Describe how to use dvips to create a PostScript file myfile.ps . Consult the man page of dvips. An interesting document about LaTeX in DVI-format is available here . Further, LaTeX has three modes. When you start to type text then you are in paragraph mode.
Many special symbols are available in math mode.
You can find these in the LaTeX documentation. The simple mode is the paragraph mode. To control features as bold face, underlining characters and using italic characters LaTeX uses special commands. For more advanced things one uses an environment. The column width is flexibly determined by the longest character string in the whole column.