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| LaTeX Help Page |
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We are using LaTeX for online abstract submission, but detailed knowledge of the formatting language is not necessary. We provide a LaTeX template that takes care of the details of text layout, font size, etc, of the abstract. You only have to add the title, author list, addresses and abstract text. Follow the instructions on this page or in the template file itself.
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It is nevertheless useful to know a few LaTeX formatting commands, e.g., to make text bold or italic, superscript or subscript, or to add characters not in the standard ASCII character set, e.g., Greek symbols, European accents, or mathematical operators. We provide here an informal list of the most common of these formatting commands; please refer to the links at the end for more comprehensive introductions to LaTeX. |
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| Common Formatting Instructions |
In the following table, we list the formatting commands most commonly found in physics abstracts. We only have space for a few examples; follow the links in each section for more comprehensive lists. LaTeX formatting instructions fall into two basic categories:
- Declarations
- These are of the form {\
decl text} where the formatting defined by decl applies to the remaining text within the curly braces (N.B. a space is required after decl, but is not included in the formatted text).
| Declaration
| Example
| Result
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Boldface
{\bf text}
| Phys. B{\bf 65}, 3213 (2000)
| Phys. B65, 3213 (2000)
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Italic
{\it text}
| J. Doe, {\it et al}.
| J. Doe, et al.
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- Commands
- These are of the form \
command{text} where the LaTeX command acts on the text within the curly braces. Some of them only work in Math mode, which is invoked by surrounding the text by two $ signs.
| Command
| Example
| Result
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Subscripts
$_{text}$
| TdB$_{2}$
| TdB2
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Superscripts
$^{text}$
| Ce$^{3+}$ ion
| Ce3+ ion
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Accents
\`{a}, \'{e}, \^{o}
| H\'{e}l\`{e}ne Sch\"{o}nberg blamed El Ni\~{n}o for the storm on the C\^{o}te d'Azur.
| Hélène Schönberg blamed El Niño for the storm on the Côte d'Azur.
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- Special Characters
- These are of the form \
char, and usually provide characters not contained within the standard 7-bit ASCII character set. However, some of them are in the standard character set, but have a special meaning in LaTeX, e.g. \ or %. Most of these need to be preceded by "\". Many characters only work in the Math environment, which is most easily invoked by surrounding the text by two $ signs.
| Character
| Example
| Result
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Greek characters
e.g. $\alpha$
| The ion has a spin of 4$\mu_{B}$.
| The ion has a spin of 4µB.
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Math symbols
e.g. $\pm$
| $1600\pm20$ Jmol$^{-1}$K$^{-2}$
| 1600 ± 20 Jmol-1K-2
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Special characters
e.g. \%
| 100\% of the cost is $<$ \$200.
| 100% of the cost is < $200.
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| Abstract Commands |
The LaTeX abstract file starts with the line
\documentclass{confabs}
which defines a number of new LaTeX commands of the form \command{value}. These commands define information required to format the abstract, such as the title, authors, addresses, contact information etc. Two of the commands, \author and \address, may have an optional label of the form \command[label]{value}, in order to allow authors to be linked to their addresses.
The command arguments within the curly braces can be any valid LaTeX text. They may contain any of the formatting instructions defined above, and may extend, if necessary, over more than one line. LaTeX replaces single line breaks with a space (double line breaks define a paragraph break).
| Command
| Description
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\title{}
| The title of the submitted abstract,
e.g.
\title{Room Temperature Superconductivity in TdB$_{2}$}
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\author{}
| An author of the abstract. If there is more than one author, put each of them in a separate \author{} command. LaTeX will automatically combine these into a formatted list.
If there is more than one author address, add a label to each author
of the form \author[label]{name}. The label can be any alphanumeric text string, and should be identical to the corresponding label provided with the \address command.
e.g, if there are three authors from two institutions in USA and France, you can link them to their respective addresses, using
\author[US]{John Doe}
\author[US]{Jane Doe}
\author[FR]{Jean Dupont}
\address[US]{University of Life, USA}
\address[FR]{Universit'{e} de la Vie, France}
N.B. It is not possible to link an author to more than one address. If necessary, a footnote can be added to the bottom of the abstract using the \thanks{} command within the author field (see below).
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\address{}
| One of the author addresses. If there is more than one address, put each of them in a separate \address{} command. If there is more than one address, link them to the corresponding authors using the optional label of the form \address[label]{address} as described above.
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\thanks{}
| This command can be used to define a footnote containing acknowledgements, alternative addresses, etc. The footnote appears at the bottom of the abstract text. The command, which inserts a label to the corresponding footnote at the position of the command, can be used within the \title, \author, \address commands, or within the body of the abstract,
e.g.
\author{John Doe\thanks{Supported by Institute of Unphysical Phenomena under contract no. ABC-123}}
N.B.If you put the \thanks{} command on a new line, finish the previous line with % at the position of the footnote label. Otherwise, LaTeX treats the newline as a space, which it therefore inserts before the footnote label.
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\footnote{}
| This is identical to the \thanks command defined above.
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| Structure of Abstract File |
The best way of formatting the abstract correctly is to fill in the blank command arguments within the abstract template file. The LaTeX abstract file starts with two lines :
\documentclass{confabs}
\begin{document}
followed by the abstract commands defined above, repeated as necessary:
\title{}
\author{}
\address{}
The body of the abstract is contained within the following lines:
\begin{abstract}
\end{abstract}
LaTeX takes care of line breaks, word spaces, right justification, etc, so the text can be written in free form. It may contain any valid LaTeX formatting commands, including the \thanks{} or \footnote{} commands. The maximum length is defined by the space allocated by the LaTeX document class rather than the number of words, i.e. it depends on the number of author and address lines, and footnotes. In most cases, it will contain between 150 to 250 words. The formatted abstract has a thick horizontal line separating the abstract body from the administrative information. If the abstract extends below this line, it is too long.
Finally, the whole abstract is finished by the following line:
\end{document}
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| Other LaTeX Resources |
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