• Don’t set both width and height when using \includegraphics. It distorts the figure. Instead, I suggest using\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{..}
  • Be consistent in capitalizing section and subsection headings, and titles in the bibliography. My preferences is to use sentence case throughout.
  • When using functions such as max, min, log, exp, sin, cos, etc., use the backlash version. e.g., \max rather than max. This puts the function name in roman font rather than math italics.
  • For anything else which should appear as text rather than in math italics, use\text{…}. This is part of the amsmath package.
  • Don’t use eqnarray. Use the align environment instead. The spacing is better.
  • Don’t put blank lines around equations. This creates paragraph breaks. If you really want an extra line in the tex file, use a % sign so there is no inserted paragraph break.
  • For bold symbols, use \bm{..} with the bm package. It works better than the alternatives.
  • Only make the symbol bold, not everything else. e.g., \bm{x_t} is wrong.\bm{x}_t is correct.
  • Use \dots whenever you want a series of dots. Never type …