latex

I've written a lot of use case documents lately for software requirements specifications, and as use cases get more complex, I find the need for "sub use cases" or "alternate scenarios". When referring to these from the main use case (or anywhere else), it's nice to be able to use LaTeX's reference capability.

Summary: Use the LaTeX soul package to highlight text in a LaTeX document.

Suppose you want to provide a highlight color or background color for text in a LaTeX document. A good example is when you want to highlight the background yellow, so it looks like it was highlighted with a marker, to catch a reader's attention. "How do you do this in LaTeX?" you ask.

Normally I like to answer "simple", but in this case there is a multi-step answer. It's still pretty easy, but you'll need to download a package named "soul".

LaTeX FAQ: How can I prevent line breaks from occurring in my LaTeX documents?

Another nice thing about LaTeX is that you can prevent line breaks between words that should not be broken, things like people's names. To prevent a line break from occurring, use the tilde character (~) instead of a space, like this:

Mr.~John~Doe

This keeps "Mr. John Doe" on the same line when your document is created.

The ability to create notes in the margin (also referred to as "margin notes" or "marginal notes") is a really nice/cool feature in LaTeX. In the words of Edward Tufte, it lets you keep your notes near your content, which is a good thing.

Creating the margin notes themselves is very easy. Here's how to create a margin note with the LaTeX \marginpar command:

\marginpar{This note will appear in the margin.}

LaTeX font question: How do I underline text in a LaTeX document?

This actually ends up being one of the easiest things to accomplish related to LaTeX font formatting. Its a little inconsistent from the LaTeX tags you use to create bold and italicized text, all you have to do is use the LaTeX \underline tag: