Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Every graduation season, the format requirements of the school graduation thesis will drive a group of college students crazy.

It was not easy to write the paper, but the result was Word typesetting: how to set the header and footer? Sometimes I just want to insert a picture, but the result is that all the text is suddenly misplaced and the enter key runs everywhere.

What I inserted is a picture, not a landmine. Why are you running around in the format?

Search the Internet for "pictures in mobile Word" and you can get a bunch of emojis that are more than that. When setting the page number, Word never knows to skip the catalog page, and re-counting from the body results in the wrong page number of the directory. There are also inexplicable blank pages, pictures and annotations separated from two pages. Not to mention Word stops responding directly. Word, how many surprises do you have that I don't know?

Open the school website, suddenly found "thesis typesetting course", this is not the savior of graduation? As a result, open the tutorial: page 82, it may take longer to learn an Word than to write a paper.

82 pages of typesetting skills? some schools in the Library of the University of Science and Technology of China have even set up "typesetting support groups". There may be an unjust classmate around you who accidentally participated in the school's "Word format training" and became a tool to help students adjust the format.

Say a word to these students: you are! Word! God! ? fruit shell colleague Su seven years, Yue Yue

Whose mental internal friction has been cured by "format help"? When you finally graduated successfully and came to work and thought you could bid farewell to typesetting, the boss said, "to arrange this report today, you need to have both pictures and texts, a beautiful catalogue and a footer." It really makes people sigh when it is time to get revenge with Word.

A random search on the Internet shows that a group of students and workers are experiencing the "Word harm incident" in real time. And this torture has long spawned a business: typesetting graduation papers.

Exquisite? I think you're thinking beautifully. Have you ever spent money for Word? Search for "Word typesetting" on the website, and you can find a lot of alternative typesetting sites. Some websites need 3.5 yuan for single-page document typesetting, and at least three digits for a graduation thesis. On the other hand, some sellers on a treasure can also customize their services, making document catalogs, headers and footers, adding pictures and formatting have already secretly marked the price.

The fee standard of a typesetting website (reminder: please use this kind of service carefully to avoid paper leakage) in order to find out the market, I took out my dusty graduation thesis and randomly found a Taobao seller (I thought the typesetting was good). After adding the seller Wechat, the other party immediately replied: 165RMB instead of 145RMB. Some additional requirements have to be paid separately: 20 yuan for the header and 20 yuan for the form. According to this calculation, the unjust students who help you adjust the format in the university can earn tens of thousands of dollars a month.

How many people does Word software support? There are many student parties tortured by papers in the commodity review area cut off by themselves. after all, if they do not know how to type, they will not even be able to pass the first hurdle of the format stipulated by the school. Graduation season itself is running out of time, and not having tables and pictures in Word can be really maddening.

Whenever this time, there will always be someone holding their own beautifully typeset paper whispered in your ear: classmate, LaTex to understand.

Let Word and LaTeX have a fight! If you want to make a beautifully typeset paper, some people will advise you to use LaTeX. LaTeX is a kind of text typesetting and editing software using TeX language. Typesetting and formatting are realized by programming language. In other words, if you want to make typesetting, you have to learn some programming first.

If you want to make a cover, you need to enter the code in the box instead of directly dragging the text box. Although the LaTex template of the University of Science and Technology of China is a bit complicated, for many science students, LaTeX is really easy to use. For those complex formulas, LaTex uses a standardized format. Users can type it easily, and they don't have to worry about compiling and output in a different style than they thought.

This kind of software which can make beautiful typesetting easily also has its drawbacks. The entry threshold is higher than Word, and the exported PDF documents are not easy to revise, annotations and other problems also deter many people.

Is it better to use Word or LaTeX to write a paper? There are always people arguing so much on the Internet that even the editors of the famous scientific journal Nature "argue". A review in Nature mentions that Nature favors Word. 1/10 of the papers accepted are in LaTeX format, and editors have to manually change them back to Word format. But the editor of Nature Physics (Nature Physics) said: "physicists just use LaTeX, so it's too hard for them to change editors."

In order to find out this problem, some people have done some serious research and let Word and LaTex have a showdown.

Who won? A 2014 study found that Word and LaTeX are equally easy to use, but people who use LaTeX enjoy it more.

In the study, 40 volunteers were asked to type some English texts in Word or LeTaX within 30 minutes. There are three kinds of text: long text, table + text, and text with a large number of formulas. The volunteers were also divided into four groups: Word novice and expert, LaTeX novice and expert. (the time for new finger operation software is less than 500 hours)

It turns out that Word is significantly better at handling long words and tables, but the formula is clearly the home court of LaTeX. But surprisingly, there was no significant difference in performance between Word and LaTeX experts.

However, in addition to the performance of typesetting, the experience of using software is also very important. After all, writing a paper is already very painful. The researchers found that the process of using LaTeX is more enjoyable and less boring and frustrating than using Word.

In another article, the researchers tried to "whitewash" Word so that math graduate students could see the usefulness of Word.

According to the authors, Word 2007 has begun to provide formula editors that can be easily edited in a way similar to LaTeX. So they recruited 20 to 30 students to do math homework with Word, and found that: "the master's degree students in mathematics are very surprised by the mathematical editing function of Word! Word does produce high-quality mathematical typesetting!"

However, a classmate in the article said, "nevertheless, I still prefer LaTeX because its output is more professional." University of Pennsylvania bioinformatics scientist said: "when I have specific requirements for typesetting, I will choose LaTeX,Word is' pretty much 'the choice."

This is not an App2017 year, and Word also supports inserting LaTeX code formulas directly, but this does not change the fundamental problem: Word and LaTex are not the same type of tools at all.

As the name suggests, Word is more focused on word processing. Word is probably the most extensive "WYSIWYG" word processor. With Word, anyone can type on the computer. In 1997, Word accounted for 90% of the word processing market. In the later development, more and more functions are integrated. Open Word and everyone is a content creator.

LaTeX is software that focuses on typesetting. With a clean interface, clear structure and complete symbols, it is more suitable for writing science professional content (and free of charge). It is more suitable for typesetting output after the text is finalized. There are more and more plug-ins for LaTex, but there is still a certain threshold for use compared to Word, which can be used easily.

It is estimated that we can continue to argue about whether to choose Word or LaTex. After all, as soon as the previous "war" paper was published, it immediately became one of the most discussed papers at that time.

Choose the tools according to your needs and go to the school website! Go to the school website! Go to the school website!

Generally speaking, the school library or academic affairs office will provide a guide to the format of the graduation thesis on the website, and more intimate ones will directly give the template. For those who are accustomed to using Word, you can directly format and save the template as a new style, so that you can click on it in your paper.

Many schools provide LaTex templates directly, which is more convenient for those who are familiar with LaTex. As long as you paste your content into the code provided by the template, you can quickly generate the corresponding format.

If you have plenty of time (for example, you still have a long time to submit your paper) and there are a lot of formulas involved in the article, you might as well take some time to learn about LaTex in advance. If time is very tight and the paper is due the next day, then. Leave it to the printer to handle it, and you have to make sure your document is secure and check that the text has been deleted.

It is always right to choose tools according to your own needs. After all, the content of the paper is worth exploring more than typesetting.

Of course, if you are not writing a paper, but want a full screen of colorful text special effects, then do not hesitate to choose Word. (dog head)

reference

[1] Knauff, Markus, and Jelica Nejasmic. "An efficiency comparison of document preparation systems used in academic research and development." PloS one 9.12 (2014): e115069.

[2] Loch, Birgit, Tim W. Lowe, and Ben D. Mestel. "Master's students' perceptions of Microsoft Word for mathematical typesetting." Teaching Mathematics and Its Applications: International Journal of the IMA 34. 2 (2015): 91-101.

[3] Matthews, David. "Craft beautiful equations in Word with LaTeX." Nature 570.7760 (2019): 263265.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: fruit Shell (ID:Guokr42), author: Chen Mou, Editor: Owl, window knocking Rain, Luku also contributed to the picture of this article.

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