TeX and LaTeX typesetting for perfectionists – tutorial

I find it easier to use the gui Lyx and then export to latex and then hand edit from there. Saves a lot of time and memory....

For the majority of what many people use in everyday documents, there's not that much to remember. The sectioning directives, itemize, enumerate, tabular, quote,... not much to commit to memory there. I have a skeleton document that I've created over time that I use as a template for the vast majority of any LaTeX documents I create but I use it primarily to avoid having to manually insert a bunch of packages that I use all the time -- booktabs, wrapfig, boxedminipage, listings, (etc.).

Now once you get into adding equations to a tech memo, that's where the GUI might be helpful though, frankly, I find the LyX GUI just as confusing and a PITB to use as Word's. And just as slow. For me, flipping open "A Guide to LaTeX2e" is nearly always a faster way to find the name of math symbol I've forgotten. (One of these days I'll create a simple lookup table document that I can quickly refer to when an odd math symbol's name escapes me so I don't have to reach for that textbook.)