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Writing

Guidelines

  • 1 page = Roughly 5 paragraphs.
  • 1 paragraph = Roughly 5 sentences = 1 idea.
    • The first sentence in a paragraph introduces the idea.
    • Followed by three sentences written has arguments supporting the idea.
    • The last sentence concludes the idea.
  • 1 sentence = Roughly 20 words.

typst

Typst is a lightweight, open-source tool for creating clean, formatted documents. Think of it as a text editor made for Scientific papers, notes, or reports which include figures, citations, or even math. Combined with Git, your research becomes reproducible, versionable, and easy to manage.

First Typst document

  • Create a document named paper.typ with the following contents:

= Some Random Text

This document was produced with Typst.
We computed the average penguin body mass by species. See the figure below.
#image("find_some_figure.png", width: 80%)
- Compile (export as pdf).

You should get paper.pdf.

📚 Academic Citations in Typst

When writing academic papers, it is essential to cite your sources properly. Typst makes this easy by allowing you to manage references with a BibTeX file (.bib).

A .bib file is simply a text file that stores bibliographic information (author, title, year, publisher, etc.) in a structured format. Each entry has a unique key that you use to cite the work in your document.

1. Create a .bib file from Google Scholar

  1. Go to Google Scholar.
  2. Search for an article or book you want to cite.
  3. Under the result, click “Cite” (the quotation mark icon).
  4. In the popup, click “BibTeX” → copy the text.
  5. Paste it into a text file (e.g., refs.bib).

Example entry in refs.bib:

@book{putnam1994making,
  title={Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy},
  author={Putnam, Robert D. and Leonardi, Robert and Nanetti, Raffaella Y.},
  year={1994},
  publisher={Princeton University Press}
}

Here, the key is putnam1994making, that is the text right after the {. This the key you use to make citations and give credit to the original source.

2. Cite Sources in Typst

To use your new .bib file in a Typst document (.typ), you need to link the typst document with your references file. You can do so by including the following line, adjusted for the name of your reference file (in this example refs.bib):

#bibliography("refs.bib")

Then, you can cite the book or article in your typst document using the @key like this:

Civic traditions strongly shape institutional performance @putnam1994making.
At the end of your document, Typst will automatically generate a bibliography using the entries in .bib file:

You can also change citation style to suit your submission requirements.

#bibliography("refs.bib", style: "chicago-author-date")