Instructions for using the Nature MS Word template

Overview

Please note that Nature is able to accept Word 2007 files, provided that they are authored from the beginning in Compatibility Mode (that is, as a Word 97-2003 document; see below) and saved in .doc format – we cannot accept files in .docx format. (Do not write the paper as a Word 2007 document then save as a Word 97-2003 document.)

If you have drafted your paper or are revising it in response to the editor's advice, and are reasonably proficient in Word, the quickest way to proceed is as follows .

1. Open the template, print it out, then delete all the text.
2. Copy and paste your paper (minus any figures) into the open template.
3. Put the cursor at the beginning of a portion of text, for example the title, look for the name of the appropriate style in the printout (arttitle in this example), find this style in the style box on the formatting toolbar, and apply it.
4. Proceed through the document applying the styles as needed for your particular paper.
5. Finally, save the document as a Word document.

If you are writing your paper from scratch, proceed as follows:

1. Open the template.
2. Highlight the appropriate sections of text, for example, the line '<arttitle>......title'. Type your title over this text.
3. Proceed in the same way throughout the document, deleting any style categories not relevant to your paper.
4. Finally, save the document as a Word document.

• Detailed instructions are given below.
• Note that the template contains standard Table formats for submissions of X-ray refinement statistics and NMR structure statistics. Authors providing these data should use these standard tables, but should note that Nature also requires fuller versions to be deposited as Supplementary Information. Templates for the full versions of these tables are on the forms and declarations page. To save time and effort, authors are advised to create their X-ray or NMR data tables using the full versions at the link above, then to copy and paste the appropriate information into the short-form tables supplied in the Nature Word template.

Using Word 2007 to produce a Nature paper

1. Open a new document.
2. Turn on ‘Compatibility Mode’: click the Microsoft Office button, Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.
3. Note that some features of Word 2007 will now be inactive, including the default equation editor. See the Microsoft page at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101172971033.aspx for details.
4. Copy and paste the Word 2003 template (available at the Nature website) into the open document, and write the paper.
5. NB To put in equations, use Insert/Object/Microsoft Equation 3.0.
6. To put in symbols such as Greek letters, use Insert/Symbol; we recommend using Symbol font.
7. Save As ‘Word 97-2003 document’.

Detailed instructions

Basing a new document on the template

The Word template contains example text tagged with each style. This text can simply be overwritten (for example, as you progress in writing the paper) or deleted. Deletion of the text does not delete the recorded style, and styles can be applied to relevant text at any stage during working on the document. The style list is on the formatting toolbar.

You can also save the Nature template as a 'Document template' into the Templates folder within Microsoft Office or Word on the hard disk drive (for example, on a PC this may be C:/Program files/Microsoft Office/Templates). To use the template styles in a new document, click on "New" under "File" and select the template you have just created. A new Word file is created that is based on the Nature template.

Attaching templates to working documents

The most straightforward way of applying the Nature styles to a previously written or working document is to copy-and-paste existing text into the downloaded template. Open the downloaded template, select and delete all of the example text (you may wish to print this before deleting it, so that you have a reference of which style tag to apply to each section of the paper), and copy your existing Word document into it. The styles can then be applied to the relevant text. Note: when saving the document, please ensure that the top and bottom margins are set to at least 3 cm, or equivalent. (PDF files are generated from Word files for the purpose of review; setting the bottom margin to 3 cm ensures that lines are not omitted from the PDF file.)

You can also save the downloaded file as a Word template (see above) and attach template styles to a working document. Open the working document and select "Templates and Add-ins" under "Tools" (or sometimes "File") on the toolbar. Within the "Templates and add-ins" window, select "Attach" and highlight the newly created template. Click "Open" to select the template and, before selecting "OK", make sure that the tick-box "Automatically Update Document Styles" is ticked (failure to do this will not copy the template styles over into the working document). Clicking "OK" will return to the working document. Go to the style list on the formatting toolbar (to the left of the font list) and you will see that all of the styles that were in the template have now been imported into the current document. As before, please ensure that the top and bottom margins are set to at least 3 cm (or equivalent) when the file is saved.

Applying styles to the Word document

All styles apply to paragraphs (or to sentences or headings if they are displayed as 'paragraphs', e.g. title, authors, footnote, etc.). When applying styles, there is no need to highlight the entire section to be put into style, or even a word or single character. Simply click on the sentence or paragraph (so that the cursor flashes at that point) and then go to the style menu on the toolbar and select the relevant style. This will apply that style to the entire text (sentence or paragraph) up to the point of the first hard return.

Several paragraphs can be put into a style at once (e.g. the 'p' style for body text indented). Simply highlight all the relevant text (by holding down the mouse button and dragging the cursor) and then select the appropriate style.

The styles are set so that, when applied to a paragraph, there is a certain amount of spacing preceding and following paragraphs. This means that you do not have to enter multiple hard returns between different styled items.

• Mac template (Word 98 27KB)
• Mac template (Word 2001 29KB)
• Mac template (Word 2004 44KB)
• PC template (Word 97 25KB)
• PC template (Word 2000 29KB)
• PC template (Word 2002 48KB)
• PC template (Word 2003 49KB)