As a long-time LaTeX user, I can confirm that there's quite a bit of overlap between that and masochism.
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
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I was going to say I like the outcome of LaTeX, far more than the experience of actually setting the outcome up.
Curious, is anyone pronouncing them the same or does this only work in text?
I’ve not heard anyone pronounce them the same, but I don’t doubt they’re out there. Probably a decent overlap with the people who pronounce GIF like the peanut butter.
I guess I’m one of them. I’ve never used LaTeX, but I don’t know how else I’d pronounce that.
Lay-tech or Lah-tech is how I've been told it's pronounced, don't ask which one is correct, I don't know
The last sound being one that afaik doesn't exist in English. It's like the j in jalapeño but waaay guttural. It's the Greek letter χ.
The tex there has the Greek letter chi instead of Latin x at the end and is supposed to be reminiscent of a Greek root from which we derived the word technique: techne or τέχνη. The tex there is just pronounced tech usually. The original intention I believe was for it to sound like the ch in loch or bach but that sound isn't seen in modern English(generally even in the examples I gave). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_uvular_fricative
For all the star Trek nerds: that's close to what the Klingon word gagh ends with. Gagh has a voiced uvular fricative, so just do the same without voice and just air and you'll get chi.
Not to be too pedantic, the modern Greek chi is a voiceless velar fricative (or in some cases a voiceless palatal fricative) rather than uvular. The velar location is the same place English pronounces the letter k, uvular is a bit further back, more like the French r. It's a little confusing because the IPA uses the chi symbol for the voiceless uvular fricative even though Greek doesn't pronounce it that way. In Klingon, the voiceless velar fricative is written as H (I believe gh is a voiced velar fricative rather than uvular as well). I think the uvular consonants are q and Q. Apologies if my pedantry was unwelcome
Hey I'm regularly wrong and don't mind being corrected.
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La-tech
The 'X' at the end of \LaTeX is actually a uppercase chi, so it pronounced with a 'k' sound.
It's actually a ch-sound, as in Bach. But Knuth also thinks the k-pronunciation is fine.
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I know how LaTeX is pronounced but I always read it the same as latex.
latex-project.org says "lah-tech" or "lay-tech"
Nah. I've said it like the English word in my head for decades. I'll keep doing it. Argle bargle.
It's like those 'kevinist' names where it sounds like 'taylor' but is spelled like 'wishbone' or something. Just. No.
(Hush, Ceilidh, I almost have a sound argument)
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The X is pronounced “tweet” apparently.
I've only heard LaTeX pronounced like latex in media where someone uses it to show what a geek some character is. eg, I've been typsetting my homework assignments in latex since I was 9.
I've never encountered that kind of LaTeX in media.
I've always pronounced it "Lah-tekh"
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You guys should try https://typst.app/
Love Typst, and I hope it takes off.
I've seen this floating around a few times but am too tired to invest energy into this specific hype train. What exactly makes it stand apart from latex or markdown (then pandoced into latex)? Genuine question. I think once you've found your way around Latex, the major pain IMHO is whenever you apply it for a new use case and need to find out which packages to load that are not outdated. Ah, and alt text for images. But AFAIR this is already mostly solved, just not shipped widely yet.
Pros of Latex I think are important to keep in mind:
- it works since ever and for probably the rest of all our careers
- there is an established community
- the codebase doesn't change on a whim
Pros of typst:
- It makes you happy while using it because it just works
- Packages are available in typst universe and you don't need to install 2000 Debian packages to be able to use it reasonably because most things are just available
- There are some super cool packages like that diagrams one, or that inline comments one.
- If you have an error, it tells you what the fucking problem is instead of printing 2000 lines of crap and saying overfull hbox 200 times
- There are many templates for all kinds of purposes
- Math mode is a bit different from latex but mich easier to remember since you often just write things out. Fractions are just done with /, more complicated things are just writing the name out. It's actually rather intuitive.
- The documentation is much better than latex, especially for the base language.
- It's fast as fuck. My bachelor Thesis builds in milliseconds. No need to build 3 times over with each being 5 seconds.
- Like overleaf? typst.app has that too. Local works just as well though. Language server for neovim or other editors exist too.
- It's actually programmable with variables and loops and conditionals and functions and all that if you need it.
Probably some more, just wrote a little list after waking up out of my head
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LaTeX (/ˈlɑːtɛk/ ⓘ LAH-tek or /ˈleɪtɛk/ LAY-tek,[2] often stylized as LaTeX) is a software system for typesetting documents
Note the pronunciation is distinct from /ˈleɪˌtɛks/ the material.
But, sure everyone has to make that joke at least once.
Venn of this is just two concentric circles.
The one is nearly sexual power play condemned by a huge portion of society, the other is wearing uncomfortable clothes
Funnily, just the other day I was reverse looking up what a symbol was in LaTeX, i.e. I had the \symbol text but not the symbol itself. So I look up whatever that symbol was in text, along with the word 'latex.' I think the search was 'cup latex.' Colour me surprised when I go to 'images', try and see if an image of it shows up. It was not LaTeX. Not with that capitalisation
I had a similar experience looking up the code for ⊥, I didn't realize the world has given a very specific meaning to the words "latex bottom"
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Anyone else have any good latex quotes? Here’s mine:
“I don’t mean to brag, but I’m deathly allergic to latex.”
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That nerd would surely pronounce his kink /ˈleɪtɛk/. Also, nobody loves \LaTeX. Unrealistic. 3/10.
I do love LaTeX. Wrote every thesis and paper with it. Using bibtex was a lifesaver as I didn’t have to care for citations and references. Not caring about numbering, footnotes or annotations and having them automatically is amazing. Also structuring the thesis or paper into multiple separate files that work with version control has web a game changer for me
Even now i'm not in university anymore I use LaTeX for my CV and any formal letter I have to send.
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Also, nobody loves \LaTeX.
Lies, LaTeX is great.
Yes, absolutely.
But does anyone love it?
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Once at school I wanted to know how to use Japanese characters so I search for "japanese in latex" on the images section. Not what I was looking for but not disappointed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I love this meme because there are people who are very devoted to one or the other. And then there is the venn diagram overlap...
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