Tag Archives: letter

May 4, 2010

Latex letter signature as image

By tom

Trying to place an image (scan of one’s signature) between the closing and the name in a letter will unfortunately not result in a nice formatting. Latex automtically adds some space for a manual signature between the closing and the printed name. This space will not automatically disappear if you place your signature as an image there. Neither will it disappear if you place the image directly in the \signature declaration. But, as you might have guessed, there is a work-around:

Remove the \signature{Your name} declaration (see this sample letter) and just replace the \closing{Yours Faithfully,} by:

\closing{Yours faithfully, \\
\fromsig{\includegraphics[scale=1]{signature.jpg}} \\
\fromname{Your name}
}

For more information, consider the documentation.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in LaTeX, Tips & tricks

August 15, 2007

Using draft to determine overfull hboxes

By tom

Latex provides a draft-mode as an optional argument to the document class, having two main effects on the whole document.

Draft is an optional argument of the document class and is therefore used as follows

\documentclass[draft]{...}

The two main effects mentioned before are:

  1. Marking overfull hboxes (no line-break within the margin) by a vertical line, helping to locate overfull hbox warnings. This affects text, but also figures and tables.
  2. Embedded images are not displayed in the generated PDF. Instead only an outline including the file path is shown.

A similar effect as the latter can also be achieved by drafting the graphicx package (\usepackage[draft]{graphicx}).

8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in LaTeX

August 15, 2007

Writing a letter in Latex

By tom

Letters are still rarely written in Latex, even though its so simple and straight forward. With this post we hope to convince at least some people to write letters using Latex. The advantages are obvious, you get a standard layout (which can be changed if necessary), the output is in PDF-format and last but not least, Latex is fun!

The following is a sample code, which can be used for writing a letter in Latex.

\documentclass{letter}
\signature{Your name}
\address{Street \\ City \\ Country}
\begin{document}
\begin{letter}{Company name \\ Street\\ City\\ Country}
\opening{Dear Sir or Madam:}
\dots
\closing{Yours Faithfully,}
\ps{P.S. Here goes your ps.}
\encl{Enclosures.}
\end{letter}
\end{document}

Here is the resulting PDF (example letter) which has been generated using the above Latex code.

For more space before or after paragraphs, openings or closings use \vspace{} or \newline

For a complete list of available commands or if you need to change margins, have a look at the letter style file (letter.sty)

29 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Introduction, LaTeX

August 11, 2007

Creating two columns in article, report or book

By tom

Three different styles have to be distinguished when creating multiple columns in a Latex document. Either we want the whole document to have two columns, single pages or only part of a page. In order to do so, three different Latex commands are used…

Whole document (using article to write a paper):

The only thing you need to do is changing the first command of your Latex-file.

\documentclass[11pt,twocolumn]{article}

It will automatically create two columns in the entire document.

Note: if you are writing a paper, IEEE provides useful templates which can be used and adapted to your needs. You can download them from their “Author Digital Tool Box“.

Single pages:

The command \twocolumn starts a new page having two columns. Accordingly, \onecolumn starts a new page with a single column assuming you are in a two column environment as described above. Both commans do not take any arguments.

The is a way to define the distance between the two columns, use

\setlength{\columnsep}{distance}

If you need a line to separate the columns, the following command will do the job:

\setlength{\columnseprule}{thickness}

Part of a page:

I have posted another article on that, just have a look there. \minipage can also be used for text, not only for figures and tables.

64 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Introduction, LaTeX, Tips & tricks

July 9, 2007

\documentclass{book, report, article or letter}

By tom

A LaTeX document starts with the command \documentclass [option] {type}. The most common document-classes in LaTex are:

  1. book
  2. report
  3. article
  4. letter

All of them are similar, except letter. The main differences can be summerised as follows:

  • An “article” does not provide “chapter”, whereas “book” and “report” do. Thus, the first structuring element of an “article” is \section{name}.
  • In a “book”, a header is automatically added to each page indicating the page number as well as the chapter name on even pages and the section name on odd pages
  • A “book” is always 2-sided whereas in a “report” or “article” you have to specify it by using the “twoside” option. In addition, in a “book” and “report” the “titlepage” and “abstract” will take a whole page each, which is not the case for “article”. In an “article”, you can use the options “titlepage” and “abstract”.
  • The “letter” provides a US-type letter format.

Available document structure commands:

Book: \part{}, \chapter{}, \section{}, \subsection{}, \subsubsection{}, \paragraph{}, \subparagraph{}.

Report: \part{}, \chapter{}, \section{}, \subsection{}, \subsubsection{}, \paragraph{}, \subparagraph{}.

Article: \part{}, \section{}, \subsection{}, \subsubsection{}, \paragraph{}, \subparagraph{}.

Letter: A letter does not know the same structuring commands as other formats, but more specific commands like \signature{}, \address{}, \opening{} and \closing{}.

Except \part{}, all structuring commands build a hierarchy. They have a standard formating and numeration.

Other less common document-classes:

  1. “proc” for a protocol (two columns by default and smaller borders on the left and right)
  2. “slides” for a presentations
  3. “minimal, a prototype for your own document type

You can always change the standard document types, by adapting the *.cls-file to your needs.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Introduction, LaTeX

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 316 other followers