EDIT: this is becoming a more generic thingy for everything I’d ever need to refer to when writing a paper, later I’ll clean this mess.

Resources – DREAM Lab links to https://dream.cs.umass.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Tips-and-Best-Practices.pdf. Until I set up a system to save PDF info, I’ll paste it as screenshots here:

ChatGPT summarized the relevant pages of the PDF file thus, but didn’t do it well, mostly rewriting myself:

General Formatting

• Smart Quotes: Use `x’ and ``x’’ for single and double quotes respectively.
• Large Numbers: Write large numbers as 54{,}000.
• Word Breaking: Use - to suggest hyphenation points in long words, including ones that already have hyphens inside them. Such words are likely to go over margins etc.: multi-discipli\-nary
  • EDIT: If I don’t want a word to get broken, use mbox: \caption{Worldwide distribution of \mbox{plantNaturalist-}500k}¹
  • EDIT2: the extdash package is even better, same link
  • EDIT3: If you want to allow linebreaks somewhere but without a dash and only if needed, it’s long\allowbreak word²
• Overflow Lines: \begin{sloppypar}... for paragraphs where latex goes over the margin.
• Float Positioning: Place figures and tables at the top of the page for readability: \begin{figure}[t]
• Center Align Floats: Use \centering for aligning tables and figures.

Specific Elements

• Non-Breaking Space: Use the tilde (~) to keep words together, including always
  • before citations: sth~\cite{whatever}
  • after numbers in text
  • before figure/section references
• Emphasize vs. Bold: Prefer \emph over bold or \textit.

Equations and Macros

• Macros: Create macros for things that will be changed later, such as DATASET NAMES. \newcommand{\system}{SQuID\xspace}
  • \xspace here adds as space unless end of sentence. Package \usepackage{xspace}

Spacing and Sizing

• Paragraph Spacing: Use \smallskip, \medskip, and \bigskip, instead of \vspace
• Line and Text Width: Use fractions of \linewidth or \textwidth.
• Resizing Tables/Figures: Use \resizebox with appropriate dimensions.

Other bits I’ll need but don’t want to transcribe but need to mention at least once so I can search for them later

Compression hacks (see pics)

Paper writing hacks:

Even more

best practices - When should I use non-breaking space? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange lists ALL the places where Knuth wanted people to put nonbreaking spaces, incl:

• 1)~one 2)~two
• Donald~E. Knuth
• 1,~2
• Chapter~12

Less obvious and not from him:

• I~am

Also:

• before all cites, refs
• … and inlined equations

ALSO

ChatGPT says that citations should come before footnotes to prioritize the scholarly source over unimportant info. So this [32] ³ and not this³ [32]. Basically footnotes after all punctuation and citations. OK

EDIT: NOT PARENTHESES, THEY SHOULD BE WITHIN PARENTHESES.⁴ DAMN

ALSO

I sometimes write and around ~50% forgetting that ~ is a nbsp — hard to catch when reading the text.

ALSO

As when writing code I like to add some assert False (or a failing test) so that I know where I stopped the last time, \latexstopcompiling here is a neat way to make sure I REALLY finis ha certain line I started but not finished.