General ⇒ Some Critique for first LaTeX Document

[dswalker]

Hello all,

This was my first go at LaTeX and I wanted to get a few opinions and advice on how I did (it's 'error' free). Basically, I want to know what conventions I'm following / need to adopt. I've programmed for awhile, but I know each language is different and conventions are necessary / will aggravate others if not used.

This is my resume (altered slightly for internet security). Feel free to comment on that also, if you'd like.

One comment: Being a noob, I didn't use itemize for the diamond bullet points you see, but instead used a separate column to add them where I wanted. I really gave it my best to try itemize for that part, but it was just too brutal (especially with indentations/padding).

Attached: "forumResume.tex", "forumResume.pdf"

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi,

welcome to the board!

Here is my opinion, also with bigger and more complex documents in mind.

Typography:

• I think frequently mixing 4 fonts is bad: small caps, bold, italic and normal in each section. I would not highlight the complete left column in small caps, there's no reason as it already stands out.
• Adding a diamond bullet is not necessary before those bold lines, it's a fancy but unnecessary additional highlighting, which is already done by boldness.
• Using microtype is very good, especially because text is in narrower columns.

Coding style:

• Use macros! There could me one macro which makes a table for reach resume section, getting category, title and contents as arguments. This macro does the formatting, and also the spacing. So, you just tweak this macro for document wide spacing or font changes.
• Avoid font commands (\textbf, \textsf) in the text. Instead, define logical styles (emphasized text, category, heading), use \textbf, \textsf in their definitions in the preamble. It's easy to change later.

LaTeX:

• \scshape is a switch. So don't write \scshape{Education}, but

  Code: Select all

  {\scshape Education}

  or

  Code: Select all

  \textsc{Education}

• Usually hyperref should be loaded as the last package, with some exceptions.
• I would not use \cr or \cr\cr, this is TeX, not LaTeX. It's probably not needed, in LaTeX we use \\ or \newline. Even this is sometimes confused with paragraph breaks or is misused to produce additional vertical space, while it's just for ending a line.

Stefan

[GerlofVito]

Re: Typography -

I think it looks good, especially for a first try. I agree with Stefan_K's comments. And I would add that you may want to consider increasing the vertical spacing in general. Everything seems pressed together vertically, which sometimes make it difficult to read straight across the page (the eye wanders the next line prematurely). I would also increase the vertical space above the horizontal rule at the top of the page, so the vertical space before and after are the same.