Book excerpt: Are you in a hurry? A friend received a letter from the American Mathematical Society (AMS) inform ing him that his paper had been accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the AMS. If he submitted it as a lt-TEX document, it would be published in 20 weeks any other format would take almost a year before the appearance in print of the article. The friend had It-T EX installed on his computer on Friday, borrowed the manu script of this book, and mailed a It-T EX version of his article to the AMS on Monday. First Steps in YI'EX is for the mathematician, physicist, engineer, scientist, or technical typist who needs to quickly learn how to write and typeset articles con taining mathematical formulas. A quick introduction to E\TE)C and the AMS enhancements is provided so that you will be ready to prepare your first article (such as the sample articles on pages 53-54 and 67-69) in only a few hours. Specific topics can be found in the table of contents, the Quick Finder, or the index. While the index is Jt.TEX -oriented, the Quick Finder lists the main topics using terminology common to wordprocessing applications. For example, to find out how to italicize text, look under italics in the Quick Finder. Setting the stage Watch someone type a mathematical article in I!lfE)C. You will see how to • Type the document using a text editor to create a Jt.TE)C source file.