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What font size should a mathematics paper be written in? \large?

If it's 12pt, how do you indicate that?

Finally, while writing my mathematics paper I'm seeing far too many sentences that end in -. For example:

The Bactkracking Algorithm has a plethora of appli-
cations. It is used...

Can I get rid of or reduce the number of -'s?

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  • There is no rule to this since the journals have their own style to publish. But you can use 11pt with the command \documentclass[11pt]{article}. Also, load the babel package with the option for your language (for example, \usepackage[english]{babel})
    – Sigur
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:00

2 Answers 2

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Depending on where you are releasing your paper the appropriate font size is different. A journal will have its own formatting standards, quite likely its own documentclass, and you should follow that. Mathematicians who "publish" papers to the arXiv tend to just use the defaults, so a lot of papers there are 10pt. Many people (such as those with poor eyesight, and also me) express a preference for 12pt, which is done via \documentclass[12pt]{article} (or whatever class you use); if you do that, you can also use the geometry package to change the margins to one inch: \usepackage{geometry}\geometry{margin=1in}, as the default large margins start to look silly with fuller text.

The hyphens are inserted automatically by TeX because you are using too many long words. Sometimes the microtype package can help with that, but sometimes, there's no other way to fit everything nicely onto the line.

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    What are the proper margins for a mathematics paper? I'm currently using the default math report format in TeXnic Center and it has a two-inch margin. That just seems a little too big on each side
    – Anthony Peter
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:16
  • @Anthony: I think most people use either the article-default (1.5in), the amsart-default (I think also 1.5in), or 1in. Math doesn't really have a universal standard for this. I like 1in margins because they don't cramp my equations.
    – Ryan Reich
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:20
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Here is a good way to begin:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{amsart}
\usepackage{amsthm,amsmath,amssymb}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}

\end{document}
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  • 1
    What are the proper margins for a mathematics paper? I'm currently using the default math report format in TeXnic Center and it has a two-inch margin. That just seems a little too big on each side
    – Anthony Peter
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:13
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    For a while I suggest you to use the standard margins. Don't change them now. If you send this paper to somebody it will be better to read. Try to download some papers from arxiv to see how they typeset.
    – Sigur
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:16
  • What does \usepackage[english]{babel} accomplish? Isn't English the default language anyway?
    – Ari Brodsky
    Jan 27, 2013 at 1:23

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