latex-authoring

name	latex-authoring
description	LaTeX document authoring with arXiv submission best practices, Overleaf patterns, and academic publishing conventions.
activationKeywords	["latex","LaTeX","tex","arxiv","overleaf","bibtex","biblatex","pdflatex","xelatex","lualatex","document class","beamer","tikz","amsmath"]
type	skill
category	media
status	stable
origin	tibsfox
modified	false
first_seen	"2026-04-11T00:00:00.000Z"
first_path	examples/skills/media/latex-authoring/SKILL.md
superseded_by	null

LaTeX Authoring Skill

Expert-level LaTeX document authoring following arXiv submission best practices and Overleaf conventions. Produces accessible, semantic, publication-ready documents.

Core Principle

"Use macros according to their meaning, not because of the way they appear visually." — arXiv Best Practices

Semantic markup over visual formatting. Always.

Document Structure

Standard Article

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb,amsthm}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib}
\usepackage{booktabs}          % Professional tables
\usepackage{microtype}         % Typography improvements
\usepackage{cleveref}          % Smart cross-references

\title{Article Title}
\author{Author One\thanks{affiliation} \and Author Two\thanks{affiliation}}
\date{\today}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
  Concise summary of the work.
\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}
\section{Related Work}
\section{Method}
\section{Results}
\section{Discussion}
\section{Conclusion}

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

Front Matter (arXiv requirement)

Always use semantic front matter commands:

\title{...}
\author{Author One \AND Author Two}
\begin{abstract} ... \end{abstract}

Never simulate titles with \textbf{\Large Title} — this breaks HTML conversion.

Semantic Markup Rules

DO (semantic)

\emph{key phrase}              % Emphasis with meaning
\textbf{important term}       % Bold with purpose
\section{Introduction}         % Structural heading
\begin{theorem} ... \end{theorem}  % Named environment
\label{eq:energy}             % Reference target
\cref{eq:energy}              % Smart cross-reference

DON'T (visual-only)

{\it key phrase}               % Visual italic, no semantics
{\bf important}                % Visual bold, no semantics
{\Large\bfseries Introduction} % Fake heading, breaks structure
\vspace{1em}                   % Manual spacing hack
\\[1em]                        % Line break as spacing

Mathematics

Inline vs Display

% Inline math
The energy $E = mc^2$ is fundamental.

% Display (numbered)
\begin{equation}
  E = mc^2 \label{eq:energy}
\end{equation}

% Display (unnumbered)
\begin{equation*}
  F = ma
\end{equation*}

% Multi-line aligned
\begin{align}
  \nabla \cdot \mathbf{E} &= \frac{\rho}{\epsilon_0} \label{eq:gauss} \\
  \nabla \times \mathbf{B} &= \mu_0 \mathbf{J} + \mu_0 \epsilon_0 \frac{\partial \mathbf{E}}{\partial t}
\end{align}