captions of the elements you want to list.
NVaughan Apr 25 '12 at 14:00

Even if you don't write academic journal articles, LaTeX can still be extremely useful.
1. For example, it forces you to follow certain format. Unless you know what you're
doing, you can't mess about in the format. Now I don't have to worry about all
those equation, page numbering, finding chapter title on one page and the
content in the next page, and so on.
2. Like OpenOffice, it's free as well. But the typeset is lot better.
smaller than .doc or .docx file.

TeX

files are lot

3. CV presentation looks lot better than in MSOffice, Open Office, etc.

4. Joy of knowing and participating in something that people from all over the
world contribute to develop, use and help others to use.
answered Feb 26 '12 at 21:54

community wiki
bakul

I see two advantages to TeX over text editors and word processors: high-quality
typesetting (especially for math) and the ability to automate formatting. I would not
recommend learning TeX unless you need one of those things.
Things I use TeX for instead of other software:
1. Taking notes during lectures where there are equations and formulas. It is far
better for this than any traditional word processor or text editor; I can usually
reproduce exactly what the speaker writes on the board, and from then on it's
digitized, searchable, and essentially permanent in my records.
2. Formatting the output from programs and databases automatically -- for
instance, preparing a working printout of a dictionary I am compiling in a
database. It is also possible to do this using text editors and word processors
that have macros or similar functionality, but TeX is better suited to it because
of how comprehensive it is.
3. Preparing camera-ready copy for publication. TeX produces much more closely
kerned and fine-tuned print than any word processor.
People often say that TeX allows you to concentrating on writing rather than
formatting. I have never found this to be true. If ``just writing'' is what you want to
do, use a plain ASCII text editor or whatever word processor is near to hand and
format your text later. TeX is attractive exactly because it gives you vastly greater

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control over formatting than normal word processors do. But that control is not
cheap: TeX is time-consuming to learn as well as to use.
The exception? If you have a front-end like LyX (there are others) that can be used
like an ordinary word-processor. That frees you from having to think about many of
the technical aspects of TeX.
answered Apr 10 '11 at 11:44

community wiki
brannerchinese

You should differ between LaTeX and (plain)TeX. Martin Scharrer Apr 10 '11 at 12:01

There is one aspect more, and not the least important one:
People, who use LaTeX, do cooperate, as you can see here in this forum, and in
many other places around the web. Here in Germany in a dozen of cities users meet
once per month in the evening in a bar to chat about their usage of TeX & Friends.
There are thousands of volunteers all over the world who write packages, bug
reports, answer questions. Not to forget the indefatigable Karl Berry and his fellows,
who issue each year a new texlive. Or Christian Schenk, who maintains MiKTeX, day
after day.
The software allows to discuss all and everythink along minimal working
examples. I've never heard about a software making it so easy to get help when you
are stuck.
Use TeX & Friends for every letter you print on paper, if you like the thought of
cooperation and you'd like to participate as well.
answered Feb 26 '12 at 21:04

community wiki
Keks Dose

For me, there are two things that Latex provide many advantages over other
solutions: (1) Tables & (2) Equations.
What I do requires me to produce many complicated tables (with spanning elements,
different alignment settings for different columns etc.). These always cause me
headache in Microsoft Word. Latex gives you more control as to how things should
behave at a very micro level. It is also more transparent i.e. you see the attributes
you entered that makes things look a certain way. Sometimes in MS Word, things
don't look right just because of some changes you have made but not aware of. In
addition, many software packages support Latex so you can paste their outputs
directly into your document.
This must have been covered by other people. But equation editing in Latex is very
powerful. It does have a bit of a learning curve but, once you learn some basic
syntax, it is much faster to write an equation in Latex compared to MS Word
Equation Editor.
Latex in general is quite intuitive if you have some basic programming skills. There
are also many resources online such that you can get most of your questions
answered by just putting them into a search engine.
answered May 12 '13 at 12:28

community wiki
Ben Sila

Although to be fair, whether you consider tables a strong point of LaTeX probably depends on what you
want to do exactly. If you want to edit your table a lot after you created it or even do crazy things as
inserting a column then you're probably better off with a spreadsheet (although some will let you export
LaTeX code). pgfplotstable made things a bit more flexible but even more difficult to learn. Christian
Sep 20 '13 at 12:30

In my opinion, Latex is the best system to typesetting that I have ever seen. Because
the quality of its output is great. I strongly recommend you to use Latex and throw
away systems like Word and Open office.
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Vahid Damanafshan

Since the last few years, reasons to use LaTeX are fewer than before, but there are
some. I've jumped into the camp that sees LaTeX as a dying beast, so here are some
arguments against:

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1. Nearly all functionalities that can be accomplished with LaTeX can be performed
in MS Word without having to compile your document to see how it turns out. In
word you can see the layout of your document and make adjustments as you are
writing.
2. Many LaTeX users claim that the document resulting from your work will be of
higher quality, but I haven't noticed. I've read that the justification algorithm is
better in LaTeX. I haven't checked on this myself, but it's something to look at.
Having said this, I've seen theses written in word which received compliments
for quality (and content) by professors on the committees.
3. A lot of LaTeX users also claim that it's easier to write your mathematical
expressions in LaTeX. This almost always untrue (note the almost). Microsoft
has developed the use of shortcuts that produce mathematical expressions
written in a similar way to that used in LaTeX. Pick a place where you would like
to write your expression in a word document and press
+
. Then use
shortcuts like \int , \rho , \Rho , or \sum to produce integrals, Greek symbols,
sums, etc.
4. You'll also hear people talk about how easy the referencing system is to use in
LaTeX. I've used the Word referencing system extensively and I find it very easy
to use, but it takes maybe half an hour overall to read about it before you
achieve fluency in it.
Having said these things, I did notice that someone mentioned above that LaTeX
editions are consistent such that you can take what you've written decades ago and
still read it. I haven't been working long enough for this quirk to hit me yet. Anyway,
while I can read very old Word documents, the compatibility is sometimes
unfortunate for older software. As an example, I once had to manually convert
documents from Word Perfect into MSWord during a job as a student. Fortunately it
was quite easy since I could see the way the documents were laid out as I made the
corrections instead of having to wait. It was a bit painful though.
edited Feb 6 '14 at 17:08

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user45591

3 Item number one starts with nearly but that's a very crude approximation. Number two becomes obvious if
you write enough text. I'm using Word and LaTeX for my work and the response is unanimously
consistent. For number three, just write Fourier transforms a few times on the same pages with hat
notation. Number 4 is indeed getting better in MSWord but a single mistake can ruin many things in Word
such as reference numbering order. And Ctrl+Z is not working. But compatibility is not what you claim. I
have rigorously created documents that are impossible to have it working on newer versions. percusse
Feb 7 '14 at 10:13

1 LaTeX does not mess around when processing documents with 300+ pages. It does not screw up the
layout after inserting a figure. And the process for numbering equations

is ridiculously long and

tedious. Not to talk of full automatism for the table of contents, list of figures and list of tables and other
structures like an index. That said, W0rd prevents users from creating good looking documents by
offering dubious default settings. Thorsten Donig Feb 8 '14 at 8:34

Is LaTeX for me? If yes, why should I be shifting from OpenOffice to LaTeX? What
does LaTeX offer to the normal user who uses word processing software to make
all kind of report documents?
If you have time to learn it, then Yes , you should shift from LibreOffice (or Word etc.)
because LaTeX itself decides and enforces the professional typesetting standards
you seek, even if you're not writing "research papers" With it, you define the "class"
of document you want (Book, Document, Letter etc.) and the sectioning (Part,
Chapter, Section etc.) and LaTeX more or less takes care of everything else. There
are a whole slew of options and styles (Packages) to use for things like Table of
Contents, Bibliographies, Tables, Math Formula, Insets (Environments) for
Quotations, Verse, Code, Graphics.
LaTeX is NOT like a word processor. It's all done in script, like html. All you see is
Type until you render the results (unless you have your LaTeX Front End
automatically render it on the fly). Your LaTeX front end would be one of many
potential applications that reads/edits/renders LaTeX code.
Which of the following matches your Type expectations:

1. I want to write my Type Content while also modifying it's appearance until it's
just what I envision when published.
2. I want to send my Type off to a professional publisher for typesetting, to make
sure it's properly done, but don't want to worry with minute formatting details.
3. I want to write my Type then have some software that can make sure it's
properly typeset, but don't want to worry with the minute details.

If you answer #1 then you should continue using OpenOffice, Word, InDesign etc.

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If you answer #2 then you should send plain text manuscript off to a professional to
have them do it for you, and done right.
If you answer #3 then you should consider LaTeX, if...
If you are comfortable scripting (html for instance) or don't mind adjusting to it, then
learn LaTeX. Just know that it's potentially more complex than html because of it's
software system of package distribution, documentation and there is other related
software in the TeX family. LaTeX is just the most famous part of an entire
Typesetting system, and it's really the only element most users need to know
anything about.
LaTeX is Powerful: It's easy for an experienced LaTeX user to professionally format a
Novel, for instance, VERY quickly ... far more quickly than doing it with a Word
Processor. It's very easy for an Indie Publishing Company to efficiently create a
standard "look and feel" for their family of books, customizing their LaTeX Preamble
(settings for the documents look and feel) like their finger print.
For a Brand New user: It's extremely easy to write a professional looking memo
letter to everyone at the company, save a template for it, then every time have YOUR
MEMO come out looking Consistent, and have your Signature Look and Feel. Then,
every time you need to create a new memo, it's as easy as opening notepad or any
text editor, then clicking process and send via email. Suppose you work in I.T. and
need to routinely send out a report or instruction memos to many folks you support.
With LaTeX, that task is a piece of cake, much easier than a word processor.
Learning Curve: With LaTeX, the software is not ONE program, like html. It works as
a set of macro package programs that you use depending on the type and class of
Look and Feel you expect from your type. So, due to it's packaging complexity, there
will be a learning curve. But, you can start out writing a Professional Looking letter
that says "Hello World" about as easily as writing an html page that displays the
same stuff. [LaTeX typesets using Set Dimensions, your paper size, for instance
Letter, legal, 8x5, whatever you define in the Geometry Package. On the other hand,
HTML typesets flowable, dimension-less text that falls into whatever the display
size might be, 4" ebook reader or 24" computer monitor, for instance. That's the key
output difference between html code and LaTeX code.
With LaTeX, The look and feel Technical Papers is placed by default in the settings
for Package Options. So by default, the final Typeset product is a Technical or
Academic Publication. Literary projects, like Novels, usually have simple typesetting
requirements. There isn't a need for Indexes, Bibliographies, Math Formula, or lots
of tables, charts and graphics) Yet in LaTeX using the package defaults for the Book
Class, for instance, will result in Literary Projects like Novels being typeset as if it
were Thesis or Scientific Book. So, you will to have to add a few options to adjust the
defaults for things like Chapter Headings.
Lastly, the one KEY ADVANTAGE that LaTeX has, which Word Processors don't, is it's
Professional-Grade Micro-Typography features. Word Processors only have a choice
between flexible or monospace type. In Monospace every letter has the same width.
Flexible type different letters have different widths, for instance an "i" is more
narrow than a "w". That's about it for a word processor. LaTeX on the other hand has
a Microtype Package with advanced Kerning features. So depending on the line, it
might reserve a different amount of space for a "w" on one line, verses another line
that needs more letters to fit. Plus, LaTeX has automatic hypenation by default, and
the ability to add custom words and their hypenation points (within the Hypenation
Package). And, if that weren't all, LaTeX features a "glue" between paragraphs, that
is a slightly different potential spacing between paragraphs so that "orphans" are
not left on a page by them self. (an orphan is one or two lines of text at the end of
chapter on a page by itself)
Finding all the documentation for setting various options, especially with one set of
very powerful packages within the "Koma Script Classes" will seem to be an
obfuscation of know-how, but once you learn the few options you need for your
document, then you have a keen new advantage in efficiency, after all, you won't
have to spend anymore time tweeking fonts and sizes and spacing and the table of
contents and the Page Headers and Footers and Page Numbering. You've done the
hard work once, and you can easily repeat the endeavor time and again, just as fast
as you can type. And you can count on the result being a professional grade of
typesetting that you don't have to pay a professional to do for you. Just consider
LaTeX that professional, and always at your service.
answered Jul 14 '15 at 19:48

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