Text Formatting ⇒ New Command with Counter

[JonTsu]

Hi LaTeXers,

I was wondering if anyone could help me with the following:

I'm typing up lecture notes and I like to be able to tell where lectures begin. I've been typing \marginpar{\fbox{Lecture 1}}, \marginpar{\fbox{Lecture 2}}, etc.. where I've wanted to show the start of a new lecture. But what I'd really like is to set up a new command with a counter so that I can just type \lect throughout my .tex file and have the lecture # increased by one each time.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Jon

[cgnieder]

This is relatively easy: you need \newcounter{countername} to define a new counter. Then you need \stepcounter{countername} to increase it by one. At last you need \newcommand to define the new command. So if you add the following to your preamble \lect should do what you want:

Code: Select all

\newcounter{lecture}
\newcommand*\lect{%
  \stepcounter{lecture}%
  \marginpar{\fbox{Lecture \thelecture}}}

Regards

[JonTsu]

Thank you, cgnieder, that's perfect!
Jon