Preparing Mathematics for Journal Articles

ASCE books often contain mathematical equations. The preparation of equations in your manuscript requires particular care as incorrect or incomplete equations impair the usability of your book and call your work into question. Although your draft manuscript will undergo a technical review and although the reviewers often spot errors in equations, bear in mind that it is not the job of the reviewers to ensure the accuracy of your math or to work out all mathematical equations contained in your manuscript. The same is true at the page-proof stage; a professional proofreader will be checking your book, but you are responsible for ensuring that your mathematical equations are accurate, contain the correct symbols, and are properly arranged.

Style for Mathematics and Equations

• If you introduce certain basic equations or formulas and then present variations, be sure to present the equation or formula consistently. For example, do not use 0.75 p_g sometimes and ¾ p_g others, even though both forms may be correct.
• Type all variables in italics.
• Type Greek characters in roman.
• Type matrices, vectors, and tensors in bold type or in brackets: M or [M].
• Type dimensionless variables in roman type and define them on first use. For example: Froude (F), Reynolds (R), Mach (M), Weber (W), Strouhal (S), Peclet (P), Richardson (Ri), Prandl (Pr), and Schmidt (Sc).
• Do not use hyphens (-) to represent minus signs (–) or exes (x) to represent multiplication signs (×).
• Check for consistency in commonly confused pairs of letters or symbols: Greek nu versus Greek upsilon; numeral one (1) versus lowercase letter el (l); and numeral zero (0) versus uppercase letter oh (O), especially in superscripts and subscripts.
• Insert a zero before naked decimals: 0.25 (not .25) and a –0.5 (not a –.5).
• Use slash equations, not built-up equations, in text and tables; for example,
  (a + b)/(c – d).
• Equations that are built-up or that the reader will refer to later should be set on a separate line from the main text and numbered.
• Equations must be double-numbered by chapter, so that equations in chapter 4, for example, would be numbered as (4-1), (4-2), (4-3), and so on.
• Numbered equations are referred to subsequently in a consistent way, such as Equation (4-1) or Eq. (4-1).

Preparation of Mathematics and Equations

• Wherever possible, prepare mathematical characters and equations using basic word-processing features, such as bold, italics, superscript, and subscript characters.
• Select Greek and other mathematical characters from the Symbol font. Do not use Wingdings, Webdings, or any of the various WordPerfect math and symbol fonts, because it is unlikely the symbols will appear correctly to the copyeditor and typesetter.
• ASCE Publications recommends that you use Word’s Equation Editor feature to prepare built-up equations or expressions with characters not found on the Symbol font.
• If your manuscript has a great deal of technical material, we recommend that you use the MathType plug-in, available from Design Science, Inc. A MathType Preferences File suitable for ASCE books is available upon request from your ASCE Staff Contact.
• Other “equation friendly” programs, such as LaTeX, are not supported by ASCE's books program.