Article Layout

2.0 Style and presentation

2.1 Brevity

For reasons of economy, brevity in the presentation of papers is essential. Authors should note that the following practices are likely grounds for rejection of a manuscript, or acceptance only after substantial revision.

• Unnecessary division of work into separate parts of a series of papers.
• Submission of fragmentary work which can be included in a larger article.
• Undue elaboration of hypotheses.
• Over-detailed and verbose exposition of ideas.
• Excessive use of diagrams; for example, a straight-line plot can be adequately expressed as an equation together with, if necessary, a table of deviations.
• Duplication of data in text, tables and figures, etc.
• Descriptions of slight variations of essentially the same technique.    

2.2 Linguistic and typographical conventions

2.2.1 Grammar and spelling. Standard English or American spelling is used but consistency should be maintained within a paper.

2.2.2 Abbreviations. The use of common or standard abbreviations is encouraged. 

2.2.3 Use of italics. Foreign words and phrases and Latin abbreviations are given in italics: e.g., in toto, in vivo, ca., cf., i.e.

In the names of chemical compounds or radicals italics are used for prefixes (other than numerals or symbols) when they define the positions of named substituents, or when they define stereoisomers: other prefixes are printed in roman. (Note: Initial capital letters are not to be used with italic prefixes or single-letter prefixes: full stops are not to be associated with letter prefixes.) For example, o-, m- and p-nitrotoluenes, but ortho-, meta- and para- compounds (o-, m- and p- are used only with specific names; ortho-, meta- and para- are used with classes), N,N-dimethylaniline, trans- and cis-bis(glycinato)platinum(II), gem- and vic-diols, benzil anti-oxime.

The names of periodicals or their abbreviations are set in italics.

2.2.4 Headings. 

(a) Main sections (Experimental, Results and discussion, etc.): side-heading, bold, first initial capital letter only, no final fullstop.
(b) Main side-heading: bold, first initial capital letter only, no final fullstop.
(c) Subsidiary side-heading: bold, first initial capital letter only, final fullstop.
(d) Further subdivision: italic, first initial capital letter only, final fullstop.

For example: