Formatting Instructions

for Authors Using Microsoft Word

AAAI Press
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
[email protected]

Abstract You must use the latest AAAI Press Word template.
AAAI creates proceedings, working notes, and technical re- Download the author kit.
ports directly from electronic source furnished by the au- Complete, sign, and return by the deadline the AAAI
thors. To ensure that all papers in the publication have a uni-
copyright form (proceedings authors) or distribution li-
form appearance, authors must adhere to the following
instructions. cense (technical report authors).
Read and format your paper source and PDF according
to the formatting instructions for authors.
Deleting this Example of a Section Heading Submit your electronic files and abstract using the AAAI
will REMOVE the Copyright Line! Press electronic submission form on time.
Email your copyright form, and any required page or
Congratulations on having a paper selected for inclusion in formatting charges to AAAI Press so that they are re-
an AAAI Press proceedings or technical report! This doc- ceived by the deadline.
ument details the requirements necessary to get your ac- Check every page of your paper before submitting it.
cepted paper published. Within the document, general
guidelines are provided as applicable for using Microsoft
Word. If you are using LaTeX, instructions are provided in Copyright
a different document. AAAI only accepts papers formatted All papers submitted for publication by AAAI Press must
using Word or LaTeX. be accompanied by a valid signed copyright form or, in the
The instructions herein are provided as a general guide case of technical reports, by a valid signed permission to
for experienced Word users who would like to use that distribute form. There are no exceptions to this require-
software to format their paper for an AAAI Press publica- ment. You must send us the original version of this form.
tion or report. We assume that you can comply with the re- However, to meet the deadline, you may fax (1-650-321-
quirements as they are provided herein. If you are not an 4457) or scan and e-mail the form (pubforms18@ aaai.org)
experienced Word user, please obtain assistance locally. to AAAI by the submission deadline, and then mail the
AAAI cannot provide you with support. If the results you original via postal mail, to the AAAI office. If you fail to
obtain are not in accordance with the specifications you re- send in a signed copyright or permission form, your paper
ceived, you must correct your source file to achieve the cannot published. You will find PDF versions of the AAAI
correct result. copyright and permission to distribute forms in the author
These instructions are generic. Consequently, they do kit.
not include specific dates, page charges, and so forth.
Please consult your specific written conference instructions
for details regarding your submission. Please review the Formatting Requirements in Brief
entire document for specific instructions that might apply
to your particular situation. All authors must comply with We need source and PDF files that can be used in a variety
the following: of ways and can be output on a variety of devices. AAAI
imposes some requirements on your source and PDF files
that must be followed. Most of these requirements are
Copyright 2018, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelli- based on our efforts to standardize conference manuscript
gence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved. properties and layout. These requirements are as follows,
and all papers submitted to AAAI for publication must Using Word to Format Your Paper
comply:
ALL FONTS MUST be embedded in the PDF file. AAAI Press has provided a Word template that you can
(Your paper cannot be corrected or published if the fonts use to create your paper. You must be careful, however,
are missing.) not to change the page set-up of this document (print a
No type 3 fonts may be used (even in illustrations). PDF and use shrink to fit if you need to print it on A4
All text in your paper must be black. Use of any colored paper), and you will encounter problems if you use Identi-
type must be restricted to figures. ty-H or CID fonts. If your paper contains many in-line
Your title must follow mixed-case capitalization rules. equations, and a significant amount of display mathemat-
ics, you may achieve better results using LaTeX, although
Word documents must use the Times, Time Roman, or
Times New Roman fonts. (Use of any other fonts in the the learning curve for this program is significantly higher.
text, title, heading, or references is not permitted). AAAI does not offer support in the use of Word or LaTeX.
Fonts that require non-English language support (CID
and Identity-H) must be converted to outlines or re- Style Sheets
moved from the document (even if they are in a graphics The Word template provided by AAAI Press supplies cus-
file embedded in the document). tom styles for the most common elements in conference
Two-column format in AAAI style is required for all pa- papers. Use of the following style sheets is required:
pers. Abstract Head
The paper size for final submission must be US letter. Abstract Text
No exceptions.
Affiliation and Address
The source file must exactly match the PDF.
Author Name
The document margins must be as specified in the for-
Bulleted List
matting instructions. Ensure that the specifications are
for the whole document, not just the first section. Extract
The number of pages and the file size must be as speci- Figure Caption (must also be used for Tables)
fied for your event. Footnote Text
No document may be password protected. Section Heading
Neither the PDFs nor the source may contain any em- Subsection Heading
bedded links or bookmarks. URLS in your document Text
must be black, and may not be underlined. Text-indent
Your source and PDF must not have any page numbers, Paper Title
footers, or headers.
Your PDF must be compatible with Acrobat 5 or higher.
Inserting Document Metadata with Word
If you do not follow the above requirements, it is likely
that we will be unable to publish your paper. PDF files contain document summary information that en-
ables us to create an Acrobat index (pdx) file, and also al-
lows search engines to locate and present your paper more
What Files to Submit accurately. Inserting metadata is a requirement of submis-
sion.
You must submit the following items to ensure that your
To insert metadata, open the document properties win-
paper is published:
dow. Type the title exactly as it appears on the paper (mi-
A fully-compliant PDF file. nus all formatting). Input the author names in the order in
Your Word docx source file. which they appear on the paper (minus all accents), sepa-
Your Word source will be reviewed and your PDF may be rating each author by a comma.
recompiled on our system. Name your source file with Important! Do not include any nonascii characters (in-
your last (family) name. cluding accented characters) in the metadata, even if the
Do not send files that are not actually used in your pa- names have accent marks. The data in the metadata must
per. We dont want you to send us any files not needed for be completely plain ascii. It may not include any slashes,
compiling your paper, including, for example, this instruc- accents, linebreaks, or unicode characters. You may also
tions file, unused graphics files, additional material sent for include keywords in the Keywords field. If you know the
the purpose of the paper review, and so forth. full title of the proceedings, include it in the subject line.
Leave any additional metadata fields blank.
Word Copyright Notice Do not use type 3 fonts for any portion of your paper,
The copyright notice has been added to the Word template including graphics. AAAI will not accept electronic files
using an invisible, unnumbered footnote, appended to the containing obsolete type 3 fonts. Files containing such
example of a first-level heading. Dont delete it! Instead, fonts (even in graphics) will be rejected.
carefully insert your own heading at the left of the existing If you are unsure if your paper contains type 3 fonts,
type, then remove the old type, being careful not to remove view the PDF in Acrobat Reader. The Properties/Fonts
the invisible footnote marker at the end of the line. Be sure window will display the font name, font type, and encod-
the copyright date is correct. (If you disable this footnote ing properties of all the fonts in the document. If you are
and transfer of copyright is required, your paper will not unsure if your graphics contain type 3 fonts (and they are
be included in the proceedings or digital library.) PostScript or encapsulated PostScript documents), create
PDF versions of them, and consult the properties window
Size, Margins, and Column Width in Acrobat Reader.
Start all pages (except the first) directly under the top
Papers must be formatted to print in two-column format on margin. (See the next section for instructions on formatting
8.5 x 11 inch US letter-sized paper. The margins must be the title page.) The Text-Indent style will automatically in-
exactly as follows: sert the proper indent when beginning a new paragraph. It
Top margin: .75 inches should be used unless the paragraph begins directly below
Left margin: .75 inches a heading or subheading. Do not skip a line between par-
Right margin: .75 inches agraphs.
Bottom margin: 1.25 inches
The Word template is automatically set with these margins. Title and Authors
Column Width and Margins Your title must appear in mixed case (nouns, pronouns,
To ensure maximum readability, your paper must include and verbs are capitalized) near the top of the first page,
two columns. Each column should be 3.3 inches wide centered over both columns. The Paper Title style will au-
(slightly more than 3.25 inches), with a .375 inch (.952 cm) tomatically apply the proper font size and leading to your
gutter of white space between the two columns. The Word title. There should be two carriage returns above the title.
template will automatically create these columns for you. The Word template already includes this space.
Nothing may intrude into the outside margins includ- Authors names should appear centered below the title
ing boxes around figures. Documents and tables may span of the paper in boldface. You must use the Author Name
two columns, but single-column figures, tables, and equa- style, which will automatically apply the proper size, font,
tions must remain completely within the column width. and spacing. If space allows, you may use tabs to separate
them, and insert affiliations below the names. If you have
Overlength Papers many authors, do not use tabs; simply separate the authors
with commas. You may then use superscript numbers as a
If your paper is too long, turn on hyphenation, which will
key to their affiliations, which should appear in the affilia-
reduce the space used by many lines. Next, shrink the size
tion lines below the author list.
of your graphics. No alterations to page layout are al-
Affiliations and contact information must appear cen-
lowed. Do not use formatting tricks to make your paper a
tered below the author names block. The Affiliation and
certain length. Cut text or remove figures instead. If your
Address style will automatically apply the correct format-
conference allows it, pay for an extra page.
ting.
Do not use a table to provide this information. Please al-
Type Font and Size
so note that no part of the title, author, or affiliation block
Your paper must be formatted using the style sheets em- may intrude into the margin.
bedded in the Word Template. They will automatically You should begin the two-column format when you
format your paper in 10 point Times, Times Roman or come to the abstract.
Times New Roman. We will not accept papers formatted
using other fonts (except that Cambria may be used for Credits
mathematics only.) This document is formatted in 10 point
Times New Roman. Any credits to a sponsoring agency should appear in the
Line spacing for text must be exactly 12 point. The style acknowledgments section, unless the agency requires dif-
file for Text sets the line spacing at 12 point. You may ferent placement. If it is necessary to include this infor-
not alter line spacing or point size. mation on the front page, use a separate footnote. The
AAAI copyright notice (if required) must appear first in
any list of footnotes.
Abstract the case of four or more authors, list only the first author,
All conference papers must include an abstract. The ab- followed by et al. (Ford et al. 1997).
stract must be placed at the beginning of the first column,
indented ten points from the left and right margins. The ti- Extracts
tle Abstract should appear in ten-point bold type, cen- Long quotations and extracts should be indented ten points
tered above the body of the abstract. The Abstract Head from the left and right margins. The Extract style pro-
style will automatically format this heading properly. vides this type automatically:
The abstract should be set in nine-point type with ten-
This is an example of an extract or quotation. Note the
point leading. The Abstract Head style will automatically indent on both sides. Quotation marks are not neces-
apply these settings. This concise, one-paragraph summary sary if you offset the text in a block like this, and
should describe the general thesis and conclusion of your properly identify and cite the quotation in the text.
paper. A reader should be able to learn the purpose of the
paper and the reason for its importance from the abstract. Footnotes
The abstract should be no more than two hundred words in
Avoid footnotes as much as possible; they interrupt the
length. (Authors who are submitting short one- or two-
reading of the text. When essential, they should be consec-
page extended extracts should provide a short abstract of
utively numbered throughout with superscript Arabic num-
only a sentence or so.) Do not include references in your
bers. Footnotes should appear at the bottom of the page,
abstract!
separated from the text by a blank line space and a thin,
half-point rule.
Page Numbers
Do not ever print any page numbers on your paper. Headings and Sections
When necessary, headings should be used to separate ma-
Text jor sections of your paper. Remember, you are writing a
The main body of the paper must be formatted in ten-point short paper, not a lengthy book! An overabundance of
with twelve-point leading (line spacing). The Text style in headings will tend to make your paper look more like an
this document is 10 point with 12-point line spacing. The outline than a paper.
first line of text after a heading should not be indented. Section heads should be twelve-point Times New Ro-
Subsequent lines of text within the same section or subsec- man bold type, mixed case centered. The Section Heading
tion should be indented 10 points. The 10 point tab is au- style will automatically apply these settings (including the
tomatically set in the Word template. The Text-indent style extra required spacing). Subsection headings should be
will automatically apply the indent without having to use a eleven-point Times New Roman bold type. The Subsection
tab. Heading style will automatically apply the proper settings
automatically. Do not skip a line between paragraphs. Sub-
URLs and Word subsection headings should be ten-point Times New Ro-
Microsoft Words default setting is to underline URLs and man bold type, mixed case, with twelve-point leading,
display them in another color. This causes the URLS to flush left, with three points of additional space preceding
turn light gray when printed, and often makes them unde- them and no additional points of leading following them.
cipherable. This feature MUST be turned off. Please also The Subsubsection heading style will apply the appropriate
turn off the automatic linking feature in Word. Failure to formatting automatically.
do so will result in a page reformatting fee. Section Numbers
The use of section numbers in AAAI Press papers is op-
Automatic Links tional.
Do not use Microsoft Words automatic section and refer- Section Headings
ence linking. Sections should be arranged and headed as follows:
Acknowledgments. The acknowledgments section, if in-
Citations cluded, appears after the main body of text and is headed
Citations within the text should include the authors last Acknowledgments. This section includes acknowledg-
name and year, for example (Newell 1980). Append lower- ments of help from associates and colleagues, credits to
case letters to the year in cases of ambiguity. Multiple au- sponsoring agencies, financial support, and permission to
thors should be treated as follows: (Feigenbaum and publish. Please acknowledge other contributors, grant sup-
Engelmore 1988) or (Ford, Hayes, and Glymour 1992). In port, and so forth, in this section. Do not put acknowledg-
ments in a footnote on the first page. If your grant agency
requires acknowledgment of the grant on page 1, limit the es to black, yellow can disappear, and so forth), we strong-
footnote to the required statement, and put the remaining ly suggest you avoid placing color figures in your docu-
acknowledgments at the back. Please try to limit acknowl- ment. If you do include color figures, you must be mindful
edgments to no more than three sentences. of readers who may happen to have a color deficiency.
Appendices. Any appendices follow the acknowledg- Your paper must be decipherable without using color
ments, if included, or after the main body of text if no ac- for distinction.
knowledgments appear. Drawings
References. The references section should be labeled We suggest you use computer-drawing software (such as
References and should appear at the very end of the pa- Adobe Illustrator or, (if unavoidable), the drawing tools in
per (dont end the paper with references, and then put a Microsoft Word) to create your illustrations. Do not use
figure by itself on the last page). A sample list of refer- Microsoft Publisher. These illustrations will look best if all
ences is given later on in these instructions. AAAI style is line widths are uniform (half- to two-point in size), and
required for references. Poorly prepared or sloppy refer- you do not create labels over shaded areas. Shading should
ences reflect badly on the quality of your paper and your be 133 lines per inch if possible. Use Times New Roman
research. Please prepare complete and accurate citations. or Helvetica for all figure call-outs. Do not use hairline
width lines be sure that the stroke width of all lines is at
Illustrations and Figures least .5 pt. Zero point lines will print on a laser printer, but
Figures, drawings, tables, and photographs should be will completely disappear on the high-resolution devices
placed throughout the paper near the place where they are used by our printers.
first discussed. Do not group them together at the end of Photographs and Images
the paper. If placed at the top or bottom of the paper, illus- Photographs and other images should be in grayscale (col-
trations may run across both columns. Figures (including or photographs will not reproduce well; for example, red
boxes and rules) must not intrude into the top, bottom, or tones will reproduce as black, yellow may turn to white,
side margin areas. Figures must be inserted using your and so forth) and set to a minimum of 300 dpi. Do not pre-
page-formatting software. Number figures sequentially, for screen images.
example, figure 1, and so on. There must be a minimum of
6 points between the figure and the figure caption, and an This Is an Example of a Figure Caption.
additional 12 points beneath the caption. There must be 12 Use of the figure caption style is required.
points between text and figures.
The illustration number and caption should appear under References
the illustration. Leave some space between the figure and
the caption and surrounding type; .25 inches should suf- To format references, use the References style (which will
fice. Captions should be presented in nine-point Times automatically format your references in 9 point Time Ro-
New Roman italic. Labels, and other text in illustrations man with 10 point line spacing, and 3 additional points of
must be at least nine-point type. The Figure Caption style space between each entry. The samples that follow provide
will apply the appropriate formatting automatically. guidelines for formatting different kinds of references:
Low-Resolution Bitmaps
You may not use low-resolution (such as 72 dpi) screen Book with Multiple Authors
dumps and GIF filesthese files contain so few pixels that Engelmore, R., and Morgan, A. eds. 1986. Blackboard Systems.
Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
they are always blurry, and illegible when printed. If they
are color, they will become an indecipherable mess when Journal Article
converted to black and white. Gif files and low-resolution Robinson, A. L. 1980. New Ways to Make Microcircuits Smaller.
Science 208:1019-1026.
jpg or png files should never be used. The resolution of
screen dumps can be increased by reducing the print size of Magazine Article
Hasling, D. W.; Clancey, W. J.; and Rennels, G. R. 1983. Strate-
the original file while retaining the same number of pixels.
gic Explanations in Consultation. The International Journal of
You can also enlarge files by manipulating them in soft- Man-Machine Studies 20(1): 319.
ware such as PhotoShop. Your figures should be a mini-
Proceedings Paper Published by a Society
mum of 300 dpi when incorporated into your docu- Clancey, W. J. 1983. Communication, Simulation, and Intelligent
ment. Agents: Implications of Personal Intelligent Machines for Medi-
Using Color cal Education. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 556-560. Menlo Park, Ca-
The archival version of your paper will be printed in black
lif.: International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence, Inc.
and white and grayscale. Consequently, because conver-
sion to grayscale can cause undesirable effects (red chang-
Proceedings Paper Published by a Press or Publisher Submitting Your Electronic Files to AAAI
Clancey, W. J. 1984. Classification Problem Solving. In Proceed-
ings of the Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Submitting your files to AAAI is a two-step process. It is
49-54. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press. explained fully in the author registration and submission
University Technical Report instructions. Please consult this document for details on
Rice, J. 1986. Poligon: A System for Parallel Problem Solving, how to submit your paper.
Technical Report, KSL-86-19, Department of Computer Science,
Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Dissertation or Thesis Inquiries
Clancey, W. J. 1979b. Transfer of Rule-Based Expertise through
a Tutorial Dialogue. Ph.D. diss., Department of Computer Sci- If you have any questions about the preparation or submis-
ence, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. sion of your paper as instructed in this document, please
contact AAAI Press at the address given below. If you
have technical questions about implementation of the aaai
Proofreading Your PDF style file, please contact an expert at your site. We do not
Please check all the pages of your PDF file. Is the page provide technical support for Word or any other software
size A4? Are there any type 3, Identity-H, or CID fonts? package. To avoid problems, please keep your paper sim-
Are all the fonts embedded? Are there any areas where ple, and do not incorporate complicated macros and style
equations or figures run into the margins? Did you include files.
all your figures? Did you follow mixed-case capitalization AAAI Press
rules for your title? Did you include a copyright notice? Do 2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160
any of the pages scroll slowly (because the graphics draw Palo Alto, California 94303
slowly on the page)? Are URLs underlined and in color? Telephone: (650) 328-3123
You will need to fix these common errors before submit- E-mail: See the submission instructions
ting your file. for your particular conference or event.

Improperly Formatted Files Acknowledgments

In the past, AAAI has corrected improperly formatted files The preparation of the files that implement these instruc-
submitted by the authors. Unfortunately, this has become tions was supported by The Live Oak Press, LLC, and
an increasingly burdensome expense that we can no longer AAAI Press.
absorb. Consequently, if your file is improperly formatted,
it may not be possible to include your paper in the publica- Thank you for reading these instructions carefully. We
tion. If time allows, however, you will be notified via e- look forward to receiving your electronic files!
mail of the problems with your file and given the option of
correcting the file yourself. A fee (minimum $50.00, and
likely higher) will be required for this service. You may References
also request that AAAI reformat the paper for you, at addi- Clancey, W. J. 1984. Classification Problem Solving. In Proceed-
tional charge. ings of the Fourth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence,
If you opt to correct the file yourself, please note that we 49-54. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press.
cannot provide you with any additional advice beyond that Engelmore, R., and Morgan, A. eds. 1986. Blackboard Systems.
given in your packet. Files that are not corrected after a Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
second attempt will be withdrawn. Hasling, D. W.; Clancey, W. J.; and Rennels, G. R. 1983. Strate-
gic Explanations in Consultation. The International Journal of
Man-Machine Studies 20(1): 319.
Naming Your Electronic File Rice, J. 1986. Poligon: A System for Parallel Problem Solving,
Technical Report, KSL-86-19, Department of Computer Science,
We request that you name your Word source file with your Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
last name (family name) so that it can easily be differenti- Robinson, A. L. 1980a. New Ways to Make Microcircuits Small-
ated from other submissions. If you name your files with er. Science 208:1019-1026.
the name of the event or aaai or paper or camera-
ready or some other generic or indecipherable name, it
may be overwritten.