latex-authoring
LaTeX document authoring with arXiv submission best practices, Overleaf patterns, and academic publishing conventions.
SKILL.mdexamples/skills/media/latex-authoring/SKILL.md
GitHubLaTeX 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}
Common Math Patterns
% Matrices
\begin{pmatrix} a & b \\ c & d \end{pmatrix}
% Cases
f(x) = \begin{cases} 1 & \text{if } x > 0 \\ 0 & \text{otherwise} \end{cases}
% Operators
\DeclareMathOperator{\argmax}{arg\,max}
\DeclareMathOperator{\softmax}{softmax}
% Fractions (prefer \frac for display, \nicefrac for inline)
\frac{\partial L}{\partial \theta}
% Bold math vectors
\mathbf{x}, \boldsymbol{\theta}
Tables
Professional Tables (booktabs)
\begin{table}[htbp]
\centering
\caption{Model comparison on benchmark tasks.}
\label{tab:results}
\begin{tabular}{lrrr}
\toprule
Model & Accuracy & F1 & Latency (ms) \\
\midrule
Baseline & 0.842 & 0.831 & 12.3 \\
Our Method & \textbf{0.917} & \textbf{0.904} & 14.1 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
Never use \hline — always \toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule from booktabs.
Figures
With Alt Text (arXiv accessibility requirement)
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.8\textwidth, alt={Bar chart showing accuracy improvements from 84% baseline to 92% with our method across three benchmarks}]{figures/results.pdf}
\caption{Accuracy comparison across benchmark tasks.}
\label{fig:results}
\end{figure}
Subfigures
\usepackage{subcaption}
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{fig-a.pdf}
\caption{Training loss}
\label{fig:loss}
\end{subfigure}
\hfill
\begin{subfigure}[b]{0.48\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{fig-b.pdf}
\caption{Validation accuracy}
\label{fig:acc}
\end{subfigure}
\caption{Training dynamics over 100 epochs.}
\end{figure}
Bibliography
BibTeX Entry Types
@article{vaswani2017attention,
title = {Attention Is All You Need},
author = {Vaswani, Ashish and others},
journal = {NeurIPS},
year = {2017}
}
@inproceedings{devlin2019bert,
title = {{BERT}: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers},
author = {Devlin, Jacob and Chang, Ming-Wei and Lee, Kenton and Toutanova, Kristina},
booktitle = {NAACL-HLT},
year = {2019}
}
@misc{anthropic2026claude,
title = {Claude 4.6 Model Card},
author = {Anthropic},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {\url{https://www.anthropic.com}},
note = {Accessed: 2026-04-08}
}
Citation Commands
% natbib
\citet{vaswani2017attention} → Vaswani et al. (2017)
\citep{vaswani2017attention} → (Vaswani et al., 2017)
\citep[see][]{vaswani2017attention} → (see Vaswani et al., 2017)
% biblatex
\textcite{vaswani2017attention}
\parencite{vaswani2017attention}
arXiv Submission Checklist
- Single directory — all files in one flat directory (no subdirectories for figures)
- Main file — must be compilable with
pdflatex main.tex(or xelatex/lualatex) - References — include
.bblfile (pre-compiled bibliography), not just.bib - Figures — PDF/PNG/JPG only. EPS accepted but PDF preferred. Include alt text.
- No absolute paths — use
\includegraphics{figure1}not\includegraphics{/home/user/fig/figure1} - Package compatibility — check LaTeXML supported packages for HTML conversion
- Compiler — use most recent TeX Live. Set Overleaf to "stop on errors" mode.
- Font encoding — use
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}for proper glyph support - No custom styles — avoid
\defand\newcommandthat redefine standard commands - Comments — remove
\usepackage{comment}sections before submission
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
{\it text} |
\emph{text} or \textit{text} |
{\bf text} |
\textbf{text} |
$$display math$$ |
\[ display math \] or equation env |
\hline in tables |
\toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule |
Manual spacing \\[1em] |
Proper environments and \vspace sparingly |
\begin{center} for figures |
\centering inside float |
Missing \label after \caption |
Always \caption{...}\label{...} in that order |
\cite without natbib |
Use \citet/\citep for author-year styles |
| Bitmap figures at low DPI | Vector PDF or 300+ DPI PNG |
| Hardcoded cross-references | Use \ref, \cref, or \autoref |
Document Classes
| Class | Use Case |
|---|---|
article |
Journal papers, short reports |
report |
Longer documents with chapters |
book |
Books, theses |
beamer |
Presentations |
standalone |
Single figures/diagrams for inclusion |
memoir |
Flexible book/report class |
IEEEtran |
IEEE conference/journal papers |
acmart |
ACM publications |
revtex4-2 |
APS/Physical Review journals |
aastex63 |
AAS/Astrophysical Journal |
mnras |
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society |
Essential Packages
| Package | Purpose |
|---|---|
amsmath |
Math environments (align, equation, etc.) |
amssymb |
Additional math symbols |
amsthm |
Theorem environments |
graphicx |
Image inclusion with alt text |
hyperref |
Clickable cross-references and URLs |
cleveref |
Smart cross-references (\cref) |
booktabs |
Professional table rules |
natbib |
Author-year citations |
microtype |
Microtypographic improvements |
xcolor |
Color support |
tikz |
Programmatic diagrams |
algorithm2e |
Algorithm pseudocode |
listings |
Code listings |
minted |
Syntax-highlighted code (requires -shell-escape) |
siunitx |
SI units (\SI{299792458}{\meter\per\second}) |
subcaption |
Subfigures and subtables |
Package Load Order
Load in this order to avoid conflicts:
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} % 1. Input encoding
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % 2. Font encoding
\usepackage{amsmath,amssymb} % 3. Math
\usepackage{graphicx} % 4. Graphics
\usepackage{xcolor} % 5. Colors (before tikz)
\usepackage{tikz} % 6. Diagrams
\usepackage{booktabs} % 7. Tables
\usepackage{algorithm2e} % 8. Algorithms
\usepackage{listings} % 9. Code
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib} % 10. Citations
\usepackage{hyperref} % 11. Hyperlinks (LAST or near-last)
\usepackage{cleveref} % 12. Smart refs (AFTER hyperref)
ORCID Integration
ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is the standard persistent identifier for researchers. Format: 0000-0002-1825-0097 (16 digits, hyphenated groups of 4).
Including ORCID in LaTeX Documents
\usepackage{orcidlink} % Provides \orcidlink command
% In author block
\author{
Jane Researcher\orcidlink{0000-0002-1825-0097} \and
John Scholar\orcidlink{0000-0001-5109-3700}
}
Manual ORCID (without orcidlink package)
\usepackage{hyperref}
\newcommand{\orcid}[1]{\href{https://orcid.org/#1}{\includegraphics[height=1em]{orcid.png} #1}}
% Usage
\author{Jane Researcher\thanks{\orcid{0000-0002-1825-0097}}}
ORCID in BibTeX
@article{researcher2026,
author = {Researcher, Jane},
title = {Important Discovery},
journal = {Nature},
year = {2026},
note = {ORCID: 0000-0002-1825-0097}
}
ORCID Record Data Types
ORCID tracks: works (papers, books, preprints), employment, education, funding, peer review, research resources, invited positions, distinctions, memberships, qualifications.
ORCID API Integration
- Public API: Read-only access to public researcher data. No auth required.
- Member API: Read/write with OAuth 2.0 permission. Post works, affiliations, funding.
- Sandbox:
sandbox.orcid.orgfor testing (use before production). - iD Format: Always display as full URL:
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097 - Schema: v3.0 current. Supports DOI, arXiv ID, PubMed ID, ISBN cross-linking.
Best Practices
- Always collect ORCID iD via authenticated OAuth (never manual entry — prevents typos)
- Display the green ORCID icon alongside the iD per brand guidelines
- Link ORCID to arXiv submissions (arXiv supports ORCID in author metadata)
- Include ORCID in all journal submissions, grant applications, and institutional profiles
- Use the ORCID sandbox (
sandbox.orcid.org) for development/testing
When This Skill Activates
- Writing LaTeX documents or templates
- Preparing arXiv submissions
- Formatting mathematical expressions
- Creating publication-ready tables and figures
- Managing bibliographies
- Troubleshooting LaTeX compilation errors
- Converting documents between formats
- Creating Beamer presentations
- Integrating ORCID identifiers into papers
- Academic publishing workflow questions