28 PRS Proofreading and Editing Service PhD Experts • All Academic Areas • Fast Turnaround • High Quality because those who will be working with your text find this format the most efficient, so there’s no reason not to comply, and spacing above and below headings can be adjusted for an effective layout no matter what basic line spacing you’re using. Some journals will ask you to number your sections and subsections, while others will very specifically ask you not to do so. If the guidelines you’re working with do call for numbered sections, they will almost certainly require the numbering of subsections as well, with the most standard format as follows: 1. methodology (first level), 1.1 Participants and 1.2 Questionnaires (second level), and 1.2.1 The First Questionnaire and 1.2.2 The Second Questionnaire (third level). Be sure to use after the numbers the punctuation required by the journal – occasionally, for instance, a colon instead of a full stop will be wanted – and beware of automatically numbering your sections in a programme such as Microsoft Word (for more on automatic formatting, see Section 5.3). This function can produce a tidy layout, of course, but it can also introduce errors based on the way in which you type material into your document by deciding that one of your numbered headings should not be included in what it sees as a numbered list. This will result in misnumbering, and the problem can be magnified if you have several levels of subheadings, bringing disorder to your efforts to achieve careful organisation. So it’s always best to number your sections manually and maintain control over your paper’s structure. It’s also best to use the numbers of sections where referring to them within your paper, and if your sections aren’t numbered, to make any cross references as specific as possible, using the exact wording of headings whenever you can. Finally, a few journals will even set specific word limits for each section of a paper, or suggest that each section should be a single paragraph. This requirement is more difficult to comply with, but it, PARt II: PRePARIng, PResentIng And PolIsHIng YoUR woRk