How To Write a Paper and Format it Using LATEX

Jennifer E. Hoffman1, 2, ∗

1Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA2School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

(Dated: July 30, 2020)

The goal of this document is to demonstrate how to write a paper. We walk through the process ofoutlining, writing, formatting in LATEX, making figures, referencing, and checking style and content.Source files are available at: http://hoffman.physics.harvard.edu/example-paper/.

I. GETTING STARTED

You should start writing your paper while you areworking on your experiment. Prof. George Whitesidessays: “A paper is not just an archival device for stor-ing a completed research program; it is also a structurefor planning your research in progress. If you clearlyunderstand the purpose and form of a paper, it can beimmensely useful to you in organizing and conductingyour research. A good outline for the paper is also agood plan for the research program. You should writeand rewrite these plans/outlines throughout the courseof the research. At the beginning, you will have mostlyplan; at the end, mostly outline. The continuous effortto understand, analyze, summarize, and reformulate hy-potheses on paper will be immensely more efficient foryou than a process in which you collect data and start toorganize them only when their collection is ‘complete’ .”Here are some concrete steps to get started.

1. Read George Whitesides’ “How to Write a Paper” [1].2. Read through at least one full paper in your target

journal, to get a sense of the content and writing style.3. To clarify in your own head the purpose of your paper,

start by writing your abstract.4. Before you tackle the body of the paper, sketch block

outlines of the figures. Decide what images and plotsyou will put in the paper, and how the panels will bearranged.

5. Outline at the paragraph level before you write. Lookat how many paragraphs there will be in the style ofpaper you are trying to write. For example, for astandard 4-page scientific letter, aim for 13 paragraphs(generally, you can estimate about 200 words per para-graph). Figure out how to tell your entire story (notnumbers, just story!) in 13 stand-alone sentences.

6. Make each of those sentences into the first sentenceof a paragraph, and fill into each paragraph only de-tails that are relevant to that first sentence. If youfind yourself writing details about the figures, cut andpaste them into the captions.

7. If you think of references as you go, you can include theminimal identifying information in parentheses to trig-ger your memory later, e.g. “(WhitesidesAdvMat)”, soall of the information is compact.

∗ jhoffman@physics.harvard.edu

8. Rewrite your abstract, taking into account what youhave learned from the process of writing the paper. Asyou fine-tune your abstract, you may find it helpful torefer to Nature’s instructions for writing an abstract[2] and for clear communication more generally [3].

As you contemplate the paper you have just writ-ten, put yourself in the shoes of the reviewers (includ-ing your collaborators). You already work many, manyhours/week, and you don’t really want to spend moretime reading this paper. So you’re going to be very happyif the figures are pretty, the text flows logically, the ref-erences are hyperlinked for easy access, and you can un-derstand the paper quickly. But you’re going to be verygrumpy if you can’t get the main points of the paper fromscanning through the figures & captions. You’re going tobe even grumpier if you invest time in reading the pa-per but you still can’t get it. Your evaluation of thispaper is likely to be swayed by your ease of understand-ing, regardless of the scientific merits of the work. (SeeRef. 4 for more information on how formatting, even assimple as font choice, will influence the reader’s “cogni-tive ease” and ultimately their judgment of the report.)Down the road, consider a reader who might cite thepaper and launch you to fame and glory: the potentialciter’s decision will be influenced by their ability to easilyunderstand your paper.Your paper should be fractal. Somebody with 30

seconds to look at it should be able to get the main ideajust from reading the abstract. Somebody with 5 minutesshould be able to look at the figures and captions and getmore out of it. Somebody with 10 minutes should be ableto get the story from the first sentence of each paragraph.

II. LATEX

LATEX is a formatting language that allows profes-sional, publication-quality presentation of scientific text,equations, figures, and hyperlinked references. REV-TeX is a specific set of LATEX macro packages assem-bled by the American Physical Society (APS) to stan-dardize manuscript formatting for the various PhysicalReview journals. The APS author website [5] lists ac-ceptable submission formats as: REVTeX (preferred),LATEX, or MSWord. It is sensible to draft your paperin LATEX/REVTeX from the beginning. You will need a

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reference manager, a text editor, and a LATEX compiler.Typically, you will be working closely with other authors,so you should pick a platform that enables simple sharingand collaborative workflow.

Here we recommend the online LATEX compiler Over-leaf (http://www.overleaf.com/) for text editing andcompiling. Overleaf (formerly known as ShareLATEX) isan online platform that is great for collaborative writing:it tracks changes and even has a real-time chat function.Note that LyX is a WYSIWYG (what you see is whatyou get) LATEX editor that may seem tempting if you ini-tially find tex formatting daunting, but LyX may comeback to bite you in the long run, because it hides the gutsof the tex code from the user, making it harder to controlformatting details.

1. Choose & install a reference management softwaresuch as Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/(See appendix A for usage tips.)

2. Make an account on Overleaf:http://www.overleaf.com/

3. Download the source files for this example paper:http://hoffman.physics.harvard.edu/example-paper/

4. Copy the tex and bib files into a new overleafproject, and share with your collaborators.

Alternatively, you may prefer to run LATEX directly onyour own laptop. In that case, follow the steps below:1. Choose & install a reference management software:

• Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/• Papers: http://www.papersapp.com/• Endnote: http://www.endnote.com/

2. Download & install a LATEX compiler such as MikTex:http://miktex.org/

3. Download & install REVTeX 4-2 (see appendix B):http://authors.aps.org/revtex4/

4. Pick an editor such as WinEdt:http://www.winedt.com/(You may need to request a university license; mayrequire ∼ 24 hour turnaround.)

5. Download the source files for this example paper:http://hoffman.physics.harvard.edu/example-paper/, open the tex and bib files inWinEdt, and get started writing!

It’s important not to lose sight of your outline, as youfill in the details of your paper. This LATEX template fileallows you to title each paragraph using the \ptitlecommand. You should keep these titles in place through-out the entire paper-writing process; they will serve as aconstant reminder to keep each paragraph focused on asingle point. You should be able to skim through thesebold paragraph titles, without reading any of the inter-vening sentences, and still understand the basic logicalflow of the paper. At the final step before submission,comment out the line \ptitletrue in the header, tohide the paragraph titles. But do not delete the para-graph titles, because they will remain useful to you inthe inevitable paper revision process down the road!

III. FORMATTING

Whether you are using a compiler on your computeror online, please use the latest version of REVTeX, andcheck your formatting carefully.

Check math & symbolic formatting, as in Table I.

TABLE I. Formatting mathematical symbols.

Incorrect Correct

cosθ cos θ

Tsample Tsample

Vrms, V (rms) Vrms

Ex, x direction Ex, x direction~Bapp

~Bapp

Sb2Te3, Sb2Te3 Sb2Te3

Sb2−xVxTe3 Sb2−xVxTe3

dI/dV dI/dV

B = 5T , B=5T B = 5 T

x direction, X direction x direction

1st, 1st, 2nd, 2nd 1st, 2nd

Use \labeltab:name and \reftab:name to referto tables.

Check hyphenation. Sometimes LATEX likes to di-vide a single letter off the beginning or end of aword, for line wrapping. The default settings forLATEX’s hyphenation of English-language words are\righthyphenmin=3 and \lefthyphenmin=2, but ap-parently they can be mysteriously reset to allow singledangling letters.

Check spacing. When a period falls in the middle ofa sentence, use a \ (backslash) to prevent LATEX fromthinking it’s the end of the sentence and thus addingextra space, as shown in Table II. If you want to pre-vent a linebreak, you can use ~ instead of \.

TABLE II. Spacing.

LATEX Output

Incorrect e.g. incorrect e.g. incorrect

Incorrect Fig. 2 Fig. 2

Correct e.g.\ correct e.g. correct

Correct Fig.\ 2 Fig. 2

Correct Fig.~2 Fig. 2

Number all equations. But do not separately numbereach line of a single multi-line equation.

Use \labeleqn:name and \refeqn:name to referto equations.

If the equation is mid-paragraph, use \noindent atthe beginning of the first line following the equation.

Here is an improperly-labeled equation in the middle

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of a paragraph.

1 + 1 = 2

Use \noindent to prevent indentation mid-paragraph.Here is a more interesting example of a properly labeledequation: the Pythagorean theorem relates the 3 sides ofa right triangle according to Eqn. 1,

a2 + b2 = c2 . (1)

Eqn. 2 shows one more example of a multi-line equationextending the Pythagorean theorem to find the diagonald of a rectangular prism of sides a = 3, b = 4, and c = 12.

d =√a2 + b2 + c2

=√

32 + 42 + 122 = 13 (2)

IV. STYLE & GRAMMAR

Use the active voice. If you use the passive voice, itis very hard to tell the difference between what youpersonally worked hard to do in your experiment, vs.what you are citing as a prior result.

Avoid pronouns if at all possible (e.g. not “that” but“that voltage signal”).

Use adjectives if there is any doubt (e.g. not “the mod-ulation” but “the z modulation”).

Define all acronyms and symbols at first use; then usethe acronym consistently from that point on.

Do not use the word “significantly” -– unless you meanit in the true statistical sense and are prepared to backit up quantitatively.

Remove redundancy, including redundancy betweenmain text and figure captions. When in doubt, theinformation probably belongs in the caption but notthe main text.

Check that all equations are dimensionally correct. For each equation, define all symbols in a previous

equation or in the surrounding text. Report each quantity consistently throughout the text

(e.g. don’t exaggerate a quantity in one place, give anexact version of the same quantity in another place,and round to the nearest 100 in a third place).

Check that all numbers have units. Use reasonable significant figures, report errors where

appropriate, and clearly explain the method of errordetermination.

When in doubt, check examples (e.g. if you wonderwhether acronyms are appropriate in the abstract,check a few recent published examples in your targetjournal).

“Only” can be an adjective or an adverb, so its mean-ing can be ambiguous. It should be placed immedi-ately before the noun, adjective, or verb that it ismodifying. For example “I only bought groceries atthe store” means I didn’t run, jump, dance, or sing atthe store, I only bought. But “I bought only groceries

at the store” means I didn’t buy valves or screws atthe store.

“Its” is possessive;“it’s” is a contraction of “it” and “is”.

“which” vs. “that”: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that

“fewer” vs. “less”: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/less-versus-fewer

“affect” vs. “effect”: http://grammarist.com/usage/affect-effect/

See additional tips from Prof. Margo Seltzer: http://www.seltzer.com/margo/pet-peeves/

V. FIGURES

It is worth taking 2-3 hours to read the definitive guideto “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information” byEdward Tufte [6]. Tufte defines several metrics for figureoptimization:

Data-ink ratio =data-ink

total ink used to print the graphic

= 1.0− fraction of a graphic that can be

erased without loss of data-information

Data density =number of entries in a data matrix

area of data graphic

A clear and visually pleasing figure should: Maximize data-ink ratio. Maximize data density. Avoid “chart-junk”, i.e. hatching patterns that inter-

act with the natural motion of the eye to promote thedistracting perception of vibration in a static graphic.

Avoid excessive colors. Avoid red-green combinations (5-10% of people are

red-green colorblind!) Use concise but clear words (not inscrutable abbrevi-

ations) directly on the graphic, so the reader doesn’thave to dig through a lengthy caption or text to un-derstand the components of the figure.

Orient words horizontally whenever possible.

Figures should typically be made in Python, AdobeIllustrator, or other program that allows vector formatexport, so that all fonts, arrows, etc. will scale cleanlywhen zoomed. Most journals prefer to stay away fromMicrosoft Powerpoint (although it can be exported to epsor pdf) because the fonts are often not transcribed cor-rectly in publication format. A bigger problem with Mi-crosoft is that it does not faithfully reproduce the pixela-tion of data images. Microscope images are acquired witha specific pixel resolution, and that pixelation should behonestly communicated to the reader without interpola-tion. Fig. 1 illustrates this point.

Note that faithful representation of images in vectorformat usually also results in a smaller figures size. This

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FIG. 1. Comparison between blurry pixels (dishonest interpo-lation occurs when the image is processed in Microsoft Pow-erpoint) vs. clean pixels (honest representation is preservedwhen the image is processed in Python and Adobe Illustra-tor). MFM images of vortices in NdFeAsO1−xFx [7].

can be important, because the arXiv places an upperbound of 5 MB on each submitted manuscript.

All figure fonts should be at least size 6 in the finalpublication figure [8]. Note also that san-serif fonts arepreferred by most journals (e.g. Arial, Helvetica). Toachieve the appropriate font size, please start by measur-ing the desired final figure size (e.g. one or two columnwidth) in the desired journal. Then make a box in AdobeIllustrator (or other program) of exactly the final size,and build your figure within it, using no fonts smallerthan size 6. Although some journals do prefer that youinitially submit your figure at full-page size, you can eas-ily scale up your figure for this purpose. But if you startwith a page-size figure and arbitrary font sizes, it be-comes harder to later scale it down while maintainingadequate font size.

Figure checklist:

Use consistent font, at least size 6. Label all axes, with units. Each plot should have a legend that describes all sym-

bols and lines. Each image (or set of same-scale images) should have

an accurate length scalebar, with numerical label.(Note that some journals discourage or “forbid” super-imposing the numerical length on the image. But ourgoal is clarity: we want the reader to understand theimage at a glance, without digging through a lengthycaption to find the necessary number. Journals willgenerally accept this argument for keeping the num-ber on the image.)

Each image (or set of same-palette images) shouldhave a colorbar. The colorbar should be labeled withnumerical values and units if possible.

If using a waterfall plot to display a set of spectra:clearly state the offset of the waterfall plot, or usesmall horizontal lines to denote the true zero referencefor each individual spectrum.

The caption should describes all figure sub-parts, inorder. Each and every mark on the figure should bedescribed; there should be no mysterious unexplained

arrows or other features. If any analysis has been performed (i.e. if it’s not raw

data), then all analysis steps should be clearly di-vulged, usually in the caption (rather than main text).

Clearly explain the origin of all error bars, usually inthe caption (rather than main text).

For STM images: give setup conditions in the caption(Vsample = 100 mV; RJ = 1 GΩ).

For STM spectra: give sample bias modulation in thecaption (Vrms = 2 mV).

For all data: clarify temperature and field conditionsin the caption.

Appropriately cite all copied figures or data, in thecaption of the figure.

Use \labelfig:name within the caption, and use\reffig:name in the paper to refer to it.

VI. REFERENCES

Referencing should be done using BibTeX. Consistently use reference tags that will be eas-

ily recognizable and editable from the tex file, e.g.AuthorJournalYear. Suppose you will be cit-ing Huang et al, Nano. Lett. 16, 4224 (2016) [9]and Huang et al, Phys. Rev. B 93, 125129 (2016)[10]. Instead of Huang2016a and Huang2016b, useHuangNanoLett2016 and HuangPRB2016. (Note: Youcan make these bib tags within Mendeley.)

Spend 5 minutes to use find-replace to delete the ab-stracts, keywords, and other useless info from your bibfile, to make it easier to read.

Alphabetize the bib entries by author last name, sothat it will be easy to notice if there are duplicates.(Note: Mendeley can automatically export them inalphabetical order.)

The hyperlink should be generated from thedoi, so make sure every bib entry has a validdoi. You should delete the URL field (unlessyou are specifically citing a website), because itmay contain a non-general URL such as https://journals-aps-org.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.125129.

Check the LATEX formatting of any special charactersin the author’s names, e.g. S\'anchez

Check the LATEX formatting in the titles. You need touse extra around any letters that should be cap-italized, e.g. title = Quantum Anomalous HallEffect

Chemical formulas should also be enclosed in soelement abbreviations will be capitalized, e.g. title= Experiments on Bi$ 2$Se$ 3$. Don’t use ex-cessively complicated formatting for chemicals. Justput the subscripts in $$.

Use longbibliography in the documentclass at thetop of the tex file, so that the title of each paper ap-pears in the references.

For most citations, you can just use

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\citeAuthorJournalYear, e.g. Jeehoon usedconducting force microscopy to measure a metal-insulator transition [11]. But if you’re using asuperscript citation style, and the citation comesdirectly after a number or chemical formula, useRef.\ \onlineciteAuthorJournalYear insteadto avoid confusion, e.g. Jessie measured the pinningforce on vortices in NdFeAsO1−xFx (Ref. 7).

In the compiled PDF, check all the references carefullyto make sure they have correctly formatted authors,titles, and hyperlinks.

VII. PROFESSIONAL INTEGRITY CHECKLIST

Authorship – are all major contributors and collab-orators included? See the American Physical So-ciety guidelines for authorship at http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/02_2.cfm

Plagiarism – have you been careful to distinguish be-tween your own work and ideas, as opposed to thoseof others?

Citations – have you properly cited prior work, andreferences that you used?

Data Integrity – have you clearly described the dataanalysis methods, and justified any data points thatwere excluded?

Image Processing – have you clearly described any pro-cessing that was applied to images?

Acknowledgments – have you given appropriate creditand thanks to collaborators and other individuals ororganizations who deserve recognition?

Clarity of collaborative structure – if this is a jointeffort, have you identified people who you worked withon this project? Acknowledgments should clearly statewho did which parts of the experiment & analysis, andwho wrote the paper.

Conflicts of Interest – do you have any conflicts ofinterest where you or someone close to you stands togain, financially or otherwise, from this work?

VIII. FINAL CHECKLIST

Think critically about all of your own claims and aboutall of the claims made by your coauthors. If youdo not understand something that your coauthor haswritten in the draft, push back until you do under-stand, then suggest an alternative phrasing to clarifythe manuscript or figure.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We acknowledge advice from Jessie Zhang and HarryPirie to produce Fig. 1.

Appendix A: Mendeley

Mendeley provides a convenient (although not 100%bug-free) database structure for storing, sorting, and an-notating the papers you read. Mendeley also providesan export function to automatically create your bib file.Here are some tips to use Mendeley most effectively.

1. Download Mendeley: http://www.mendeley.com/Launch it on your desktop.

2. Set Mendeley options: Make sure your Mendeleydatabase is set correctly to include the DOI (digitalobject identifier) field. Go to Tools → Options →Document Details. Scroll down and make sure theDOI box is checked.

3. Import paper: In the upper left corner of MendeleyDesktop, click the drop-down menu for “Add” and se-lect the bottom option “Add Entry Manually”. In thedialog box that pops up, scroll down until you find theDOI field. Paste the DOI into the field, and click thelittle magnifying glass icon to the right of the field.This will auto-populate all of the relevant paper infor-mation such as author names, title, etc., without riskof typos due to manual copying.Note 1: Mendeley also allows you to import directlyfrom a PDF file, and it tries to pull all of the meta-data from the PDF, but the process is imperfect. Soit’s safest to use the DOI for an error-free import.Note 2: Even if you use the DOI, some journal titleswill not import correctly with special characters, soyou may need to manually correct.

4. Add tags: It’s useful to add tags to help sort yourimported papers. For example, if you are going tobe writing a manuscript in 2019 on superconductivity,you might add the tag “sc19” to all the relevant papersthat you will be citing in your manuscript.

5. Export bib file: Select all of the references that youwant to include, and go to File → Export. Nameyour file, and it will add a citation key to each paper(e.g. Whitesides2004) and automatically export to abib file.

6. Resolve redundant citation keys: At this point, youmay have several references with the same citation key,e.g. Huang2016a and Huang2016b [9, 10]. For yourfuture convenience, you should manually change theredundant citation keys to be more informative, e.g.HuangNanoLett2016 and HuangPRB2016. Now re-export the bib file.

7. Open the bib file in your tex file editor. By default,Mendeley exports all fields, including long ones like theabstract. To reduce clutter in your bib file, and makeit easier to debug any errors, it’s a good idea to removethe abstracts and other unnecessary fields. For exam-ple, in WinEdt go to Search→ Replace, check the reg-ular expressions box, search for “<abstract**\,>,”and replace it with nothing.

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Appendix B: REVTeX

How to install REVTeX 4-2 on Windows for MikTex:1. Download REVTeX 4-2:

http://authors.aps.org/revtex4/2. Unzip the downloaded folder revtex4-2-tds3. If you don’t already have one, create a folder C:\TeX-

local4. Copy the four subfolders (bibtex, doc, source, tex) into

C:\TeX-local5. From the start menu, open MikTex 2.9 → Mainte-

nance (Admin) → Settings6. On the root tab, add the path C:\TeX-local7. On the general tab, click “Refresh FNDB” (You may

need to close WinEdt, or whatever is using yourMikTex installation, in order to properly “RefreshFNDB”.)

8. Download natbib:http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/natbib/

9. Unzip natbib.10. Open natbib.ins, and run TeX on it (Shift+Ctrl+T in

WinEdt)11. Open bibentry.ins, and run TeX on it (Shift+Ctrl+T

in WinEdt)12. You may also need to get two more packages, i.e. down-

load from ctan and run TeX on url.ins and textcase.ins

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[2] How to construct a Nature summary paragraph.[3] How experts communicate, Nature Neuroscience 3, 97

(2000).[4] D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus

and Giroux, 2011).[5] Physical Review journals web submission guidelines.[6] E. R. Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Informa-

tion, 2nd ed. (Graphics Press LLC, Cheshire, CT, 2001).[7] J. T. Zhang, J. Kim, M. Huefner, C. Ye, S. Kim, P. C.

Canfield, R. Prozorov, O. M. Auslaender, and J. E. Hoff-man, Single-vortex pinning and penetration depth in su-perconducting NdFeAsO1−xFx, Physical Review B 92,134509 (2015).

[8] B. de Bivort, Figure style guide.[9] D. Huang, T. A. Webb, C.-L. Song, C.-Z. Chang, J. S.

Moodera, E. Kaxiras, and J. E. Hoffman, Dumbbell de-fects in FeSe films: A scanning tunneling microscopyand first-principles investigation, Nano Letters 16, 4224(2016).

[10] D. Huang, T. A. Webb, S. Fang, C.-L. Song, C.-Z. Chang,J. S. Moodera, E. Kaxiras, and J. E. Hoffman, Bounds onnanoscale nematicity in single-layer FeSe/SrTiO3, Phys-ical Review B 93, 125129 (2016).

[11] J. Kim, C. Ko, A. Frenzel, S. Ramanathan, and J. E.Hoffman, Nanoscale imaging and control of resistanceswitching in VO2 at room temperature, Applied PhysicsLetters 96, 213106 (2010).