1. Be certain to use the Guidelines and layout template. These are provided in advance to help you prepare your manuscript.
2. Extended abstracts and PowerPoint slides are not acceptable for the conference proceedings publication and should not be submitted.
3. Manuscripts that are not submitted in an acceptable format may be returned to the author to be corrected or removed from the final publication.
4. Please kep your paper to 5,000 words or fewer.
5. Page size should be 8.5" x 11" with 1" margins.
6. For all text, use a common font such as Times New Roman, Arial and Symbol.
7. All regular text, including author name, author affiliation, bulleted, numbered, table text, references, etc.: 11 pt, regular
8. Title and Heading Level 1: bold, all caps, flush left
9. Subtitle and Heading Level 2: bold, initial caps, flush left
10. Heading Level 3: bold, sentence style, end with a period. Heading level 3 should run right into the paragraph text.
11. Table or Figure Caption: 11 pt, bold
12. Table Column Heading: 11 pt, bold
13. Extract Text (quotations): 10 pt, regular, left and right indent of 0.38”
14. Footnote Text: 10 pt, regular
15. Page Number in Footer: 10 pt, regular

Here are a few of the most commonly misunderstood or misused points of style. Please consult the SME Style Guide for more details or for anything that isn’t covered here.

1. In publishing, only one space is used between sentences and after colons (not the two spaces we learned in typing class).
2. Use capitalization and italics judiciously. It is not always necessary to capitalize or italicize for emphasis or for the name of company departments, pieces of equipment, titles, offices, acronyms or terminology.
3. In general, most compound words with prefixes such as non, ex, re, pre, are not hyphenated. But use the hyphen when the second word is a proper noun (e.g., post-Vietnam).
4. Full dates are written like this in running text: January 1, 2002. Months and years may be abbreviated in tables to save space. When the date doesn’t include the day, there is no comma between the month and the year: January 2002.
5. Always place periods and commas within quotation marks. Place colons and semicolons outside quotation marks.
6. In a series consisting of three or more elements, separate each element by a comma (often called the “series comma”). If commas are used within an element, use semicolons.
7. Commonly used foreign words do not have to be printed in italics: et al., in vitro, and in situ.
8. Numbers under 10 are spelled out EXCEPT for expressions of time, measurement and money. A single number more than 10 is always given as a number unless it is the first word in a sentence.
9. When using numbers of one thousand or more, commas should be used between every group of three digits. Example: 4,000. Exceptions are addresses and years.
10. Avoid mentioning specific commercial product names. If at all possible, use generic equivalents. Trademark symbols are not required (e.g., ®, ™).
11. Avoid e.g. and i.e. in running text. These abbreviations are OK in parentheses or in tables and figures. Use periods in both. Use commas after them.