Figures and tables from the literature commonly constitute the primary data which support the position in a library-research paper. The format used for figures by the Geological Society of America differs from that for tables. An image of the formats from a paper in the Bulletin are shown in Figure 1. In general, the best practice is to follow the same format used in recent Geological Society of America Bulletins, but tables can be tricky. The Geological society of America periodically provides instructions for tables (Geological Society of America, 1998). What ever you do, copy only the figure or table NOT the caption for insertion into your paper. Serious format errors almost always occur if you copy the caption. Take the time to write your own figure captions and table headings with the correct sequence number. As a minimum, you will need to retype the caption or heading with quotes (not needed if you revise the title) and cite the figure or table with author and page number since the figure is really a quotation. An example of a correctly presented student figure and table will be provided in class for your reference. If you are writing and are stuck regarding the correct format, remember a recent Geologic Society of America Bulletin is available as a PDF on Library electronic reserve under ESCI 301 and in the Journal List. You should be able to access format information day or night on the internet from home or school.
A figure examples from a recent GSA Bulletin and from student
papers (both good and poor) will be passed out in class. We will
use these to discuss figures and tables and outlines.