Effective Formatting in Academic Writing

The Essential Art of Effective Formatting in Academic Writing
The majority of academic and scientific authors would no doubt agree that the most challenging aspect of preparing a scholarly document for publication is the creation of content. Explaining the problem under investigation, describing research processes, and reporting and analysing findings are, after all, the primary reasons why scholars take the time to write and publish their work. Yet content must be presented in an effective format if it is to be clear, accessible and appealing for readers, and the more complex the content, the more important careful formatting becomes. Indeed, designing and implementing the best formats for presenting advanced research in text are so important to successful academic and scientific writing that they have become among some providers of professional textual improvement services a separate editing category requiring additional time and payment. The scholarly author concerned to convey research content effectively therefore ignores or belittles formatting at his or her peril, and most scholars will find it both wise and economical to learn how to format their own documents sooner rather than later.

Fortunately, the guidelines and samples provided by academic and scientific publishers tend to offer a great deal of help for authors. It is therefore a good idea to decide on the journal or press to which you plan to submit your document before you do much formatting and certainly before you finalise that aspect of your writing. Be sure to read the publisher guidelines carefully, paying special attention to any specific instructions about the formats of individual parts and elements of the document. These instructions can vary considerably among publishers, with some saying very little about formatting and others outlining appropriate formats for virtually everything, but common formatting requirements for scholarly books and articles apply to the overall structure of a manuscript, the text sizes and fonts used for headings, the arrangement of margins and other spacing patterns such as indentation, the design and placement of tables and figures, the style and positions of citations and references, and the presentation of personal information within a manuscript. Remember that instructions of this kind not only provide assistance for the author who is formatting his or her own text, but also need to be followed with precision and consistency or the manuscript may be rejected by a publisher without the content ever being considered.

If a publisher does not provide specific instructions on formatting, the guidelines may suggest that prospective authors consult the texts already published by the press and use them as models for formatting their manuscripts before submitting them for consideration. Even when publishers do not suggest this, consulting their recent publications for use as models and templates is an excellent strategy. It can also be helpful when the author instructions are not clear or are simply nonexistent regarding formatting questions that arise as you are preparing your manuscript. Let us say, for instance, that you wish to use several tables in a scientific article you are submitting for publication. You know the journal welcomes tables because they are suggested in the author instructions, but there are no recommendations at all about how they should be designed and labelled. Scanning through recent issues of the journal for articles that use tables and emulating in your own the patterns you detect in their layout, headings, notes and the like will probably prove successful. If what you encounter does not reveal clear formatting patterns, perhaps the journal allows more individuality in tables in order to accommodate a wide variety of material, in which case you will have the creative luxury of choosing the best formats for presenting your research, and you can certainly make good use of any particularly pleasing design features you discovered as you looked over the tables of other authors.