Overview
Latex is a plain text markup language that is used to create professional documents. The writer follows a set of markup conventions to indicate locations in the text that would include images, title heading, citations and cross references etc...
Once a latex document has been written, a pdf file or other document can be produced from the plain text document.
Document Tags
The document tags are a set of tags the specify the beginning of the document text, and the end of the text.
\begin{document}
this text is the document text
\end{document}
These tags enclose the document. All document text is placed within these tags.
Document Preamble
The preamble contains instructions to the compiler that affect the entire document. They are placed prior to the opening document tag.
\begin{document}
The following is an example of a short preamble.
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{lingmacros}
The first line instructs the compiler as to the type of document (in this case, the document is structured as an article) For a list of document types, see latex document types.
Additionally, the compiler is instructed to include the lingmacros package for use within the document.
Sample Blank Document
The following shows an example of a complete document.
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
this text is the document text
\end{document}