Writing Style Guide

Writing Conventions

Mathematical Notation

Matrices always use square brackets. Use \begin{bmatrix} ... \end{bmatrix}

Sequences use curly brackets, such as \{ x_t \}_{t=0}^{\infty}

The use of align environments can be done using the \begin{algined} ... \end{aligned} as it is not a full math environment and works within the equation wrapping of sphinx.

"Independent and identically distributed" is abbreviated to "IID".

Emphasis and Definitions

Use bold for definitions and italic for emphasis. For example,

• A closed set is a set whose complement is open.
• All consumers have identical endowments.

Titles and Headings

• Capitalization of all words for all titles.

  Example “How it Works: Data, Variables and Names”

Adding References

Adding a Citation to a Lecture

To add a reference to the text of a QuantEcon lecture you need to use the :cite:<bibtex-label> directive.

For example

:cite:`StokeyLucas1989`, chapter 2

is rendered rendered in HTML and LaTex as:

[SLP89], chapter 2

Adding a new reference to QuantEcon

To add a new reference to the project, a bibtex entry needs to be added to QuantEcon.lectures/_static/quant-econ.bib.

Sphinx and Restructured Text

Editing

The syntax of the source files is reStructuredText.

Here is a nice primer on how to write reStructuredText files.

Here is the documentation for the Jinja template syntax.

Helpful Links

• A nice Sphinx tutorial
• Another rst primer