Style Guide

  1. Preliminary Note
  2. Metadata
  3. Orthographic Conventions
  4. Other formalia: Tables, Images, Footnotes, Enumerations, References within the running text
  5. Bibliography

1. Preliminary Note

For any aspect of style, copyediting and layout that is not covered by these guidelines, or when in doubt, please follow the detailed guidance provided by the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition, 2017).

2. Metadata

Author contribution

  • Check whether the entries in metadata/authors.tex actually use the CREDIT taxonomy vocabulary CREDIT-taxonomy (case sensitive). For further information on CREDIT taxonomy see https://credit.niso.org
  • Vocabulary can be understood widely: 
    • E.g. methodology can include the development of a hermeneutic approach or work on a term / concept
    • E.g. investigation can include the annotation of data or interpretation of data 

Software and Data Availability

  • Is a full sentence which ends with a period.
  • Links are indicated using \url{…}.
  • Check links to data.
  • Check if the anonymization has been removed.
  • If there is no information: comment out the corresponding lines in main.tex (i.e. lines \dataavailability or \softwareavailaability)

3. Orthographic Conventions

Titles and subtitles

  • English capitalization of titles and subtitles, short titles, and all section headers (capitalization of nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns)
    • E.g. The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over the Lazy Dog
    • Check also the title indications in self.bib
    • Headings (3rd level as \paragraph) end with a period.
  • Special cases:
    • For words separated by parentheses, the second word starts with a small letter
      • E.g. (Dis)similarity
    • For words separated by parentheses and hyphen, both words start with capital letter
      • E.g. (Dis-)Similarity
    • For a word with hyphen, where not all word form are nouns: all word forms start with capital letter
      • E.g.  “Part-Of-Speech”
    • Non-nouns joined by hyphens: all word forms start with capital letter
      • E.g. “Multi-Dimensional” not “Multi-dimensional”

Parenthesis with dashes

  • Spaces between the dashes and words
    • E.g. “word – word” (not: “word—word”)
  • Latex: word -- word

Italicisation

  • Foreign-language terms
  • Titles of monographic oeuvre (books, movies, compositions)
  • Emphasis
  • Latex: \textit{} not \it

Bold

  • Latex: \textbf not \bf

Numbers

  • Decimal numbers are separated by dot
    • E.g.  0.5
  • Numbers with four digits or larger are separated by comma in groups of three digits
    • E.g. 10,000; 1,000,000

Equations

  • Equations are written in math mode, they start and end with “$”
    • E.g. $N \times 8$

Colon and capitalization

  • If followed by a complete sentence: first letter is capitalized
  • If followed by enumeration: first letter is lowercase
  • If followed by a list: Every entry in the list starts with a capital letter 

Citations

  • Pay attention to the correct characters: Only grave accent ` (opening) and apostrophe ' (closing) – do not use formatted characters.
  • Start and end with double quote
  • Also use double quotes if the citation consists of one word only
  • Only citations are placed within double quotes; distancing terms are placed in single quotes
    • Double quotes: ``Text’’
    • Single quotes: `Text’

URL encoding

  • Must be wrapped in url-tag: \url{link/to/website}
  • Check if all indicated links work.

4. Other formalia

Tables and images

  • The caption is a complete sentence which ends with a period.
  • The images and tables are labelled with a unique label to be referenced within the running text.
    • E.g. \label{labelname}
  • Don’t use additional packages to build tables.
  • Don’t specify the position of the table with [h], [H] or \centering etc.
    • E.g. don’t write \begin{figure}[h].
    • If a figure should cover entire page, use \begin{fullwidthfigure}
  • If the table is especially large, use \begin{table*} instead of \begin{table}.
    • No vertical lines, just one horizontal line under the header: Use booktabs package.
  • Section with lots of figures that shouldn't go into the next section: Use \usepackage[section]{placeins} and set \FloatBarrier at the end of the section.
  • If table interrupts enumeration: Begin table with \begin{table}[htb].

Footnotes

  • Footnoted comments are complete sentences.
  • Footnotes start with a capital letter.
  • Footnotes end with a period.
  • A special case are link-only footnotes.
    • Here write: See: \url{link/to/website}.

Enumerations and lists

  • If enumeration items are complete sentences, they end in a period.
  • If enumeration items are not complete sentences, they are separated by semicolons.
  • The last item in the enumeration always ends in a period.
  • If the enumeration is a list, the list entries start with a capital letter.

References to sections / tables / images within the document

  • The sections / tables / images are labelled.
    • E.g. \label{labelname}
  • Use \autoref{labelname} (not Section / Table / Figure \ref{labelname}).
  • Check if all figures and tables are being referenced in the text. If neccessary add \label{labelname} to figure or table and add \autoref{labelname} to the text. Note that labels must always be assigned after the caption but within the table or figure environment. 

References to bibliographical entries

  • In running text: “author (year)”
    • Latex: \textcite{referenceLabel}
  • In parentheses: “(author year)”, no additional introduction like “cf.”, “see” or the like
    • Latex: \cite{referenceLabel}
  • With page numbers:
    • Latex citations:
      • \textcite[page number]{referenceLabel}
      • \cite[page number]{referenceLabel}
    • Possible page numbering:
      • Start page–End page
        • Latex: [1--3]
      • Single page
        • Latex: [1]
      • Page, page
        • Latex: [1, 3]
      • Only numbers, dashes and commas are allowed in the brackets for page numbers. Always use explicit page numbers (not “f.” or the like)

5. Bibliography

General

  • Provide an identifier whenever possible.
  • The place of a publication should not be set.
    • Latex: Don’t set address, if available set publisher.
  • All first names of the authors (if known) are stated.
  • For entries with original publication dates, make sure a line origdate={1924} is included in the bib file.
  • “Title case” for titles of monographs, anthologies, journals, conferences as well as conference papers, journal articles, anthologies (i.e., change lower case to {T}itle {C}ase for {U}ppercase, but leave Uppercase where already there).
  • Don’t use “title case” for other languages than English.

Identifiers

  • If DOI is available, no additional identifier such as URL or ISBN etc. is needed.
  • DOI: use plain DOI, not the URL.
    • E.g. doi = {10.1145/3240323.3240369}
  • Use the URL only if a publication was published online and has no DOI.
    • Set urldate in ISO-format (yyyy-mm-dd).
      • E.g. urldate = {1989-09-12}
  • Don’t use ISSN or ISBN as identifiers.

Conference articles or journal articles

  • Latex: @inproceedings and @article
  • Date: Only set to the year, not the month
    • Exception: encyclopaedic articles which are versioned by the exact date of publication. Set date to exact date in this case.
  • Has either
    • A DOI or
    • A URL and a urldate
  • Journal articles (@article)
    • For @article: specify number (for the issue), and date (for the year). In cases with volumes, also specify volume.
  • ArXiv articles
    • journal = {arXiv preprint}
    • doi = {arXiv doi}

Monographs and anthologies

  • Set publisher’s name: publisher = {name}.