<p>ThereasonLaTeXthinkstherearetoomany}'s here is that the opening curly brace is missing after the <tt>\\date</tt> control sequence and before the word December, so the closing curly brace is seen as one too many (which it is!). In fact, there are other things which can follow the <tt>\\date</tt> command apart from a date in curly braces, so LaTeX cannot possibly guess that you'vemissedouttheopeningcurlybraceuntilitfindsaclosingone!</p>
<p>Inthisexample,LaTeXiscomplainingthatithasnosuchcommand("control sequence")as<tt>\\dtae</tt>.Obviouslyit's been mistyped, but only a human can detect that fact: all LaTeX knows is that <tt>\\dtae</tt> is not a command it knows about: it'sundefined.Mistypingsarethemostcommonsourceoferrors.Someeditorsallowcommoncommandsandenvironmentstobeinsertedusingdrop-downmenusoricons,whichmaybeusedtoavoidtheseerrors.</p>
<p>Acharacterthatcanonlybeusedinthemathematicswasinsertedinnormaltext.Ifyouintendedtousemathematicsmode,thenuse<tt>$...$</tt>or<tt>\\begin{math}...\\end{math}</tt>orusethe'quick math mode':<tt>\\ensuremath{...}</tt>.Ifyoudidnotintendtousemathematicsmode,thenperhapsyouaretryingtousea<ahref="/wiki/LaTeX/Basics#Special_Characters"title="LaTeX/Basics">specialcharacter</a>thatneedstobeenteredinadifferentway;forexample<tt>_</tt>willbeinterpretedasasubscriptoperatorinmathematicsmode,andyouneed<tt>\\_</tt>togetanunderscorecharacter.</p>
<p>Inthiserror,theclosingcurlybracehasbeenomittedfromthedate.It's the opposite of the error of too many }'s,anditresultsin<tt>\\maketitle</tt>tryingtoformatthetitlepagewhileLaTeXisstillexpectingmoretextforthedate!As\\maketitlecreatesnewparagraphsonthetitlepage,thisisdetectedandLaTeXcomplainsthatthepreviousparagraphhasendedbut\\dateisnotyetfinished.</p>
<p>Ifthe"overfull"wordincludesaforwardslash,suchas"<code>input/output</code>",thisshouldbeproperlytypesetas"<code>input\\slash output</code>".Theuseof<code>\\slash</code> has the same effect as using the "<code>/</code>" character, except that it can form the end of a line (with the following words appearing at the start of the next line). The "<code>/</code>" character is typically used in units, such as "<code>mm/year</code>" character, which should not be broken over multiple lines.</p>
<p>Whenyouusethe<tt>\\usepackage</tt>commandtorequestLaTeXtouseacertainpackage,itwilllookforafilewiththespecifiednameandthefiletype<tt>.sty</tt>.Inthiscasetheuserhasmistypedthenameoftheparalistpackage,soit's easy to fix. However, if you get the name right, but the package is not installed on your machine, you will need to download and install it before continuing. If you don'twanttoaffecttheglobalinstallationofthemachine,youcansimplydownloadfromInternetthenecessary<tt>.sty</tt>fileandputitinthesamefolderofthedocumentyouarecompiling.</p>