A few notes on typography
that you may wish to consider in the event that you, possibly unexpectedly, find yourself appointed editor of a (printed) collection of articles, or maybe contributor to such a collection.
For the editor
General
It is wise to consider basic typographical issues at an early stage, and to communicate your choices to the authors while they still have a chance to conform to them (that is, immediately after they have conceded to contribute to your publication). Such decisions will eventually have to be made anyway; by doing so in good time, you will greatly reduce the efforts and the costs of the subsequent typographical work. (And for that reason, your typographer will be most happy to assist you in your choices, should you feel the need.)
Note in particular that any guidelines on formatting are better than no instructions at all. You will save a lot of work (for your typographer) and possibly money (for yourself) simply by prescribing all authors to use the same template for all articles, although that template may need later revisions. (If you happen to be the typographer as well, your gain will obviously be twofold.) -- On the other hand, in the absence of your indications, most authors will follow their personal preferences. This generally means at least one set of formatting preferences per individual (but some five or six co-occurring suggestions from the same author have been reported).
Please, then, decide (or have your typographer decide for you) on the following questions as early as possible:
Paper, printing, and other high-level topics
- What should be the page size, the number of columns, the column width, the printing height, and the printing width of your publication? The latter two are especially important, since they set the maximum dimensions of the figures, illustrations, tables etc of the articles.
- Should the publication be printed in color, or black-and-white, or a mixture?
- What company, printing works etc should print your publication? Find out all necessary details on the desired graphics format for illustrations and figures (or have your typographer finding out them). For instance, will they accept eps, tiff, png etc files? If you don't consider the question in advance, you may find yourself in front of 200 unprintable low-resolution screen dumps two days before press stop.
- Should you consult reviewers and/or proof readers? If so, do it at an early stage. Please note that there is little point in working on typographic details before the text has taken a final shape, or close to it.
Text
(You may certainly leave some or all of the following points entirely at your typographer's discretion -- but if so, do it explicitly, to avoid mutual surprise.)
- Should there be mandatory sections (e.g. 'Abstract' for a specialized readership, or 'Introduction' for a more general audience)? If so, you may want to specify the extension and possibly the nature of such sections, perhaps "not exceeding 200 words" or something similar.
- Should there be a general recommendation also on the total extension of the text, perhaps to a specified number of words or pages?
- How many heading levels should you permit? Two or three (not counting the title) should generally be enough -- four should definitely be considered a maximum for any publication.
- Should headings carry numbers or not (i. e. "2.1 Methodological considerations", "2.3.4 Software used" etc)? The numbered system should probably be reserved for more specialized topics; it suggests a higher degree of strict logical subdivision, which in that case preferably should pervade in the actual body text as well. It does not go well with the less formal structure of e.g. essays. A common compromise is to have numbers only on the highest or the two highest levels.
-
How should references be formatted, and what should
they contain? Consistent formatting of lists of
references will always require substantial
afterwork, but you will certainly make it easier by
specifying at least the most common cases:
- book by one or more authors;
- article by one or more authors from a collection under one or more editors;
- article by one or more authors from a
journal.
You may want some strategy for references to web sites as well.
- Should footnotes be allowed? You will certainly spare yourself (well, your typographer) large pains by minimizing the use of them. Plain references can be made in parentheses in the body text, and longer quotations and slightly-besides-the-track comments can be placed as endnotes just before the reference list. If you do opt for footnotes, reserve them for references or very short comments.
For the authors
General
Please conform to the indicated formatting guidelines, which you should have received well in advance. (If you haven't, urge your editor to find them fast for you. If nothing happens, try to get in contact with the typographer instead, who will be eternally thankful to you for your efforts. Failing that -- use the guidelines of some well-known journal in your subject area.)
You should (preferably before you start off) have a clear idea about the following points:
- number of words for the entire article;
- mandatory sections (if any), including number of words;
- number of heading levels; numbered or plain headings;
- footnotes allowed or not;
- references, contents and formatting.
Additionally, you may spare yourself possibly unpleasant surprises (and/or much work for the typographer) by considering also the following issues, not quite as obvious. (Of course, if on a particular point your editor has indicated other preferences, such indications take precedence.)
Title and headings
- Please make the title of your article as short as it possibly can be made without losing track of the subject. It should never occupy more than two lines in the final publication; for an ordinary page, this corresponds to some 50 characters including spaces. Do not exceed this length (e. g. by adding a subtitle, as in "Jaws VI -- a comprehensive study of the etiology and pathogenesis of gingivitis and periodontitis") without consulting the editor or the typographer.
- Please try to make your headings and subheadings fit in one line only (although admittedly this may be difficult on a multi-column page). Consider some 50 characters as a preferred maximum also for headings (this preference is weaker than for titles, though). Headings spanning more than two lines should definitely be avoided, no matter the column width.
- Please use the styles of your word processor, and use them as they are intended. Headings of the first, second, third etc level in your text should be marked with the heading 1, 2, 3 etc style, and that style should be used nowhere else. If you don't know how to use styles, ask someone to show you. Please.
- Please send a hard copy by ordinary mail if explicitly asked for. You may also do so even without being asked to, if you suspect that occasional parts of your text may cause trouble (maybe due to characters outside the standard ASCII-set). For such parts, you can also make images and attach them to your file. For that end black-and-white screen dumps may do -- they're not meant to be printed anyway.
Body text
-
Please avoid references of type "as can be seen [in the table/figure] below/above/on the previous page/on the next page" etc. The typographer will try to put your tables and figures as close as possible to the spot you have indicated (preferably with a phrase like "[INSERT FIG 2 HERE]"), but the figure should of course not be split onto two pages, and the placement must make general typographical sense. Your referenced items may thus show up slightly before or after the exact location you have specified, especially if you have a lot of them.
A better way of referencing replaces all such context-dependent expressions with specific pointers: "as can be seen in table 4", "cf Figure 2" etc.
- Please make sure that the publication will in fact have numbered headings before you make use of references of type "see section 4.3".
- Please use footnotes only if explicitly allowed. If they're not, you may use endnotes if you find them indispensable.
Figures (including images)
- Please send images in the format indicated (.eps, .tiff etc) and make sure they are in printable resolution. It is not sufficient that they look fine on your screen -- images intended for printing needs several times that resolution. 300 dpi (dots per inch) is a general guideline. This means that screen dumps generally are inappropriate for printing, as are .gif and .jpg files.
- Please use no images wider than the printable page width. If you do, the typographer will implacably resize them to fit, maybe in some way you don't fully approve of. You will guard yourself from unpleasant surprises if you make such decisions yourself. Cropping is often preferable to rescaling for pixel-based graphics, in particular for photos, if the interesting parts are concentrated in the middle of the image.
- For any figures relating to numerical data, like diagrams from a spread sheet: always include your data. You may be very happy with your particular choice of scales, axes, shades, fonts etc, but more ambitious layout work requires the diagrams of all articles to be uniformly designed with respect to layout. That is the task of the typographer.
- Please provide each and every figure with an identifier ("Figure 3") and a self-explaining description ("Coffe-drinkers vs tea-drinkers. Percentage of entire population"). The figure should be understandable without referring to the body text. For images, a caption may be helpful but perhaps not always necessary.
- Please do not put your figures in one large file together with your text, especially not if there are many figures. Send them instead as separate files and indicate their intended placement in the text with phrases like "[INSERT FIG 2 SOMEWHERE HERE]". If this means many files you may wish to pack them into a zip archive with some suitable software, like WinZip for PC or StuffIt for Macintosh.
- Please do not count on the expressivity of colour figures in a black-and-white publication. Make a b/w version (appropriately sized, of course) of your colour figure and use that when planning the text. In doing so you may for instance find that the blue lines and the green lines of your figure become indistinguishable when converted to grayscale.
- If possible: please avoid large dark areas in your figures, especially as backgrounds. In some cases, the entire figure or parts of it may be inverted in some image-editor. Consult the typographer if in doubt.
Tables
- Please make no tables wider than the printable page width (just as for figures). Multi-column tables in small fonts that looks just fine on Mr. Gates' default page width (in Europe, often 160 mm) may be impossible to make fit on a 120 mm wide page while retaining readability. Consider splitting such tables in two.
- Please DO NOT make tables with the space key. The typographer will have to redo them all from scratch, while cursing you wholeheartedly. Use the table function of any decent word processor or spread sheet program instead. If you don't know how to use such functions, ask someone to show you.
- Please provide each and every table with a self-explaining heading, and each column of the table with an understandable caption.