# Write a Professional Research Paper with LyX

## Overview

$$\LaTeX$$ is a professional typesetting system widely used in academia. It produces great-looking journal articles, technical reports, books, and even slide presentations.

One of its main features is that it separates the writing and the formatting stages. The writer can focus solely on writing the content in plain text, and then use some markup tags and commands to stylize the text and define the document structure.

This is mainly what sets $\LaTeX$ apart from WYSIWYG (an acronym for “What You See Is What You Get”) editors, like Microsoft Word. Experienced users can produce professional-looking documents very quickly, but at the expense of losing a Graphical User Interface.

## Meet LyX

LyX is a document preparation software that bridges the two worlds of “What You See Is What You Mean” and “What You See Is What You Get”. It combines the power and flexibility of $\LaTeX$ with a Graphical User Interface and the gentle learning curve of editors like Microsoft Word.

Read more about all the installing options for $\LaTeX$ and LyX. In case you need further guidance, you can access here the full list of official LyX tutorials.