Typography for Academic Texts

1

Long-Form Texts Tips on the design of long-form academic texts—such as articles, dissertations, bachelor’s/master’s theses, and term papers: choosing a suitable typeface, choosing a suitable font size, determining appropriate line width and lince spacing, and integrating tables and figures into the page design.

2	Presentations Tips on the design of academic presentations—such as seminar/conference presentations and lecture slides: choosing a suitable typeface, choosing a suitable color scheme, integrating tables and figures into the slide design.

3	Posters Tips on the design of posters—for conferences and exhibitions: laying out the elements—figures, tables, text—systematically, choosing a suitable color scheme, and choosing a suitable font size.

The Fundamental Issue: Difficulty Meets Nonexperts

Difficulty. Academic texts feature many peculiarities that only rarely occur in nonacademic texts. Examples include

• ^superscripts and _subscripts,
• letters from non-Latin alphabets (e.g., Greek letters like α, β, and Γ),
• chemical and mathematical formulas—both inline formulas like \(y_t = β_1 + β_2\,x_{t,2} + β_3\,x_{t,3} + ε_t\) and display formulas like \[ f″(x) ≔ {`d^2 f(x)}/{`d x^2}.\]

Academic texts are, therefore, among the most difficult to typeset.

Nonexperts. At the same time, a large share of academic texts is typeset by nonexperts, such as

• students writing a (bachelor’s/master’s/doctoral) thesis,
• researchers submitting a manuscript to a journal or posting a working paper online, and
• book authors/editors who are frequently required by the publishing house to carry out the typesetting themselves.

This Website

This website addresses the peculiarities of academic texts and provides assistance to those involved in typesetting academic publications. It offers downloads of LaTeX/XeLaTeX templates for academic texts. In these templates, issues such as choosing a suitable typeface, reasonable page margins, appropriate line spacing, etc. are taken into account.