Start from LyX if it helps, but just make sure that you grind down the rough edges. Fully enough, I would have exactly the opposite recommendation: Start by wr

Start from LyX if it helps, but just make sure that you grind down the rough edges. Fully enough, I would have exactly the opposite recommendation: Start by writing LaTeX out manually, then move on to LyX when you have a good understanding. This is due to a combination of (1) needing to already know about LaTeX features before you can know to look for them in LyX (buried in menus or whatever) and (2) although LaTeX errors are much rarer when you're using LyX, when you do get them they're often really confusing ones. I'd say that using LyX requires greater knowledge of LaTeX than using LaTeX directly, just applied less often. The benefit of LyX is not that you avoid needing to know about LaTeX. It's that you don't have to see it when you're editing your content. Equations with a lot of subscripts and superscripts come to mind; anyone who claims that it is easier to find and fix mistakes in a nested superscript in the raw LaTeX rather than just clicking directly in rendered representation and fixing it in place is, frankly, lying, if only to themselves.