An Example of the Paper Format

Alex Winsome, Justine Akazuba

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1  First-Level Heading

This document is an example of proper formatting for papers in this course.[1] The fonts should all be Times Roman or Times New Roman font except the email addresses in the title which are in Courier font. Standard fonts are 12 point with no bold. But, note the different size fonts and bolding (or no bolding) used in titles, headings, captions, references, etc.

Paragraphs are indented and justified on the left and on the right to the margins. The page size is US Letter (8.5 inches by 11 inches). The margins are one inch on all sides. You may turn on hyphenation to improve the spacing within each line. The page number is centered at the bottom of the page and also Times (New) Roman.

All these features are there for a purpose. The different size fonts and numbers for headings help us readily see the logical structure of the document. The paragraph indents allow us to see the transition from one “idea” to the next.

1.1  Second-Level Heading

Notice in this document that the numbering for the headings is generated automatically. The paragraph Styles feature is very powerful. By using the predefined styles, the numbering on the headings is managed for you. If you add a new section, all the numbers in subsequent sections will be automatically updated. To use a style, type the desired heading text and then in the Styles menu select the heading style (e.g. “Heading 1”).

In fact, every paragraph in this document uses a particular style. The typical paragraph like this one is the “Text” style. The title uses the “Title” style. The importance of using styles is that it allows you to automatically reformat your whole document. For instance to make this a single space document you would modify the “Text” style to be single space. The way you do this is different in different versions of Word. It is worth your time to become proficient at making these changes so that you can effortlessly keep a consistent and professional format throughout your document.

2  Equations, Tables, Figures, and References

Every document will include all of the above. Let us consider each of these in turn.

Equations: Notice that we will use a bold paragraph topic for this sequence of concepts through which we are walking. This could have been a level 2 heading. But when you are listing concepts like this with short explanations, it may be cleaner to use a bold or underlined paragraph topic to highlight your structure. In any case, here is an equation:

r+α= 2bt (1)

Equations are centered and should have a number on the right side so that you can easily refer to them in your text. To get fancy equations, you will need to Insert an Equation. Note that if you Insert and “object” of type Microsoft Equation you get a better equation editor than the default editor. When you refer to variables in the text, always use italics for Latin letters and non italics for Greek symbols like this: r is the first variable and α is the second in equation (1).

Tables: Here is Table 1. It is centered, numeric values line up, and units are present for all values. The table caption goes above the table. Captions are bold and a smaller font.

Table 1: Example Table

Time (sec) / Money
1 / $ 1
100 / $100

Figures: Below is Figure 1. Note that the caption goes below the figure. Every paper should have at least one figure to better convey their ideas to the reader.

Figure 1: Example Figure

References: The preferred format for references is the IEEE format. In this reference style, citations are numbered inside of square brackets. Here is a single citation [1]. Here we cite a whole sequence of references [2]–[7]. Other styles will be accepted at this time as long as they are used correctly and consistently. Every reference in the reference section must be referenced in this way somewhere in the text or removed.

Appendix A: First Appendix Title

An appendix is where you might include detailed analysis or data that would detract from the main body. Here is equation (2):

(2)

Equations are numbered consecutively through the paper.[2] Note the references do not need to be double spaced and they are a smaller font. Every reference is in the form <author> <title> <source> <date>. Note that long lists of authors (more than 3) can be truncated as in reference [7].

References:

[1]  A.B. Author, “Title of Paper,” Name of Journal, vol. 2, pp. 1-2, 1997

[2]  A.K. Author, “Title of Paper,” in Proceedings of the Conference on ..., City, State/Country, October 18-20, 1993.

[3]  V.E. Author, Title of Book, New York; A Press, 1965, pp. 23-35.

[4]  C.E. Author, “Title of Paper,” presented at the Conference on ..., City, State/Country, October 18-20, 1993.

[5]  D.E. Author, private interview, November 7, 2009.

[6]  E.F. Author, “Title of Web-Source,” Author’s personal website, November 12, 2009. http://www.colorado.edu/iwannt.html

[7]  J. A. Author, K. Y. Secondauthor, et al., “The Heartbleed protocol,” IETF RFC 5432, April 4, 2014.

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[1] More information can be found in the formatting instructions. This is an example of a footnote. Note that it is not used to put in citations but to add additional peripheral information.

[2] Footnotes are numbered consecutively also.