How to Create Essays with Pandoc and Markdown

Introduction

Writing essays in Markdown and converting them to LaTeX, Microsoft Word, or PDF using Pandoc is a straightforward process. This workflow allows you to maintain a clean, text-based writing environment while producing professionally formatted documents.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure that you have the following tools installed:

• Pandoc — install it with:
  sudo apt install pandoc
• LaTeX — install it with:
  sudo apt install texlive-full

Document and Citation Style

To format your document according to the publisher’s requirements, you may need:

• A LaTeX template provided by the editor (e.g., eisvogel.latex)
• A citation style file required by the editor (e.g., ieee.csl)

You can find citation styles here.
Right-click on the desired style and select “Save Link As…” to download it.

File Structure

Your project directory should have the following structure:

project/
├─ paper.md
├─ bibliography.bib
├─ editor_style.latex
└─ citations_style.csl

YAML Header

At the beginning of your Markdown file, include a YAML metadata block like this:

---
title: "Test Title"
author: "your name"
date: "2025-11-01"
abstract: "This paper is testing Pandoc technology..."
keywords: [Markdown, Pandoc, LaTeX, something]
bibliography: bibliography.bib

csl: ieee.csl

titlepage: true
titlepage-text-color: "000000"
toc: true

mainfont: Times New Roman
---

Generating the Document

To convert your Markdown file into a PDF, run the following command:

pandoc essay.md \
  --from markdown --to pdf \
  --output final_paper.pdf \
  --citeproc \
  --template=eisvogel.latex \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V mainfont="Times New Roman" \
  -V sansfont="Times New Roman" \
  -V lang=el \
  --number-sections
  ```

# Writing in Markdown
### Numbered Equations and References
Here is an example of a numbered equation:

\begin{equation} T[i,s] \equiv T_{r,c} = v \label{eq:basic_representation} \end{equation}

TTo reference this equation within your text, write `\ref{eq:basic_representation}`.

### Images
Include images using the following syntax:

The text inside the square brackets serves as the caption.
Image numbering is handled automatically.
You can refer to this image later in the text using `\ref{fig:myfigure}`.

### Tables
To add a caption below a table, use the following format:

Table: Caption for the table of operators {#tbl:operators} ```}{#fig:myfigure

You can refer to this table later in the text using \ref{tbl:operators}.

Bibliography

If we need a word to start with a capital letter, we can put curly brackets around it in the bibliography file, e.g. {M}athematics.