How can I make a MS-Word document as beautiful as one written in LaTeX?

It's probably possible, but will take you a lot more time and effort than just using LaTeX.

[Edit: from some of the newer comments it seems like LaTeX is doing...

This came up on StackExchange as http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1756/why-should-i-use-latex, and I think the reasons given there are pretty standard.  As for me, the prospect of having to deal with MS Word's table tools makes me shudder. Besides, generating a https://www.writelatex.com/187934xrzvdt in Word is not so trivial.

Microsoft Word is a word processor, LaTex is a typesetting system/markup language, they are not similar things. That's the answer, but, to expand: It is possible to use MS Word in a similar way. However, depending on what you want to do, it can (will) become increasingly difficult/impossible to accomplish the task. It isn't designed for typesetting, and though some features are available (tracking, leading, use of kerning tables), they're difficult to find and often turned off by default. Very basic typesetting is fine: set up styles and off you go. But. Justification is not good, hyphenation is not good, it isn't built for very long documents, it has very poor support for placed imagery, for hanging punctuation. It does not seperate the layout from the content. For maths/science etc, it simply cannot do what LaTex can do. Critically, it does not (and is not designed to) produce professional, print-ready PS/PDF documents. Two pieces of advice: Go look at http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/~hedrick/typography/, it gives a very clear overview of good typography - it's not in relation to LaTex, but the principles are there. You cannot easily do some of the things he talks about in MS Word. You'll want to read [PDF] http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/%7Ehedrick/typography/typography.janson-syntax.107514.pdf: (note that he's set it in several different fonts for comparison if you scroll down the original page). And general advice on fonts: Word's  default (Calibri) is a screen font. It's very good, but it's not for  printing. DON'T go off and install free fonts from Google, this is a bad idea. On a Windows system, you'll  have access to Palatino Linotype. Word comes with its clone Book Antiqua, as well as Century (a clone of Century Schoolbook) - these are fairly good serif fonts for long passages of formal writing. On a Mac you've got Palatino and Hoefler Text, and Baskerville, Times and Optima. Minion comes with Adobe Reader (go to Resource>Font in the installed directory). Reader also comes with the sans-serif Myriad. Installing a trial of, say, Indesign (not CC version) will give you Adobe Garamond Pro in the same manner. NOTE The Garamond that comes with Word is not the same. For free, Ghostscript comes with the URW++ clones of Optima (Classico), Palatino (Palladio) and New Century Schoolbook (Century Schoolbook), as well as Nimbus Sans (URW++'s Helvetica), but they're all just basic sets. If you're likely to be producing a lot of text that needs typesetting, look at purchasing a font. Addendum: Adobe InDesign costs £17.58  per months use at the minute. If you do want something that will  produce beautiful typography and has a GUI, you could do a lot worse.  It's complex, but the basics are easy to learn.

I think you can get pretty close by selecting the appropriate MS Word style set and adhering to it.  The styles have built in fonts, white space management, allows automatic generation of tables of contents and various other beneficial things that happen automatically.  Perhaps it's greatest strength is simply making your documents more uniform in appearance. Unless you are an expert with MS Word, just use one of the default style sets and don't modify it.  I don't think I've ever seen a custom style set that works as seamlessly as the ones that come with MS Word.  These default style sets were probably designed by someone that knows more about graphic design and document layout than you or I do, so you get the benefit of standing on their shoulders. Learn the quick keys for applying styles.  The most useful for me are ALT-CTRL-1, 2, 3 for applying heading styles 1, 2, or 3.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290938 If you're not on MS Word at least 2007, upgrade if you can afford it.  The styles get much better in 2007 and onward. Here is MS's primer on styles:  http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/style-basics-in-word-HA010230882.aspx Use the built in headers, footers and cover pages in MS Word too.  They usually have one of each that matches your style set. Avoid breaking the defaults by changing things unless you really know what you're doing.  For example, just select the page header that works best for you and then don't change the information in the header in it or the margins.  If the default one doesn't have the information you need, then choose a different one.

tl;dr You can make it look similar, but it will never look beautiful. You can mimic the appearance by selecting identical fonts, formats, etc. You can get (some) of the consistency by using styles. But LaTeX's beauty doesn't derive just from its Computer Modern font. It derives from the powerful line-breaking, hyphenation, and other powerful algorithms that power the TeX backend, and that are completely absent in Word. For example, LaTeX uses a dynamic programming algorithm to minimize the "badness" of the text. This takes into account extra whitespace, short lines, hyphenation, and a bunch more stuff you just don't think about while writing. Microsoft Word simply doesn't have these intelligent algorithms. Instead, it uses greedy algorithms that try to fit as many words onto one line as possible, even if that screws up the next line. If you haven't yet seen the famous comparison, take a look at http://www.zinktypografie.nl/latex.php?lang=en. Here's an excerpt: And the statistics: Other places where LaTeX will win include ligatures, true small caps, compatibility and stability, kerning, procedurally generated graphics (that are consistent with the source document appearance), and more. You can copy the appearance, but you won't copy the beauty.

I suggest taking a tour through http://practicaltypography.com/ -- the author does a great job at making typography (so much more than font and spacing!) accessible to the masses. And, since he has an irrational distaste for LaTeX, he provides examples for MSWord, Pages, and CSS. Be forewarned: It will likely take you more time to make your Word document look good, since TeX does a lot of typography work for you, and the defaults in Word are just awful. But it's probably doable, if you've got a particularly masochistic streak.