How to format a paper or report

The front page must give the full name(s) and email-address(es) of the author(s).

Layout

The typographical layout of the text is not unimportant to readers. Most importantly, line length, font size, and line spacing are interdependent. For instance, with a 12 pt font, the line length must not exceed 140 mm and line spacing not be less than 15 pt.

Good formatting rules for A4 are:

• The text bloc (the printed area) should not exceed 140 x 227 mm; it must have a one-column format and be positioned at the center of the page. In A4 format, this corresponds to 35 mm margins on all sides. (However, you may want to have a 10 mm "gutter" to give room for binding or stapling).
• Body text should be set in 12 point Times or an equivalent serif font. Line spacing (leading) should be 15 point.
• The first paragraph after a headline should not be indented; apart from that, the first line of a body text paragraph should be indented by 5 mm. Body text should be justified (i.e., do not use a ragged-right style).
• Headings should be set in Times and flush left:

Level 1: 18 point, 24 point space before, 12 point after.

Level 2: 14 point, 18 point space before, 9 point after.

Level 3: 12 point, 12 point space before, 6 point after.

• Quoted passages of more than 40 words should be set off from the text by indenting the left-hand margin 5 mm. Such quotations should be set in 10 point Times with 13 point line spacing, with 2 mm additional spacing before and after the quotation.

References

Exact and unambiguous references are essential to scholarly work. The following rules are the ones used by the European CSCW community:

Citations should be incorporated into the text, either directly in the sentence (‘As claimed by Bowers (1990)...’) or at the end, with author’s name and date of publication in parenthesis: (Bowers, 1990).

References should be listed at the end of the paper or report, in alphabetical and chronological order. References should be set in 10 point Times, with 5 mm hanging indents.

The general formatting rule of references is that titles of volumes should be in italics, whereas articles in volumes should be in quotation marks ('inverted commas').

• References to books should include the author’s name; year of publication; title in full, in italics; publisher; place of publication; volume number (if appropriate).

Johansen, R. (1988): Groupware: Computer Support for Business Teams, The Free Press, New York and London.

• References to articles in periodicals should include the author’s name; year of publication; title of article, in quotation marks; full title of periodical, in italics; volume number; issue number; issue date; page numbers.

Gerson, E. M. and Star, S. L. (1986): 'Analyzing due process in the workplace', ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1986, pp. 257-270.

• References to essays in edited editions should include the author’s name; year of publication; title of essay, in quotation marks; editor’s name; title of collection, in italics; publisher; place of publication; volume number (if appropriate).

Bowers, J. M. (1991): 'The Janus Faces of Design: Some Critical Questions for CSCW', in J. M. Bowers and S. D. Benford (eds.): Studies in Computer Supported Cooperative Work: Theory, Practice and Design, North-Holland, Amsterdam etc., 1991, pp. 333-350.