Writing Guide for Meteorology Courses

Writing Guide for Meteorology Courses

Writing Guide for Meteorology Courses

Resources:

  • Manuscript template:
  • AMS Guidelines:

General Rules:

  • All pagesshould be printedon 8.5” × 11” paper (one-sided, double-spaced, with 1” margins, and numbered at the bottom).
  • Use a 12-point Roman font (except titles/headlines may be in a larger boldface font).
  • The length of the paper should not exceed 7500 words (about 26 pages).

Grammar/spelling:

  • Use clear wording, logic, good sentence/paragraph structure, and correct spelling
  • Quotations are seldom, if ever, used in scientific papers

Basic Elements:

  • Title page—withtitle (in bold, larger font) and name/affiliation of each author centered on a separate line (each line double spaced)
  • Abstract—aconcise third-person summary of key methods and findings of the paperprinted double-spaced in 250 words or less. The abstract should begin on a new page with the centered header “ABSTRACT” at the top.
  • Body—the main text of the paper (should begin on a new page)
  • Should be divided into sections and subsections, each with a separate numbered heading (the first section is normally the Introduction and the last section is generally given the heading “Results” or “Conclusions”).The first line of a new paragraph should always be indented and the headings should be typed on a separate line as follows (with tertiary and quaternary headings indented):

1. Primary heading

a. Secondary heading

1) TERTIARY HEADING

(i) Quaternary heading

  • Each figure and table must be discussed and cited specifically in the text and referred to by the figure or table number in the order discussed by the paper [e.g., “Fig. 1 depicts a cross-section of…” or “A survey was conducted to investigate this trend (Table 1).”].
  • Each time a statement is made in your paper that builds upon or cites the work of other scientists, a citation must be made to the reference section of your paper. This citation includes the author’s last name and year of publication [e.g., “these results agree with a previous study (Jirak 2006).” or “Jirak (2006) obtained similar results.”] Failure to cite references properly is a form of plagiarism.
  • Mathematical units should be SI and typeset on the same line, delimited with a space between each unit (e.g., m s-1 denotes meters per second, whereas ms-1 denotes inverse milliseconds).
  • Mathematical symbols are generally italicized, with equations being centered on a separate line in the text and numbered on the right-hand side in parentheses if you wish to refer to the equation somewhere else in the paper, as follows:

. (1)

  • Acknowledgments—Aconcise section after the body of the paper that gives credit to those who directly helped with the research or writing in the paper. This section has the header “Acknowledgments” in italics beginning at the left margin. Do not indent the acknowledgments section.
  • Appendices—If you have mathematical derivations or details secondary to the main thrust of the paper, you may wish to include at least one appendix. Each appendix should be lettered in alphabetical order with a centered header (e.g., “APPENDIX A”) and title two lines below. Figures, tables, and equations in each appendix have the appendix letter included in the numbering (e.g., Figs. A1, A2, etc.) Otherwise, the format of the appendix is identical to the body of your paper.
  • References—A complete listing of ONLY those works cited in the paper. These works cited should be in alphabetical order by author’s last name, then first and middle initial. The references section begins on a new page in the manuscript with a bold centered header (e.g., “References”). Each reference should be aligned along the left margin, double-spaced, and separated from other references by an additional carriage return. Below are some sample references in AMS format.

Charney, J. G., and A. Eliassen, 1964: On the growth of the hurricane depression. J. Atmos. Sci.,21, 68–75. (Journal article)

Kalnay, E., and Z. Toth, 1994: Removing growing errors in the analysis cycle. Preprints, 10th Conf. on Numerical Weather Prediction,Portland, OR, Amer. M eteor. Soc., 212–215. (Conference paper)

NCSA, cited 1994: A beginner's guide to HTML. [Available online at (Web)

Wallace, J. M., and P. V. Hobbs, 1977: Atmospheric Science: An Introductory Survey. Academic Press, 350 pp. (Book)

  • List of Figures—Begin this section on a new page, with the header “List of Figures” left justified at the top, and print the text of all your figure captions (double-spaced).
  • Tables—Print each table in the order cited by your paper on its own page with a descriptive caption printed above. The caption should be double-spaced and begin with the table number as follows: “Table 1.”
  • Figures—Same as tables section, except that captions go below each figure and begin with the figure number as follows: “Fig. 1.”
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