[Tex/LaTex] Formatting the basic tex report with specific spacing and font settings

fontsmarginspackagesparagraphsspacing

Ok so I am configuring the settings of my tex file before starting my (mathematical) report and am going through my basic template and removing all packages I don't need and believe I have the very crux of it below (if I don't need some of them please let me know!).

Anyway, I have strict settings for my report, these are:

"Use the following margins: 33mm top margin,
38mm bottom margin, 26mm left margin, 20mm right margin. The text should be justified and
typed in BLACK using TIMES ROMAN font (or similar font if not possible) with 12 point
font on 2-point space (single space is acceptable if 2-point space is not possible). Each
paragraph should be indented 5 spaces. Do not leave extra space between paragraphs."

I have set the margins using the geometry package, but I do not know how to change the font or make it justified (I believe it is already justified by default, but am unsure of the font settings). Also, how do I use 2-point spacing and 5 space paragraph indenting?

Thank you for your help!

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,12pt]{report}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% PACKAGES & SETTINGS
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\usepackage[english]{babel} % formatting rules for the English language
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % proper formatting for accented characters and non-standard characters such as pipelines
\usepackage{lmodern} % font formatting
\usepackage{float} % allow floating environments such as figures
\usepackage{amsmath} % math eqn formatting
\usepackage{amssymb} % math fonts
\usepackage[top=33mm, bottom=38mm, left=26mm, right=20mm]{geometry} % page layout

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% DOCUMENT
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\begin{document}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% TITLE PAGE
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\title{title here}
\author{author details}
\date{\today}

\maketitle

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% START OF REPORT
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%



\end{document}

Best Answer

I would try something like this:

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,12pt]{report}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% PACKAGES & SETTINGS
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\usepackage[english]{babel} % formatting rules for the English language
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} % proper formatting for accented characters and non-standard characters such as pipelines
\usepackage{mathptmx}% fot a font which looks like Times New Roman (serif/roman)
%\usepackage{tgtermes}% an altternative
\usepackage[scaled=.90]{helvet}% for a font which looks like Helvetica, scaled to match TNR (sans)
%\usepackage{tgheros}% an altternative
\usepackage{courier}% for a font which looks like Courier (typewriter/monospaced)
%\usepackage{tgcursor}% an altternative
\usepackage{float} % allow floating environments such as figures
\usepackage{amsmath} % math eqn formatting
\usepackage{amssymb} % math fonts
\usepackage[top=33mm, bottom=38mm, left=26mm, right=20mm]{geometry} % page layout
\setlength{\parindent}{5ex}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% DOCUMENT
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\begin{document}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% TITLE PAGE
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\title{title here}
\author{author details}
\date{\today}

\maketitle

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% START OF REPORT
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\end{document}

This will not use Times New Roman itself as that is not included in TeX Live, being a commercial font, but standard substitutions will be used. The commented lines are alternative substitute fonts from the TeX Gyre family. See which you prefer or which look most like TNR to you.

If you have TNR itself, you can use it if you wish. However, you must either use XeLaTeX/LuaLaTeX rather than (pdf)LaTeX, or you must find or generate suitable support files for it. Moreover, the latter is only really an option if you have the font in type1 format or, for pdfLaTeX, truetype format or the licence permits conversion. It you want to know how to generate support files, let me know. I'm assuming there's no reason to in this case since the rules explicitly permit substitution.

The paragraph indentation is trickier. What, you wonder, do they mean by 'space'? This is not obvious in TeX. If they mean the space between words, that is not fixed but varies to get good line breaks etc. Setting it to 5ex seems not entirely unreasonable. This is equivalent to 5 times the nominal width of the letter 'x'. This 'looks about right' to me but see what you think.

Note that it is recommended to specify american or british or whatever for babel rather than english because different versions default to different options. You might also pass this to the class so that any package which can use the option will get it.

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