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LaTeX (pronounced lay-tech or lah-tech) is a document preparation system. This system helps people create articles for publication. The LaTeX system creates documents in a TeX typesetting program. LaTeX is most often used to format and produce longer scientific and mathematic documents, though it can be used to format any document. LaTeX is not word processing software, such as Microsoft Word. Instead of using buttons, shortcuts, and menus to format the document, LaTeX has users type in commands that tell the software how the document should be formatted. Users do not see the formatting appear in the document as they type the commands. Instead, the formatting from the commands appears when the document is produced, usually in a PDF file, or previewed.