Basic Formatting

Complete Guide to Formatting Text in LaTeX

LaTeX gives you precise control over how text appears in your document. This guide covers every common formatting technique you'll need for academic writing.

Bold, Italic, and Underline

The three most common text decorations:

\\textbf{Bold text}
\\textit{Italic text}
\\underline{Underlined text}
\\textbf{\\textit{Bold and italic}}
\\emph{Emphasis — italic in normal text, upright in italic context}

Output: Text appears with the specified formatting applied.

Font Families

LaTeX has three built-in font families:

\\textrm{Roman (serif) — default body text}
\\textsf{Sans-serif — often used for headings}
\\texttt{Monospace — for code and filenames}
\\textsc{Small Caps — for acronyms like NASA}

Output: Each line renders in its respective font family.

Text Alignment

Control paragraph alignment with environments:

\\begin{center}
  Centered text
\\end{center}

\\begin{flushleft}
  Left-aligned text (default)
\\end{flushleft}

\\begin{flushright}
  Right-aligned text
\\end{flushright}

Output: Text blocks aligned to center, left, and right respectively.

Spacing Control

Fine-tune horizontal and vertical spacing:

% Horizontal spacing
Word\\hspace{2cm}Word    % exact horizontal gap
Word\\quad Word           % 1em space
Word\\qquad Word          % 2em space

% Vertical spacing
Paragraph one.

\\vspace{1cm}

Paragraph two (with 1cm extra gap).

% Stretch to fill page
\\vfill  % pushes content to bottom

💡 Tips

•Use \emph{} instead of \textit{} for semantic emphasis that adapts to context
•Avoid \underline in academic papers — it's considered unprofessional; use \emph instead
•For colored text, use \textcolor{red}{text} from the xcolor package
•The microtype package subtly improves text appearance with microtypographic tweaks

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