Interfacial and Colloidal Phenomena Lab

Department of Chemical Engineering

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore - 560012

1. Rao et al. (1994) should be typed as Rao et~al.~(1994). Do not italicise `et al'. A `~' between two strings ensures that `et' and `al.' will not be broken across a line. A further `~' before (1994) ensures that a line will not begin with (1994). If the names of the authors are a part of the sentence, they should be referred to as shown here: Rao et~al.~(1994) and Rao and Patil~(1995) have shown that ... . In case you want to provide references for a given idea without making authors' names as part of the sentence, use the following format: As drops move relative to the external fluid, the drop fluid begins to circulate (Rao et~al., 1994; Gupta and Patil,~1995). Please use only the most relevant part of a name while referring to it. C. K. Jaffer Sharif et al is best referred to as Sharif et~al. In the bibliography, the name by which a work is being referred to must appear first, such as Sharif, C. K. Jaffer.
2. A gap of two characters after the full stop and the first word of the next sentence helps you see sentences more clearly in typed form in the ASCII file. Furthermore, it also allows some additional emacs features that work on sentences (compared with lines) to become operational. It helps a lot in editing using emacs. If you are using vi editor, please make sure that file .vimrc exists in your home directory with at least these three lines `:set wm=5', `:set ws', `:set sm' (make sure lines start with colon).
3. When you start a sentence with `Equation', the word `Equation' or `Equations' should never be abbreviated to `Eq.' or `Eqs.' respectively. However, if they appear in the middle of a sentence, they should preferably be abbreviated to `eq.' and `eqs' respectively. Notice that in case of more than one eqs, the abbreviated form does not end with a dot. It is nice to use eq.~10 to make sure that eq. does not appear at the end of a line. Still better option to use is type eq.~\ref{eq:10} where `eq:10' is the label that you would added (using command \label{eq:10}) while typing eq. 10 in \begin{equation} ... \end{equation} environment. If you use emacs and if auctex is loaded, all these environments need not to be typed. They can be invoked by using C-c-C-e.
4. When words `Figure' and `Figures' appear in the beginning of a line, they should not be abbreviated, but `Figure' in the middle of a sentence should preferably be abbreviated `Fig.'. Please notice that the first letter is capitalised, whenever it is accompanied by a number to refer to a specific figure. To make sure that Fig. and figure number are not broken across a line, type `Fig.~5' instead of `Fig. 5'. Still better, use \ref command with \label to make sure that numbers are never wrong.
5. The words Table and Tables are to be always used without any abbreviation and with capitalised first letter, whenever they refer to a specific table of data. Use Table~\ref{tab:3} along with \label{tab:3} within the \begin{table} ... \end{table} environment.
6. The word `data' is a plural and should be used accordingly with `are', `have' and `were' depending on the context.
7. Always follow a consistent pattern for your headings. If they have first letter of each word capitalised, make sure that it is so everywhere in the thesis. If you are following different pattern for section and subsection heading, please make sure that the pattern remains the same throughout the text. If you do not do this, the list of contents will show these mistakes glaringly.
8. All Tables and Figures should have descriptive enough captions so that they can be understood for their content by themselves. Use \begin{figure} ... \end{figure} and \begin{table} and \end{table} environments so that `List of Figures' and `List of Tables' is automatically generated using \captions. \caption allows two fields, one for caption as it should appear with the object and the other for preparing `List of Tables' and `List of Figures'.
9. Use latex facilities of `\label' and `\ref' to eliminate any possible problems with sequencing of equations, figures and tables and also referring them at other places in the text. You may want to do the same even for section numbers and page numbers if you are referring to those.
10. Whenever you want to emphasise a word or a phrase, use the following format {\em this needs to be emphasised.\/} Please remember to put `\/' before you end the curly bracket to allow for proper spacing after the slanted phrase or word comes to an end. Avoid the use of $...$ as it produces a math like string. {\it ...} is also not a good option. Always use {\em ...\/} which is designed just for this purpose.
11. You can simplify $V^{\prime}$ to $V^\prime$ which can be further simplified to just $V'$. It makes typing lot more easy.
12. While trying to insert something in quotes in LaTeX, do not use double quotes on the key board. Instead use two ` to open and two ' to close the quote. An example could be ``This is a test of quote''.
13. If a mathematical equation is a part of a paragraph, do not leave any blank lines before and after \begin{equation} and \end{equation}. The same applies even when you are putting equation using \[ .. \] or $$.. $$. This is very important because a line gap after the equation will cause a new paragraph to begin which you did not want. Similarly, a line gap before will cause extra spacing before the equation making the equation look wrongly adjusted.
14. Use \begin{equation} .. \end{equation} environment only for those equations which you plan to refer to latter. For equations which will not be referred, and the most of them are likely to be of this type, use \[ .. \] or $$ .. $$.
15. Use \begin{enumerate}

    \item first item goes here, \item second item goes here, \item third item goes here, \end{enumerate} to list items as 1., 2., 3., ...

16. Names of Chemicals do not begin with a capital letter.
17. There should be no blank space before `:', `;', `,', `.', `-'. All these have to be necessarily be followed by a blank space, though.