The paths into LaTeX are well-trodden: free introductions to get going fast, standard books when you want depth, and reference sites when you get stuck. This page maps out where to learn (for where to *ask*, see “Community”).
Start free
Three things get you going at zero cost. lshort (*The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2ε*, by Tobias Oetiker and others) is the classic single-PDF primer; it lives on CTAN with translations in many languages, Japanese included, and you can open the local copy with texdoc lshort. Overleaf Learn (overleaf.com/learn) is a polished set of browser-readable tutorials — its “Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes” is a well-regarded on-ramp (readable without an account). The LaTeX Wikibook (en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX) is comprehensive and kept current by the community.
texdoc lshort # 手元の lshort を開く / open your local lshort
texdoc -l lshort # 言語版を一覧 / list the language editionsThe Japanese standard — the “Bibun” book
If you pick one Japanese book, 『LaTeX美文書作成入門』 (by Haruhiko Okumura and Yusuke Kuroki, Gijutsu-Hyohron) is the de facto standard. The current edition is the 9th revised edition (December 2023, ~432 pp.). It runs from the basics to advanced “I want to change the layout myself” territory in a single volume, and the 9th edition strengthens its coverage of modern LaTeX (LuaLaTeX and friends) and installing TeX Live. Okumura is also behind much of Japanese LaTeX (e.g. jsclasses), so the book tracks real-world setups closely. It is the natural first book to keep on the desk, Japanese typesetting included.
The English standards
English has two books of different character. *LaTeX: A Document Preparation System* (Leslie Lamport, 2nd ed., 1994) is the official user’s guide by the person who created LaTeX — a concise, authoritative introduction that gets the underlying model right. *The LaTeX Companion* (Frank Mittelbach with Ulrike Fischer, 3rd ed., 2023, Addison-Wesley, two volumes) is the encyclopedic reference covering packages and typesetting in depth — the place to turn when a requirement gets intricate. Remember the split: Lamport to learn it, the Companion to look it up.
Online references and links
For day-to-day lookups, online is fastest. In Japan the two hubs are the TeX Wiki (texwiki.texjp.org) and Okumura’s TeX forum (okumuralab.org/tex/). Internationally: TeX Stack Exchange (the definitive Q&A), the LaTeX Project (latex-project.org, for news on the core), and CTAN (ctan.org) for the primary package sources. One caution — LaTeX keeps evolving, so don’t take old posts at face value (deprecated commands like \bf, or obsolete packages); prefer recent material.
Learning efficiently
- Read one short intro end to end (lshort or Overleaf Learn) — getting the whole picture comes first.
- Learn packages on demand, when you actually need them; the fastest route is each package’s own manual via
texdoc PACKAGE(see “CTAN & docs”). - Search when stuck — the same question is usually already on TeX Stack Exchange; when you do ask, include a minimal working example (MWE) (see “Community”).
- Check the date — practices in older posts may have been superseded in current LaTeX.