It seems most political science PhDs and professors tend to use LaTex to write research papers. However, as an undergraduate majoring in political science, do you think LaTex is better than Microsoft Word for writing short papers (less than 10 pages) in undergraduate political science courses?
Hi Haoran,
Those students with a lot of experience in MSWord will write fast short papers (not necessarily good ones). And the same is true for those which are good with Latex. The only thing the prof has to do is to determine the format of the paper in all its aspects. If that is done efficiently, the papers will not differ in format whether made in Latex or MSWord. And isn't that the most important issue when writing papers? The content will inevitably be different (if not, there is fraud committed by some students). The format should always be the same, whatever the software used. When writing for a Scientific Journal one has to do exactly the same.
Cheers,
Frank
I think LaTeX is a universal tool that allows to focus on content rather than formatting of the paper. I also think the latter is even more true for short papers. Alternatively, you might like to consider Markdown for writing short papers. Heavy tools that have representation inconsistency throughout platform, like Word, are not good for research papers. The troubles start when you coauthor the article with someone with a different version of the editor or other typesets that your own. Representation ignorant tools (like Markdown, LaTeX and likewise) are the safe way for rapid research papers writing. The only downside is a steeper learning curve for starters. More complex tools like Word also provide rich opportunities for fraud detection contour-measures. That won't work, when the Markdown or LaTeX source is submitted. I hope that'd be helpful.
When I was an undergraduate I only used MS Word for any reports or essays. As a postgraduate and more experienced researcher I almost exclusively use LaTeX for all written work. There is certainly a learning curve when it comes to LaTeX. It is definitely as straight forward and easy to use as MS Word. That being said, once you get your head around it, it makes work so much easier. Especially when you start integrating it with reference managers like Mendeley. Services like https://www.overleaf.com with their numerous templates make LaTeX even easier. If you are planning on doing postgraduate study, or working in research later in your career, chances are you will be working in LaTeX. If that is the case, you will need to learn it at some stage.
By coincidence I have been having a conversation with the MS Community on MS Office's shortcomings and why such a rich company with the expertise at hand has not improved it in all these years. Thinking of the grinding pace when opening Word (or Excel) and the difficulty with footnotes or endnotes, is LaTex any better?
Hello Haoran Zhang !
Latex in the academic world has been by far the best option to write works, projects or articles, due to the ease, having the template is even easier. I recommend you use ShareLatex which is an easy-to-use, collaborative online LaTeX editor. For starters there are more than 400 Models in the template gallery, so it's easy to get started, even if you're writing a magazine article, thesis, resume or something else. ShareLaTeX includes history of all changes so you can see exactly who changed what and when. It makes it extremely easy to keep up to date on the progress of your employees and you can review recent work. In collaborative mode or alone, some mistakes are made. Reverting to previous versions is simple and removes the risk of losing work or regretting a change. Hope this helps.
Website:
https://www.sharelatex.com?r=29a94bae&rm=d&rs=b
I believe that LaTeX is a good investment in the long-term, the learning curve is not steep at all.. For a political scientist, I guess than it is on the edge of convenience, depends on the amount of formal work you make (e.g., regression, theoretical models, etc.).
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