LaTeX.org

Never meant to be as an insult.
OK ... thank you. I have spent many hours trying to get this program to work satisfactorily, so its rather frustrating when someone seems to suggest that I'm just randomly poking around.

Is The LaTeX Companion a book you would recommend?

(And why doesn't this ...

cgnieder wrote:Did you by any chance insert an empty line inside the {align} environment?

No, I did not, but thanks for asking. See my first reply to Stefan.

Does LaTeX only work correctly on a PC? I'm using a Macintosh.

A minimal example how your equation(s) could be typeset:
I modified the example slightly in my second attempt, and there were still errors.

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin ...

localghost wrote:Your example works flawlessly.

No, that's incorrect. The sample file returned errors, as one can plainly see above.

clear and common language
Your referral to my attempt to use this software and "random" and "guesswork" was merely a gratuitous insult, without any use. If you're not interested in actually helping me, but more interested in defending some sort of turf, then please don't reply to me.

consult a ...

Which manual exactly do you mean?
I'm using the manual that came with the software, "More Math into LaTeX," by George Gratzer.

Stefan — I tried your suggestion, and it didn't work.

This is the example file.
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage[parfill]{parskip ...

Which posts, what did you try?
I don't know, and I didn't bookmark them. Next time I will.

Please always tell the error messages. Copy and paste them here.
I tried your suggestion, and it didn't work. I will try to include what you requested, as best as I can understand what that is.

The ...

to avoid random shots and guesswork
I don't know what that means. If you want to help, then please don't use jargon.

Usually it is given to the document class.
The instruction manual makes no mention of document classes with regard to alignment of equations. I'm using the manual that came with ...

LaTeX is not giving me two lines, and I have no idea why. That puts everything together on one line.

Why? The manual claims that a \\ will instruct the program to create a new line.

I would like to simply align a math formula to the left margin. I've read several previous posts about this and tried everything, but nothing works. I tried this:
\begin{align*}
...
\end{align*}

And I get error messages. I tried the fleqn option, and there's either zero effect, or I get more ...