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.

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 only 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