In general, LaTex is much more popular in the hard sciences since it allows you to create nicely rendered equations. However, it has also been somewhat popular amongst humanities students who do not need to have equations in their text.

I found it remarkably easy to switch: I had about 10k words written for my thesis, in a document containing about 100 citations generated by Mendeley. The hardest part was switching my Harvard-style citations over to BibTex, but even this wasn’t as bad because I could search for “(Gefen 2000)” and replace all occurrences with its BibTex equivalent (\cite{Gefen2000}). In total, the whole procedure took me less than a day. This includes figuring out how LaTex and BibTex works. Below I will highlight some of the pro’s and con’s that influenced my decision to try it out. I’d like to state that I am a novice, so if anyone with a lot more LaTex experience wants to correct anything, let me know.

PROS
Citations
LaTex + BibTex + Mendeley makes citation easy. This is probably the main reason you could consider switching. Mendeley does a pretty decent job of recognizing papers. It is also capable of generating .bib files, with citation keys pre-made (AuthorDate). This makes it very versatile since if you are managing your library with Mendeley, you can always still use Word to write shorter pieces of text, whilst still benefiting from your citations. Citing in LaTex is dead easy: once you know the citation key, the only thing to do is write \cite{CitationKey}. Writing software such as TexMaker makes this process even easier by offering a drop down of existing citations, sourced from your .bib file (think of it as a linked .css file). The benefits of BibTex are even clearer when you are dealing with 100+ citations. Word + Mendeley just isn’t that good (yet) when handling larger bibliographies. The benefits are even greater when you using number based citations like ACM or IEEE: LaTex generates these automatically.

Another major plus it the ability to insert page numbers into your citations: \cite[p. 192]{Putnam 2000}. The sky is the limit when it comes to library size.

Flexibility
When writing in Word, you are stuck with using MS Word on your PC or Mac. Alternatives like Open Office don’t always play nice with your .doc(x) files, so you really have no alternative. With LaTex, you can choose any text editor. This also means that you are platform independent. For some people this might not be a important, but since I routinely use Mac, Windows and Linux (Mint), it is a plus. You could even opt to write it in your browser. Additionally you can use fullscreen editors that allow for distraction free writing, ultimately saving you a lot of time. You also have direct control of the text: there is no second guessing what your word processor is doing: you can see the inner workings.

Stable
LaTex is stable. If your Word document has ever become corrupted, or all your citations lost, I think you can really appreciate the stability of LaTex.

Formatting, Numbering
One of the biggest headaches in Word is getting a nice table of contents and consistent numbering. Sure, it is possible to do so, but the process is not as intuitive as it could be. LaTex is super easy. It has a hierarchy, depending on the document class, and merely typing \chapter{Introduction} tells it that there is a new chapter. The code \section{Method}, denotes a section in that chapter, etc. Putting in a table of contents is as easy as typing \tableofcontents. Images and captions are also significantly easier to deal with. I remember spending a day on my bachelors thesis, just to get the images where I want them. Additionally, pdf’s generated can have hyperlinks to text, figures, citation, etc., plus bookmarks to your chapters.

CONS
Coding
If you haven’t coded before, LaTex might be daunting. Most of us grew up using Word or some other alternative where we are not confronted with the inner workings of the text. With LaTex you are exposed to the syntax. This, once again, sounds more daunting than it is: it is actually simpler than HTML and many people are are quite familiar with this (thanks MySpace!).

Compatibility
Outside of the technical sciences, LaTex is not a very widely used. This can be problematic if you are required to send drafts of your work to colleagues. However, there are some LaTex -> Word -> converters, which makes collaborating easier. I can’t vouch for these though, I haven’t used one.

Design
The default design of a LaTex document looks quite good if you are writing a thesis in Humanities or Technical Sciences. For Design students, this might not suffice. Changing fonts and layout is possible, but there is a slight learning curve. However, you can opt to write entirely in LaTex and then produce a text file (.rtf or .doc) that you can then place into InDesign, so you can design your final document the way you want it. However, there are loads of LaTex packages available that will allow you to create documents that look just the way you want.

To conclude: if you are used to writing rudimentary code and don’t mind working in a text editor, then you might want to give LaTex a try. Setup is not that hard and there are lots of example and source files available. I would generally recommend it for longer writing projects with lots of citations. If you are not using a lot of sources in your writing, then it might not be worth the effort to switch. Simple documents such as short essays might not be easier to write in LaTex.

A few resources:
Citations in LaTeX
Great General Tutorial by Andy Roberts
Default LaTex Layout (pdf)

Some software:
TexMaker, a good cross platform editor.
MikTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in Windows)
MacTex (You’ll need this to compile your document in OSX)

I have never really bothered with trying to figure it out completely but today I managed to do so and since I use InDesign almost exclusively (here’s why) I thought I might share this. Then again, it might be that I am the last person on earth to discover it.

It boils down to this formula:
Size in points = size in pixels / (body size in InDesign/body size in pixels)
eg.
Size in points = 10px / (500pt/1000px)

If this is new to you feel free to read on.

Where to find points as measurement in Indesign

1. Figure out what the width of your site will be. I use this grid calculator to do exactly that.
2. Once you have figured out your body width (let’s say 1000px), measure how wide your pages are in InDesign. This measurement should be in points and should be only the area in the body of your design. Best way to do this is to draw a square that you think it wide enough, you could also try and size it so you have nice round numbers. On an A4 page, 500pts work rather well.
3. Take the width of your working area, or body, for example 500pts, and divide it by the width of your site. In this example the number we get is 0.5
4. From now on, whenever you define a paragraph style that sits within your webpage in InDesign, divide the amount of pixels by the number just obtained. A font size of 10px would thus translate to a point size of 5 pt in InDesign.