Document classes

The document’s overall class is defined with this command, which is normally the first command in a LaTeX source file.

\documentclass[options]{class}

The following document class names are built into LaTeX. (Many other document classes are available as separate packages; see Overview.)

article

For a journal article, a presentation, and miscellaneous general use.

book

Full-length books, including chapters and possibly including front matter, such as a preface, and back matter, such as an appendix (see Front/back matter).

letter

Mail, optionally including mailing labels (see Letters).

report

For documents of length between an article and a book, such as technical reports or theses, which may contain several chapters.

slides

For slide presentations—rarely used nowadays. The beamer package is perhaps the most prevalent (https://ctan.org/pkg/beamer). See beamer template, for a small template for a beamer document.

Standard options are described in the next section.

• Document class options		Global options.
• Additional packages		Bring in packages.
• Class and package construction		Create new classes and packages.