4.1 Using Simple Commands

[Typesetting all those TeX-related logos]Now let's try adding a few simple commands to our document. The command \LaTeX produces the logo and the command \today prints the current date. LaTeX always ignores any spaces that follow a command name that consists of letters, as it uses the space to indicate the end of the command name. This means that if we want a space to occur immediately after the command, we need to explicitly say so using the command \␣ (recall from earlier ␣ indicates a space character). So, for example:

\LaTeX\␣logo

produces the output:

Some people when starting out can get a bit confused by this and read it as the entity “\LaTeX\” whereas it is in fact two commands: “\LaTeX” (print the LaTeX logo) followed “\ ” (print a space.)

Let's also try using a command that takes an argument . The command

\footnote{<text>}

takes one argument that specifies the text that should appear in the footnote. This command must be placed where you want the footnote marker to appear.

Exercise 2: Using Simple Commands

Edit the document you created in Exercise 1, so that it looks like the following: (You can download it if you like, but again it is better if you try typing it in yourself.)
\documentclass[12pt]{scrartcl} \begin{document} This is a simple \LaTeX\␣document. Here is the first paragraph. Here is the second paragraph\footnote{with a footnote}. As you can see it's a rather short paragraph, but not as short as the previous one. This document was created on: \today. \end{document}

Now LaTeX your document and view the result. (Remember to check Appendix B. Common Errors if you have a problem.) You should see the LaTeX logo, the footnote marker and the current date. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you should see the footnote.

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