/manuscript-typography

name: manuscript-typography
description: 'Audit academic manuscripts for typographic design conventions: booktabs table style, caption placement, dashes/quotes, units and numbers, cross-reference style, page layout, typographic hierarchy, professional polish. Triggers on: "check typography", "fix formatting", "polish my paper", "check my LaTeX", "typographic review", "make it look professional", "check tables", "fix captions". Companion to manuscript-review (content) and arxiv-preflight (compliance).'
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  complements: [manuscript-review, arxiv-preflight, figure-table-quality]
  category: review
  tags: [typography, latex, formatting, booktabs, polish]
  difficulty: advanced
  phase: review

Manuscript Typography Audit

**Pipeline position:** Phase 2b (polish audit). Runs in parallel with manuscript-provenance. Depends on: content settled after Phase 1 fixes. See `/manuscript-pipeline` for full execution order.

Purpose

Audit a LaTeX manuscript for widely-accepted academic typographic conventions that directly affect readability and professional appearance. These are not venue-specific formatting rules — they are cross-venue norms from decades of academic publishing that experienced readers and reviewers notice.

A paper with solid content but poor typography signals inexperience. Reviewers form impressions from visual presentation before reading a single sentence.

Relationship to Other Skills

| Concern | manuscript-review | manuscript-typography (this) | arxiv-preflight | |---------|-------------------|------------------------------|-----------------| | Table content | Data quality, significant figures (§12) | Design: booktabs, alignment, headers, caption placement | Format compliance | | Figure content | Colorblind, axis labels, chartjunk (§12) | Design: font matching, backgrounds, subfigure style | Format/size compliance | | Rendered output | Legibility, float proximity, page breaks (§23) | Layout: widows, column balance, spacing, float specifiers | N/A | | Math notation | Notation consistency, operator formatting (§15) | Spacing, delimiter sizing, display vs inline choices | N/A | | Cross-refs | Citation hygiene (§11) | Reference style consistency, non-breaking spaces | N/A | | Typography | N/A | Dashes, quotes, units, micro-typography | N/A | | Polish | N/A | TODOs, placeholders, metadata, bookmarks | N/A |

**Rule:** This skill audits design and typography. manuscript-review audits content and communication. arxiv-preflight audits submission compliance. No overlap — each reads different signals from the same document.

Workflow

1. Ingest

Read all `.tex` files (main + `\input`/`\include` targets). Identify:

• Document class and loaded packages
• Two-column vs single-column layout
• Target venue (if identifiable from class/template)

If compiled PDF is available, use it for rendered inspection checks.

2. Audit Passes

For each check:

• **FAIL** — convention violated (document file, line, specific fix with LaTeX code)
• **WARN** — debatable but worth considering
• **PASS** — convention followed
• **N/A** — not applicable

---

Pass 1 — Table Design

**1.1 Rule structure**

• Use `booktabs` package: `\toprule`, `\midrule`, `\bottomrule`
• No `\hline` (replace with booktabs equivalents)
• No vertical rules (`|` in column spec) — vertical lines in tables are a hallmark of amateur typesetting
• No double horizontal rules
• Exception: if the document class mandates a specific table style, note but don't flag

% BAD
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|r|}
\hline
Method & Accuracy & F1 \\
\hline\hline
Ours & 0.94 & 0.91 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

% GOOD
\begin{tabular}{lcr}
\toprule
Method & Accuracy & F1 \\
\midrule
Ours & 0.94 & 0.91 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

**1.2 Column alignment**

• Numeric columns: right-aligned or decimal-aligned (`S` column from `siunitx`)
• Text columns: left-aligned
• Center alignment: only for single characters or very short labels
• Header alignment: matches column alignment or centered

**1.3 Header formatting**

• Headers visually distinct from body (bold is standard: `\textbf{}`)
• No ALL CAPS headers (use bold or small caps)
• Units in headers: parenthesized or bracketed — `Latency (ms)` not `Latency ms`

**1.4 Best-result indication**

• If highlighting best results: consistent method across all tables (bold, underline, or marker)
• Define the convention in the first table's caption or a footnote
• Do not mix bold-for-best and underline-for-best across tables

**1.5 Table notes**

• Footnotes/notes below the table, not in the caption
• Use `\tablenotes` (threeparttable) or manual footnotes with consistent markers

**1.6 Caption placement**

• Table captions ABOVE the table (universal convention)
• `\caption{}` before `\begin{tabular}`
• Not below — below is for figures

**1.7 Caption formatting**

• Caption label ("Table 1:" / "Table 1.") in **bold** or **small caps** — visually distinct from the description text
• Caption description text smaller than body text — `\small` (one step down) is standard; `\footnotesize` acceptable
• Use the `caption` package to control this consistently:

\usepackage[font=small, labelfont=bf]{caption}
% label ("Table 1:") = bold, description = \small
% applies uniformly to all figures AND tables

• Never caption text at full body size — it visually competes with the main text and makes the document look untypeset
• Never caption text below `\footnotesize` — becomes unreadable
• Consistent across ALL captions (tables and figures use the same size/weight scheme)

**1.8 Caption style**

• Consistent prefix: "Table 1:" or "Table 1." — not mixed (controlled by `labelsep` in `caption` package)
• First sentence describes what the table shows
• Caption is self-contained (interpretable without body text)

**1.9 Spacing**

• `\addlines