LaTeX document classes

As we have seen from the first examples, each LaTeX document has a class, i.e., a “type” that determines its appearance and possible contents. For example, an “article” can contain parts and sections (etc.), but a “book” can contain also chapters. Probably the most commonly used classes are:

• the default article, book and report, and
• their counterparts provided by the AMS, with look-and-feel of AMS’s publications: amsart and amsbook (there’s no AMS-style report class; on the other hand, there is amsproc, for articles for conference proceedings etc.).
  To see the difference between classes, try to typeset this simple document:
  

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\author{Marcin Borkowski}
\title{Some document}
\maketitle
The contents.
\end{document}

and then substitute book, amsart and amsbook for article—and see what happens.