Writing and Presentations

Scientific writing is an integral part of research. Use these guidelines when writing reports, manuscripts, proposals, presentations, and working notes.

Document Titles

For documents associated with a specific date, such as conference abstracts, presentations, personal statements, or fellowship materials, use:

YYYY_MM_DD_NameOfDocument
YYYY_MM_DD_NameOfDocument_Yourlastname

Use the effective date of the document. Include your last name only when the document is unique to you, not when working on a collaborative document.

For in-progress manuscripts, use:

PaperDescriptiveTitleOfPaper

Use no spaces, use title case, and start with Paper.

Do not include version numbers in document titles. Documents should be under revision control through Overleaf, GitHub, or Google Docs. Do not manage group work by emailing document versions.

Templates

Always use official group templates for group-related work.

• Beamer presentation template
• Manuscript template
• Thesis template

Writing Style

Scientific writing should be professional, formal, and succinct.

• Use a spell checker and proofread for grammar and sentence structure.
• Read text out loud to check whether it flows coherently.
• Avoid colloquialisms, figures of speech, and idioms.
• Paraphrase references instead of using direct quotes.
• Define acronyms the first time they appear, then use them consistently.
• Treat equations as part of the sentence and punctuate them accordingly.
• Avoid using figure references as grammatical nouns.

For example, instead of:

The results are shown in Figure 3 and have excellent agreement.

write:

The results were shown to have excellent agreement (Figure 3).

LaTeX Formatting

All professional writing should be done in LaTeX, either on Overleaf or locally.

• Use one sentence per line in the LaTeX source.
• Separate paragraphs with a blank line.
• Use labels and references for tables, figures, sections, equations, and other numbered objects.

Example figure:

\begin{figure}
   \includegraphics{figures/myexamplefigure.pdf}
   \caption{This is my example figure}
   \label{fig:myexamplefigure}
\end{figure}

Reference it with:

The results are shown to match closely (Figure~\ref{fig:myexamplefigure}). % OK
The results are shown to match closely (\cref{fig:myexamplefigure}).

Use these label conventions:

• fig:name_of_figure
• tab:name_of_table
• eq:name_of_equation
• sec:name_of_section

and use \cref for automatic and consistent formatting of labels.

BibTeX

Use BibTeX to manage citations.

Use the Google Scholar convention for BibTeX entries. The general convention is:

lastnameYYYYfirstword

Acceptable handles:

smith1995analyzing
gras2018new
yi2019fluid

Unacceptable handles:

Smith1995
gras-2018-new
FluidMechanicsYi2019

Scientific Posters

For poster design guidance, see the Caltech scientific poster guide.