In practice, LaTeX users vary significantly in how proficiently they use LaTeX and BibTeX. In what follows, we mention those points of LaTeX and BibTeX usage that we insist on. If anything is unclear, please don't hesitate to ask!¹⁾

When compiling your TEX file, if you pay attention to the compilation log, you may see warnings of the following kind:

Overfull \hbox (9.13985pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 476--486
\T1/futs/m/n/12 mak-ing the right ac-tion choices. Ac-tion choices are de-ter-mined by an agent's

Any such overfull \hbox is acceptable as long as its width is strictly less than 12pt.

Naturally, it would be preferable to eliminate any overfull \hbox-es altogether, but this isn't always straightforward to do. In general, narrow overfull \hbox-es – of, say, less than 6pt – aren't an issue.

When running BibTeX on your BIB file, there should be no BibTeX warnings whatsoever. Please pay attention to the BibTeX compilation log to verify this.

Every entry in your BIB file should include the names of the authors and editors as they appear in the work in question – please don't abbreviate any author's or editor's name yourself.²⁾

For example, the author of the book Semantic interpretation in generative grammar is given as “Ray S. Jackendoff”. If you want to cite this book, then the corresponding entry in your BIB file should contain the following author field:

author = {Jackendoff, Ray S.},

In this example, you shouldn't abbreviate Ray S. as R. S. or Ray or R..

Since there are different bibliographic styles for how titles of works of different types are capitalized, please don't force unnecessary capitalization in titles of works in your BIB file, for otherwise a bibliographic style (which is determined by a BST file) can't change this.

For example, if you want to cite the book The sound pattern of English, then the corresponding entry in your BIB file should contain the following title field (following the convention known as Title case):

title = {The Sound Pattern of {E}nglish},

If the title is given in this way, then {E}nglish must be capitalized, whereas Sound and Pattern may but need not be capitalized, which allows the BST file to decide, depending on the bibliographic style. (Note that The will necessarily be capitalized because it is the first word of the title.)

Any other variation in how this title is given could lead to undesirable results. For example, a common mistake would be to write the title as follows:

title = {{The Sound Pattern of English}},

But this would force the capitalization of Sound and Pattern, which may contradict the chosen bibliographic style.

Similarly, another common mistake would be to write the title as follows:

title = {The sound pattern of English},

In this case, the problem is that this wouldn't force of the capitalization of English, which would be incorrect, and it also wouldn't allow for the capitalization of sound or pattern, which again may contradict the chosen bibliographic style.

Naturally, what was said above applies to titles of works in English. Other languages, for example, French, don't have a tradition of Title case, and in the case of German, you need to force capitalization on common nouns in general.