For 1), if you're an Emacs user, you can use org-mode tables, and convert them into LaTeX. You can even do that from the same LaTeX document using "radio tables

For 1), if you're an Emacs user, you can use org-mode tables, and convert them into LaTeX. You can even do that from the same LaTeX document using "radio tables" (https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Radio-tables.html https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Radi...), which you can edit with all the facilities of org-mode, and then simply convert to LaTeX at the appropriate place. Regarding 2), you can nowadays find a wealth of document styles to use, if you don't want your writing to look like a CS paper... While creating proper document classes is a non-trivial amount of work (and so it is in MS Word and other WYSIWYG tools), it can then greatly simplify the task of creating the documents themselves. For example, I have recently done a CV class ( https://github.com/mvarela/orbit-cv https://github.com/mvarela/orbit-cv ), which provides a bunch of macros to automate the creation of your CV/résumé, and looks nothing like a scientific paper...