ATL-GEN-PUB-2008-001 ATLAS Style Guide Version 1.3 25 September 2008 Eric Eisenhandler Queen Mary, University of London This is a compendium of information and advice for writing papers and notes within the ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. It covers what to include in the paper, and some general guidelines and specific points about writing a scientific paper. There are sections on the use of English (though it is not a guide to grammar), punctuation, and typography. There is some discussion about the use of both LATEX and Microsoft Word. This Style Guide is meant to evolve as the experiment develops. ATLAS Style Guide Version History Version Date Changes 0.1 27/3/08 Initial draft. 0.2 1/4/08 Added bookmarks and hyperlinks. Various typographical errors fixed and minor improvements made. Added: license or licence, ensure or insure. Labels on figures consistent with text. Minutes and seconds symbols. Computer Modern bad for screen viewing. A or an in front of acronyms. Dropping e before -able. Deprecated prefixes in appendix A. Table text left-aligned, numbers right-aligned. First author sometimes surname before initials. No space before colon. Et al. sometimes in italics. 0.3 4/4/08 More on capitalization of main title and section headings. Particle symbols preferred in italic (should they be?). Non- hyphenation of di- words. Many items on specific ways to write a variety of things in new sect. 6.6.6 (now 6.6.7). 0.4 16/4/08 Do not start a sentence with a symbol. Mentioned BibTeX and EndNote Plus. A few corrections and additions to appendix B. Minor corrections to text. 1.0 18/6/08 Note on US vs. UK word usage in sect. 6. Led or lead, lose or loose, build or built, send or sent. New sect. 6.6.5 on a or an. DOI URLs. Sect. 5.2 now mentions pdfLaTeX. Acronyms added to glossary, others corrected. Added comment on putting figures and tables at top of pages. Mentions of atlasphysics.sty for LATEX macros. Added comment to sect. 3.2.1 on whether data supersede previous results. Minor corrections to text. 1.1 1/7/08 Added phrases to sect. 6.6.8. Corrected errors in mentioning atlasphysics.sty. Medium not media for singular. Some text clean-up. 1.2 9/9/08 Merged glossary with Computing Workbook glossary and several others to make an overall ATLAS glossary, on a separate wiki page; links to it added. Recommended double quotation marks in sect.6.5.4. Added a couple of capitalization items to sect. 6.3. Minor corrections in sects. 4.3.2 and 4.3.3. Various small improvements in wording. 1.3 25/9/08 Fixed a minor error and strengthened some recommendations about graphics formats in sect. 3.3.1. Added PDF recommendation to sect. 5.1. The Microsoft Word source file for the current version of this document is at: http://pprc.qmul.ac.uk/~efe/ATLAS_StyleGuide_1_3.zip – 2 of 42 – Version 1.3 Contents 1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................5 2 Basic rules .......................................................................................................................6 3 Elements of a typical scientific paper .............................................................................7 3.1 Front page matter ....................................................................................................7 3.1.1 Title ...................................................................................................................7 3.1.2 Authors..............................................................................................................7 3.1.3 Abstract .............................................................................................................7 3.2 Body .........................................................................................................................8 3.2.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................8 3.2.2 Theory, models, and definition of important quantities....................................8 3.2.3 Experimental setup............................................................................................8 3.2.4 Event selection ..................................................................................................8 3.2.5 Monte Carlo model ...........................................................................................8 3.2.6 Statistical and systematic uncertainties.............................................................8 3.2.7 Results...............................................................................................................9 3.2.8 Discussion .........................................................................................................9 3.2.9 Summary and conclusions.................................................................................9 3.3 Figures......................................................................................................................9 3.3.1 File formats .......................................................................................................9 3.3.2 General rules for figures..................................................................................10 3.3.3 Graphs and plots..............................................................................................10 3.3.4 Figure captions................................................................................................11 3.4 Tables .....................................................................................................................11 3.4.1 General rules for tables ...................................................................................11 3.4.2 Table captions .................................................................................................11 3.5 Acknowledgements................................................................................................12 3.6 References and footnotes .......................................................................................12 3.6.1 General rules for references ............................................................................12 3.6.2 Journal and book references............................................................................13 3.6.3 Footnotes.........................................................................................................13 3.7 Some recommendations for correcting papers.......................................................13 4 Layout, styles, and typography .....................................................................................14 4.1 Document layout ....................................................................................................14 4.1.1 Overall layout..................................................................................................14 4.1.2 Organization into sections and subsections ....................................................15 4.1.3 Styles...............................................................................................................15 4.2 Typography: general points ...................................................................................15 4.2.1 Paragraphs and page breaks ............................................................................15 4.2.2 Fonts................................................................................................................17 4.3 Typography: specific aspects .................................................................................17 4.3.1 Numbers ..........................................................................................................17 4.3.2 Variables and symbols ....................................................................................18 4.3.3 Subscripts and superscripts .............................................................................18 4.3.4 Special characters............................................................................................19 En-dashes and em-dashes........................................................................................19 Line-breaks..............................................................................................................19 Non-breaking spaces ...............................................................................................19 Non-breaking hyphens ............................................................................................20 Quotation marks......................................................................................................20 – 3 of 42 – ATLAS Style Guide Thick and thin spaces..............................................................................................20 Non-printing characters ..........................................................................................20 4.3.5 Units................................................................................................................20 4.3.6 Equations.........................................................................................................20 4.3.7 Lists.................................................................................................................21 4.3.8 Use of italics and bold type.............................................................................21 4.3.9 Words from other languages...........................................................................22 5 Tools .............................................................................................................................23