Latex:

1. Basic structures

\documentstyle[11pt]{article}

\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.}

\topmargin =-0.4 in

\oddsidemargin=0.25 in

\setlength{\textheight}{8.5in}

\setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}

\setlength{\unitlength}{5 mm}

\pagestyle{empty} ß display no numbers

\date{\ } ß display no dates

\begin{document}

\end{document}

2. Mathematical Symbols (The best way to learn them is to use them, via examples)
3. Resources (some very useful sites):

http://www.latex-project.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/latex/ltx-2.html

http://www.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/

4. Be fancy and creative (beamer, bibtex, amstex, …many other variations to be explored)