# User:Donalies/Latex Trial Run 2015 Proofreading

## LaTeX proofing guidelines for 2015 trial run

Note: all the good stuff was stolen from the real guidelines page.

A LaTeX project is formatted differently because it has complex structure that is beyond the reach of normal DP styling. LaTeX is a powerful mark-up language used for typesetting mathematical and many other special characters and expressions. Because the formatting is different, some of the proofing conventions also need to be a bit different (to make life easier for the formatters). However, the primary goal in proofing is still to accurately match the characters on the scan.

• For P1, P2, and P3, no knowledge of LaTeX is required. Do not worry about the mathematics. Non-mathematicians are expressly encouraged to work on LaTeX projects in the P rounds.
• Aside from Greek letters (see below), do not add LaTeX formatting in the P rounds, even if you know LaTeX. Most proofers do not know LaTeX, so LaTeX code seriously interferes with the proofing rounds' work. Less is more. :)
• Proofread the text, and as much of the math as is covered by the normal DP proofing guidelines, e.g., proof a subscript yn+1 as y_{n+1}, superscript z² as z^{2}. In-text fractions are handled slightly differently in LaTeX: Don't join a fraction to a preceding number with a hyphen, just leave a space (see Examples below).
• Latin-1 characters from the drop-down (or "pop-up") menu can and should be used in the P rounds. These include accented letters, as in non-LaTeX projects, but also the degree symbol °, section symbol §, plus-or-minus ±, multiplication sign ×, and mid-dot · (used for multiplication). To denote prime accents in math, use the ASCII single-quote character ' (a.k.a. close-quote, right-quote, or apostrophe), repeated as many times in succession as needed. Please do not use a superscript "o" for degrees or a letter "x" for multiplication.
• Proofread parentheses (), square brackets [], and curly braces {} using the ordinary characters, even if the symbols on the page are large.
• If a mathematical symbol or expression was read as junk by the OCR, or appears to be missing, type in what you can, or at a minimum replace it by $$ (two dollar-symbols). • For an expression set off on its own line, or group of lines, treat it as a separate paragraph, with a blank line before and after. • When a Greek character is used in a math expression (which may be just a single character), proof it as the name of the letter preceded by a backslash (e.g., π as \pi). For a capital letter, simply capitalize the command (e.g., \Pi). Capital Greek letters having a Roman equivalent (\Alpha, \Beta, \Epsilon, etc.) and the letter omicron do not have special LaTeX commands; if the project comments don't say how to handle these letters, please ask in the project thread. As a last resort, if you don't recognize a character, just mark it as $$.
• Seven Greek letters have lowercase variants in LaTeX (in blue above). In rare cases, a project may use both forms of a letter with different meanings. Should this occur, or if you're unsure, please seek advice in the project thread. In other words, unless the Project Comments explicitly require it, we don't distinguish variant forms of the same Greek letter. Caution: The letters "vee" and "upsilon" are nearly identical, while the following pairs are quite similar-looking: "omega" and "variant pi"; "zeta" and "variant sigma"; "ex" and "variant kappa". Lowercase "upsilon" and "variant sigma" do not occur in mathematics, only in transcribed Greek.
• LaTeX treats a backslash followed by a sequence of letters as a single entity. When Greek letters appear as part of a larger expression, their names must be followed by a non-letter--such as a space, backslash, or arithmetic operator--as in \pi r^{2} or \alpha+\beta\pi = \omega. Similarly, named functions (log, cos, tan, etc.) should generally be surrounded by spaces, as in "cos u sin v". If the text is easily human-readable, it's probably fine.
• Within math expressions, spaces next to numbers and arithmetic signs are of no importance, since LaTeX will ignore them and put space around the elements by its own rules. So "x = 2 + 4", "x=2+4", and "x =2 +4" are all syntactically equivalent; they'll all be displayed as x = 2 + 4.
• Complete rendering of complicated fractions, square roots, etc., is generally beyond the expectations of the proofing rounds. However, please do proof the parts of formulas that are covered by the regular DP proofing guidelines, see the table of examples below. For fractions, type the numerator, a slash, and the denominator, even if the fraction has a horizontal bar. Do not use braces to group the numerator and denominator unless they're present in the page scan; the proofed text need not be mathematically accurate. Finally, never use "ASCII art" to represent fractions, square roots, integrals, or other typographical constructs in a LaTeX project.
• If you're not certain whether part of an expression is covered by a normal DP guideline or not, the safest thing is to match the scan. For example, you might be uncertain whether a string of dots is an ellipsis (which would be covered by a normal guideline) or just a string of dots (in which case you would just match the number of dots in the scan). Don't be upset if a subsequent round has a different opinion and changes your work: there are many shades of grey in LaTeX proofing. If you prefer black and white, raise the issue in the project thread and get a ruling from the PM.

## Examples:

Image: Proof as:
x  x
y1  y_{1}
z2+2½  z^{2} + 2 1/2
cos Ax sin By  cos Ax sin By
tan θ  tan \theta    or    tan $$ a + b = 42  a + b = 42   ( 1.234 × 10^{4} × 678 / 9023 )  $$ x^{2} + y^{2}
 sin^{-1} A = \pi / 2
 a + b / c + d
 e^{a^{2} + ab + b^{2}}
 $$_{a}^{b} f(x) dx  $$ 1 / n
 dy / dx    dz / dy ; [another slash could be confusing, so use space]

(Don't spend a lot of time trying to indicate the structure of the mathematics—just get the elements of the expressions proofed and in line, with the tops of fractions followed by the bottom parts. Use a space or two to separate the elements of an expression, but don't add parentheses or braces that aren't on the image. For fractions with a horizontal bar, either replace the bar by a slash or separate the top from the bottom by extra space—whichever gives the clearer output.)

• For tables, get the elements of the header and body
1. correctly proofed (watch for O / 0 and I / l / 1),
2. sorted into rows, and
3. separate columns by at least two spaces.

There's no need to try to align columns.