Required parts of a LaTeX input file

Last revision August 3, 2004

A few commands MUST appear in every LaTeX input file in a certain order. They are:

\documentstyle{stylename}
\begin{document}
\end{document}

The documentstyle has a required argument stylename to select an overall typesetting style for the document; the one you normally use is article (there are also book, report, letter, and memo). It also has an optional argument to select 11pt or 12pt normal type size (10pt is the default size).

Between the \documentstyle and \begin{document} commands you can place commands that will affect the environment of the entire document, such as changes to margin widths.

The actual text of your document and associated commands go between the \begin{document} and \end{document} commands.

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