In my opinion, YES! LaTeX is a text editing software rival to Microsoft Word. Unlike Word, you don’t get a real-time representation of what you document will look like but it gives you absolute control over you document through the use of packages which you can include. You type you formatting and text into a document, then compile it to give yourself a preview of your document. For a large document, such as a thesis, I’d recommend splitting it into multiple files, perhaps one for each chapter, as they can easily be combined (unlike in Word, where formatting usually suffers as a result).
It is worth noting that there is a tough learning curve with LaTeX to start with but it’s certainly worth it. If you can acquire a format file from someone else, this process becomes much easier. I have my formatting files, which you are welcome to, just ask me for them. I can also discuss how to get started, as once you have compiled a document successfully and added a figure and a table, you’ve pretty much got it!
I’d recommend TeXstudio as an editing package, which can be found here. This does handy things like format highlighting and such, compared to the more common but less user-friendly TexWorks, which is more basic but less helpful. There are also many useful packages that I’d recommend you using (ask me for more details) but a special mention must go to the siunitx package, which is simply amazing. It sorts out the correct size space between numbers and their units and allows a very user friendly method of adding units. It can also display number ranges with ease, and is generally epic!
Dr Linzi E. Amers-Dodd 