Copy‐editing the LaTeX files

After adding compatible .tex files to your LaTeX project, referencing them in your main.tex file, and recompiling your PDF document, you will likely want to fix some formatting issues. The following methods can be used to make the contribution conform to the layout of the Variants journal.

Fix all unrecognized (sub)sections

If the author didn't use Heading templates, (sub)section titles will just be treated as formatting. They still need to be manually changed into \section{}, \subsection{}, etc. where appropriate. Don't forget the asterix if sections have no section numbers (e.g. \section*{TITLE}.

Change em-dashes

When authors want to use dashes to break up their sentences, use a single em-dash character (—), surrounded by spaces. Do not use double or triple dashes — be they hyphens (-) or en-dashes (–). Combinations of these may look the same in different fonts (and it will be difficult to distinguish them here, on GitHub), but they behave differently in PDF compilation, pandoc conversion, and HTML representation. (Note that we currently have no correct examples in our LaTeX repositories, because the issue was only discovered at a very late stage in the production pipeline of V17-18, and needed to be fixed in the styled Word files instead).

For example, format the text as follows:

I want to explore the possibilities — and limitations — of collective genetic critical projects here. (corrected version of a phrase in Wiens 2024)

To type an em-dash:

• on MacOS, press: Option+Shift+-
• on Windows, use an Alt Code: Alt+0151

Lessons Learned

1. Some symbols (incl. \smile and \cup are considered as mathematical symbols, and should be placed on a line that is surrounded by $-signs -- or LaTeX will throw an error. For an example, see Subacius in Variants 15.