How to Use L A T E X Properly for Papers and Theses

Transcription

1 1 / 13 How to Use L A T E X Properly for Papers and Theses Thorsten Dahmen Department of Computer Science University of Konstanz Scientific Practices, July 16 th, 2009

2 2 / 13 Overview 1 Overview 2 Typography 3 Guidelines 4 Conclusions

3 3 / 13 Where to Get Information For beginners: e.g. L A T E XKurzanleitung Before you start: L A T E XTabu Comprehensive information: Tutorial: How to write appealing documents with L A T E X Presentation: Typography by Dr. Matthias Muhlich Book: Typograpfie und Layout Manual: KOMA-Script (scrguide.pdf) for Layout Book: Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Science

4 4 / 13 Different Brances of Typography Typography for... Fonts Books / Reading Advertisement Corporate design Web and screen Arts

5 5 / 13 Two Levels of Book Typography Macrotypography (above word level) Paper type Paper format Choice of fonts Color Composition of sites (type area, margin) Page break Microtypography (below word level) Line break, syllable division Abbreviations, units Punctuation Formulas

6 How do Humans Read? Saccade and Fixation Our eyes jump sequentially Recognition during fixation: 9 letters circularly Use of context information 6 / 13

7 7 / 13 Guidelines for Macrotypography Things to consider A4 use broad margin Justified text good syllable division Images and tables floating objects, labels, captions Never use san-serif fonts in continuous text (Except for DFG-Proposals) Don t use Times (designed for cheap newspaper print) Good font have non-linear scaling, small caps, kerning, ligatures etc. to avoid fakes. But $ (Adobe)

8 Guidelines for Microtypography Accentuation Lines In most cases use italics (passive) Use bold only if word shall attract the eye (active) Never underline words (unless you use a typewriter) Never write words in capital letters Name Symbol L A T E X Usage Hyphens - - syllable division Dash -- parentesis --- parentesis (USA) Streckenstrich Konstanz Zürich -- ranges Minus $-$ like + 8 / 13

9 Guidelines for Microtypography Abbreviations With point if full word is spoken: e.g. NATO Blanks only in German: e.g. z. B. Units: \usepackage{units}, wenige Sekunden 9 / 13

10 Testing Typography Experimental Setup 1 Print the same text with different fonts, margins, linespacing etc. 2 Have different groups of people read it in limited time. 3 Have them answer question relating the content. Results Nobody can read more that 10 pages in A4 format with narrow margin in 10pt Arial! Don t belive it? Try to use OCR software on your proposal! 10 / 13

11 11 / 13 L A T E X vs WYSIWYG Macrotypography will be automatically good Less flexibility avoids mistakes Less font faking Kerning, ligatures Better algorithms for pagebreaks, linebreaks and syllable divisions...

12 12 / 13 Conclusions For good scientific text... Use L A T E Xand not Word Use KOMA-Script Use logical markup Use good fonts with serifs Allow enough margin Set high value on typography consistent and correct Comply with conventions, unless you really know what you do For Papers: Take care of what you are allowed to make use of!!!

13 13 / 13 Suggestions Contact DFG to change proposal template Change bad guidelines in our department Learn about basic typography before you write Compile a list of useful packages for scientific work