Where to put floats definitions?

Question

I always use floats for figures, tables, graphs, and any other object that is not part of the text. LaTeX do a really good job. Normally I put the definition when i use a withe line (after the paragraph that contains the reference to the float). It is correct? Where we have to put float definition (after the reference with input, at the end of the sentence, ...) to have the best positioning of float (decided by LaTeX, without options like h, b, ... that i never use)?

Answer 1

The most natural place is probably to put the float definition at exactly the point of first reference.

If I understand you correctly you are placing the float definition after the paragraph containing the first reference. That has the advantage of making the source text a bit more readable as the paragraph text is not broken by the \begin{figure}... markup, but that is less of a problem if your figure environment is in a separate file as the markup is then just

... text text text \ref{zzz}{\input{file-with-figure-zzz} text text ....

The disadvantage of always putting the float definition at the end of a paragraph is that LaTeX never moves floats forward more than the top of the page that contains the point of definition, so if you have a long paragraph with \ref{zzz} near the start, then if the \begin{figure} is included at the end of the paragraph that is on the next page, there is no way that LaTeX can put the figure on the page with the reference, even if it would fit.