Drafting a Manuscript with Latex

 
1.  Start with a working template.  AGU has produced good templates over the years, and Patrick Daly has modified these to yield clear results.    (See his comments.)  Here are some appropriate files:

2.  Type your manuscript.  A few ground rules for Latex:

3.  Figures should be encapsulated postscript.  If your software does not place tight bounding boxes on the figures, you can hand edit the bounding boxes, which are normally defined in the second line of the eps file.

4.  The bibliography file (filename.bib) can be created in emacs, which has an appropriate interface. Note that author names need to be separated by the word "and". They should either be in the form, "Smith, A. B." or "A. B. Smith" (and note that you must include a space between first initials.) If you use the emacs template, after you fill in available information, type ^C-^C to clean up the entry.

5.  To convert your raw text file (filename.tex) into postscript use the following procedure:
If you like to proofread compact documents, you can use psnup to put two pages of manuscript on every page.
6.  To make pdf files instead of postscript, there are two options:

7.   See this page for comments on choosing a journal for your manuscript.

Sarah Gille, September 2003; minor updates June 2005, November 2006.