LaTeX, which is pronounced «Lah-tech» or «Lay-tech» (to rhyme with «blech» or «Bertolt Brecht»), is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting. We learn from the LaTeX project’s about site: Collection of some prescriptive texts available to us

I do this to show thatĪ) we don’t have the solution for every problem,ī) for some problems, there probably won’t ever be a solutionĬ) if you’re an asshole to someone because they don’t use your favourite pronounciation, you do this because you’re an asshole and not because you’re right. In the following, however, I’d like to deconstruct some of the prescriptive texts indicating there was one “correct” pronounciation.

and, here’s where it gets complicated: “tec”, “tech” or “teks”.Īs I said above, it is ok to use any pronounciation of your liking as there is no unified pronounciation anyway and probably won’t ever be.

either “Lay” or “lah” for the first syllable (no holy wars involved).

I thus invite everyone not to be aggressive about the pronounciation convention of your choosing. This is why I want to prove in this article that the question of how to pronounce “LaTeX” is actually a logical dilemma we can’t solve. But it can sometimes come to holy wars if you refuse to adopt the accepted pronounciation at large in your social or work environment. There are multiple pronounciations currently in use which are all considered to be more or less valid. Unlike other explanations, I dont’ want to provide an answer (because there isn’t one) but rather explain why this question is not just a matter of “knowing how it’s pronounced” and thereby, show why we need the Humanities. It turns out to be a classical Humanities’ style thinking kind of logical dilemma. And explain to you, why this question cannot be answered if you want to take the investigation seriously. In this post, I want to address the question of how to pronounce “LaTeX”.

How is latex text editor pronounced