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I apologize if this question has been asked before, but I can't find any information on how to cite LaTeX in my documents.

EDIT: My report contains an explanation of LaTeX, and how it has helped me in my internship. Thus, I wish to cite LaTeX in my report.

Example: LaTeX is a high quality typesetting system (citation here). I used it for blah blah blah

Wet Feet
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    You might want to clarify your question, or specify your problem. As it stands, one cannot understand it. –  Dec 29 '13 at 21:31
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    do you mean something like What is best way to mention that a document has been typeset with TeX? – cmhughes Dec 29 '13 at 21:49
  • Sorry, I have edited my question. – Wet Feet Dec 29 '13 at 21:52
  • Did you use a particular document, book or website for the explanation of LaTeX? If so, you should cite that at the appropriate point. That is, I don't think you can cite LaTeX as the source for the claim that it's a "high quality... system" since that's a claim about LaTeX rather than part of LaTeX, isn't it? – cfr Dec 29 '13 at 22:13
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    Your example implies that you want to make reference to someone (authoritative, presumably) who has claimed that LaTeX is a high quality typesetting system. Wikipedia says as much. Of course, so does The LaTeX Companion, right on its back cover, in fact; and it is available in many formats these days. – jon Dec 29 '13 at 22:13
  • Wikipedia is not an acceptable source in many contexts, although it is OK in some. – cfr Dec 29 '13 at 22:17
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    And, from a strictly technical point of view: put \usepackage{biblatex}\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib} in the preamble, and then \cite{companion} in your document (this is a reference to the first edition). – jon Dec 29 '13 at 22:18
  • @cfr -- Sure. It is not clear, hence the 'authoritative, presumably'. – jon Dec 29 '13 at 22:19
  • If you can find a copy of Lamport's book, there is a nice summary statement in there about the system. You can then simply cite the book for the statement. – Sean Allred Dec 29 '13 at 22:31
  • You may also look at the Preface of the book 'Latex Beginner's Guide' by Stefan Kottwitz. – Umz Dec 29 '13 at 23:10

2 Answers2

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I often want to acknowledge my use of software in the production of documents whose content never mentions it. If you want to acknowledge the role of LaTeX etc. in the report itself, you might consider including something like the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{cfr-lm}
\usepackage{texnames}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
        Typeset using pdf\LaTeX, {B{\sc \uppercasesc i\kern-.025em \uppercasesc b}\kern-.08em\LaTeX} and Biber\\in Latin Modern and URW ChanceryL.
\end{center}

\end{document}

enter image description here

or

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{garamondx}
\usepackage{texnames}

\begin{document}

\begin{center}
    The image on the front is a fractal based on\\the Mandelbrot set designed in Gnofract 4D.\medskip

    The GIMP was used to create derived images and\\to combine the images into a background.\medskip

    The final design was typeset using pdf\LaTeX{}\\in URW ChanceryL and EBGaramond.\medskip

    Kile was used to prepare the \TeX{} source\\on a machine running GNU/Linux.\bigskip

    This software may be freely\\used, modified and distributed.
\end{center}

\end{document}

enter image description here

cfr
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There is no proper way of citing LaTeX.

LaTeX is not created by a well-known bunch of people or by a institution you can refer to. LaTeX is not a book (there is a proper way of citing books, that is to say with authors, title, publisher, date, ...). LaTeX is composed by many packages and macros (etc.) with really many authors. So you cannot say "thanks to LaTeX software created by X with the support of Y" (because it will incomplete and therefore not correct).

However, you can choose to mention the historical author of LaTeX, Leslie Lamport and Donald Knuth (for TeX and the original idea). Or you can cite some very famous books about LaTeX like the The LaTeX Companion (but both solutions are not citing directly LaTeX but rather LaTeX history or a LaTeX handbook.

In my opinion, the best way to refer to LaTeX is to talk about the LaTeX community (which is a abstraction) and insert a link to the LaTeX project website.

For example : "I thank the LaTex community for this very useful document preparation system and document markup language".

ppr
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