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Tables

Tables will be processed as text and therefore should NOT be submitted as figures or as ‘pictures’ inserted into a Word document, and should NOT be prepared in PowerPoint.

Tables can be most easily prepared using the Draw Table facility of Microsoft Word, but it is equally valid to simply submit columns of numbers separated by tab stops. (The two can be readily interconverted in Word: Table, Convert.)

Note that when preparing a table using the Draw Table facility of Word, you set the number of rows in advance and can readily insert extra, but you should not try to increase the number of rows by using carriage returns inside the cells: there should be only one number in a cell not a column of numbers.

Tables can also be prepared in Excel and then inserted into Word. To get an Excel table into Word you just highlight the data and copy and paste.

Preparing figures

Figure legends should be included as text in the word processor file of your manuscript. We cannot use legends sent as part of a figure. But for the figures themselves, we don’t mind whether you send the figures as separate files or as part of the word processor file, or separated from their legends or with their legends underneath. The figures will be cropped to separate it from its surroundings and it doesn’t matter to us whether the space around them is plain white or filled with text. What we care about is the quality of the figures.

There are a number of options for sending figures, but essentially we work with the interconvertible industry-standard file formats tiff, EPS and PDF. In addition, we are happy to accept figures in Word or PowerPoint as we can easily convert these to PDF ourselves, and if you have figures as Word or PowerPoint files and are unsure how to proceed or don’t want to bother, you can simply send these and leave the conversion process to us.

Tiff files

Authors are welcome to send figures as tiff files. We like tiff files to be at a resolution of 600 dpi. Photographic material is satisfactory at 300 dpi, but the quality of graphical work is lower at this resolution, and it is better to prepare a mixed photographic and linework figure at 600 dpi. A resolution of 72 or 96 dpi is far too low and will not give acceptable print quality. Note that you cannot get a high-quality tiff file by starting with a low-resolution one and changing the settings: you have to create a 600 dpi tiff in the first place. You can tell by magnifying: if the lettering looks sharp and crisp at high magnification the figure is fine, but if the lettering looks jagged the resolution at which the image was created was too low. To keep file size reasonable, the file should be compressed when prepared: when saving in the tiff file format look for a checkbox called LZW compression, and tick it. Note that tiff files should not be prepared from PowerPoint as they come out at 96 dpi (PCs) or 72 dpi (Macs), and this resolution is unacceptably low. PowerPoint files should be submitted directly or converted to PDF, but never converted to tiff.

PowerPoint files

Authors are welcome to prepare figures using PowerPoint and to send these to us as PowerPoint files. All the figures can be in one PowerPoint file if your prefer: there is no particular need to separate them into individual files. We will process such figures by creating a PDF. Please note that axes and scale bars in PowerPoint can look OK on-screen but disappear during file conversions if their ‘weight’ is 0 pt. You should make the weight around 0.75 pt – this can be done by highlighting the relevant parts of the figure or even the whole figure and then selecting Format on the menu bar at the top of the screen, followed by Object, and toggle or type to get the appropriate weight in the box called Weight (under Colours and Lines). Note that this will thicken all the lines of ‘objects’ (not text) that you have highlighted, including the symbols and curves of the figures, and so should be used with care.

PDF files

Authors are welcome to send figures as PDF files. We don’t mind whether you send each figure as a separate file or them all in one file, and we don’t mind whether they are alone or accompanied by their legends. But you must send the figures as a high-resolution PDF – if when you have created your PDF you enlarge your view on-screen to 300 or 400%, the lettering and lines should stay crisp and clear; if the lettering looks blurry or jagged your PDF has a low-resolution and will not be suitable for printing.

The graphical package you use may have an option for saving in the PDF format. Look out for options for setting the resolution or file size and go for such wording as ‘press quality’ or maximum file size.

A high-resolution PDF can be created starting with a PowerPoint or Word file if you have Adobe Acrobat Professional installed. However, if you don’t have Acrobat Professional installed or don’t want to bother you can just send the PowerPoint or Word files. If you do want to convert these to PDF, you will see an item on the menu bar at the top of the screen called Adobe PDF. If you click on that, a menu should drop down, and the last item on it should be Change Conversion Settings. Clicking on that should bring up a window, and the first item in the window should be Conversion Settings. Select the one called Press Quality; do not create a PDF using the setting called Standard or Smallest File Size. Having set the resolution this way, you now create the PDF file simply by clicking the appropriate (usually left-most) icon on your PDFmaker toobar or alternatively clicking the first item in the dropdown menu under Adobe PDF on the menu bar, namely Convert to Adobe PDF.

Experimental Physiology style

Experimental Physiology endeavours to get a uniform look and feel across all its papers by careful sizing of figures, by encouraging authors to label their figures in our style and having the typesetter relabel figures that are far removed from our style. Experimental Physiology style is essentially very similar to that of Nature and the preferred font is 8pt sans (e.g. Arial) regular. At this point size, the lettering of a sans font is clearer than that of a serif font such as Times New Roman, making figures easier to read.

Tips

A hyphen is not a minus sign. For a minus sign use the dash, which should appear if you hold down the alt key and type 0150 on the numeric keypad. (It must be the numeric keypad to work.)