AAAI Press Formatting Instructions For Authors Using LaTeX A Guide 2019
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AAAI Press Formatting Instructions
for Authors Using L
A
T
E
X — A Guide
Written by AAAI Press Staff1∗
AAAI Style Contributions by Pater Patel Schneider,
Sunil Issar, J. Scott Penberthy, George Ferguson, Hans Guesgen
1Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160
Palo Alto, California 94303
publications19@aaai.org
Abstract
AAAI creates proceedings, working notes, and technical re-
ports directly from electronic source furnished by the authors.
To ensure that all papers in the publication have a uniform ap-
pearance, authors must adhere to the following instructions.
Congratulations on having a paper selected for inclusion in
an AAAI Press proceedings or technical report! This doc-
ument details the requirements necessary to get your ac-
cepted paper published using PDFL
A
T
E
X. If you are using
Microsoft Word, instructions are provided in a different doc-
ument. AAAI Press does not support any other formatting
software.
The instructions herein are provided as a general guide
for experienced L
A
T
E
X users. If you do not know how to use
L
A
T
E
X, do not use it to format your paper. AAAI cannot pro-
vide you with support and the accompanying style files are
not guaranteed to work. If the results you obtain are not in
accordance with the specifications you received, you must
correct your source file to achieve the correct result.
These instructions are generic. Consequently, they do not
include specific dates, page charges, and so forth. Please
consult your specific written conference instructions for de-
tails regarding your submission. Please review the entire
document for specific instructions that might apply to your
particular situation. All authors must comply with the fol-
lowing:
•You must use the 2019 AAAI Press L
A
T
E
X style file and
bib file, which are located in the 2019 AAAI Author Kit.
•You must complete, sign, and return by the deadline the
AAAI copyright form (unless directed by AAAI Press to
use the AAAI Distribution License instead).
•You must read and format your paper source and PDF ac-
cording to the formatting instructions for authors.
•You must submit your electronic files and abstract using
our electronic submission form on time.
∗Primarily Mike Hamilton of the Live Oak Press, LLC, with
help from the AAAI Publications Committee
Copyright c
2019, Association for the Advancement of Artificial
Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
•You must pay any required page or formatting charges to
AAAI Press so that they are received by the deadline.
•You must check your paper before submitting it, ensur-
ing that it compiles without error, and complies with the
guidelines found in the AAAI Author Kit.
Copyright
All papers submitted for publication by AAAI Press must be
accompanied by a valid signed copyright form. There are no
exceptions to this requirement. You must send us the orig-
inal version of this form. However, to meet the deadline,
you may fax (1-650-321-4457) or scan and e-mail the form
(pubforms19@aaai.org) to AAAI by the submission dead-
line, and then mail the original via postal mail to the AAAI
office. If you fail to send in a signed copyright or permission
form, we will be unable to publish your paper. There are no
exceptions to this policy.You will find PDF versions of the
AAAI copyright and permission to distribute forms in the
AAAI AuthorKit.
Formatting Requirements in Brief
We need source and PDF files that can be used in a variety
of ways and can be output on a variety of devices. The de-
sign and appearance of the paper is strictly governed by the
aaai style file (aaai19.sty). You must not make any changes
to the aaai style file, nor use any commands, packages,
style files, or macros within your own paper that alter
that design, including, but not limited to spacing, floats,
margins, fonts, font size, and appearance. AAAI imposes
requirements on your source and PDF files that must be fol-
lowed. Most of these requirements are based on our efforts
to standardize conference manuscript properties and layout.
All papers submitted to AAAI for publication will be re-
compiled for standardization purposes. Consequently, every
paper submission must comply with the following require-
ments:
•Your .tex file must compile in PDFL
A
T
E
X — ( you
may not include .ps or .eps figure files.)
•All fonts must be embedded in the PDF file — in-
cluding includes your figures.
•Modifications to the style file, whether directly or via
commands in your document may not ever be made,
most especially when made in an effort to avoid ex-
tra page charges or make your paper fit in a specific
number of pages.
•No type 3 fonts may be used (even in illustrations).
•You may not alter the spacing above and below cap-
tions, figures, headings, and subheadings.
•You may not alter the font sizes of text elements,
footnotes, heading elements, captions, or title in-
formation (for references and tables and mathemat-
ics, please see the the limited exceptions provided
herein).
•You may not alter the line spacing of text.
•Your title must follow Title Case capitalization rules
(not sentence case).
•Your .tex file must include completed metadata to
pass-through to the PDF (see PDFINFO below)
•L
A
T
E
X documents must use the Times or Nimbus font
package (you may not use Computer Modern for the
text of your paper).
•No L
A
T
E
X 209 documents may be used or submitted.
•Your source must not require use of fonts for non-
Roman alphabets within the text itself. If your paper
includes symbols in other languages (such as, but
not limited to, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Japanese,
Thai, Russian and other Cyrillic languages), you
must restrict their use to bit-mapped figures. Fonts
that require non-English language support (CID and
Identity-H) must be converted to outlines or 300 dpi
bitmap or removed from the document (even if they
are in a graphics file embedded in the document).
•Two-column format in AAAI style is required for all
papers.
•The paper size for final submission must be US letter
without exception.
•The source file must exactly match the PDF.
•The document margins must be as specified in the
formatting instructions.
•The number of pages and the file size must be as
specified for your event.
•No document may be password protected.
•Neither the PDFs nor the source may contain any
embedded links or bookmarks (no hyperref or nav-
igator packages).
•Your source and PDF must not have any page num-
bers, footers, or headers (no pagestyle commands).
•Your PDF must be compatible with Acrobat 5 or
higher.
•Your L
A
T
E
X source file (excluding references) must
consist of a single file (use of the “input” command
is not allowed.
•Your graphics must be sized appropriately outside of
L
A
T
E
X (do not use the “clip” or “trim” command) .
If you do not follow these requirements, your paper will
be subject to expensive reformatting and special handling
fees that can easily exceed the extra page fee.
What Files to Submit
You must submit the following items to ensure that your pa-
per is published:
•A fully-compliant PDF file that includes PDF metadata.
•Your L
A
T
E
X source file submitted as a single .tex file (do
not use the “input” command to include sections of your
paper — every section must be in the single source file).
The only allowable exception is the reference list, which
you may include separately. Your source must compile on
our system, which includes only standard L
A
T
E
X TeXLive
support files.
•Only the graphics files used in compiling paper.
•The L
A
T
E
X-generated files (e.g. .aux and .bbl file, etc.) if
they are needed to compile your source (generally, the
.aux and bbl file can be omitted; the bib file might be nec-
essary, however).
Your L
A
T
E
X source will be reviewed and recompiled on
our system (if it does not compile, you may incur fees). Do
not submit your source in multiple text files. Your single
L
A
T
E
X source file must include all your text, your bibliogra-
phy (formatted using aaai.bst), and any custom macros.
Your files should work without any supporting files (other
than the program itself) on any computer with a standard
L
A
T
E
X distribution. Place your PDF and source files in a
single tar, zipped, gzipped, stuffed, or compressed archive.
Name your source file with your last (family) name.
Do not send files that are not actually used in the pa-
per. We don’t want you to send us any files not needed for
compiling your paper, including, for example, this instruc-
tions file, unused graphics files, style files, additional mate-
rial sent for the purpose of the paper review, and so forth.
Obsolete style files. The commands for some common
packages (such as some used for algorithms), may have
changed. Please be certain that you are not compiling your
paper using old or obsolete style files.
Using L
A
T
E
X to Format Your Paper
The latest version of the AAAI style file is available on
AAAI’s website. Download this file and place it in the T
E
X
search path. Placing it in the same directory as the paper
should also work. You must download the latest version of
the complete AAAI Author Kit so that you will have the lat-
est instruction set and style file.
Document Preamble
In the L
A
T
E
X source for your paper, you must place the fol-
lowing lines as shown in the example in this subsection. This
command set-up is for three authors. Add or subtract author
and address lines as necessary, and uncomment the portions
that apply to you. In most instances, this is all you need to
do to format your paper in the Times font. The helvet pack-
age will cause Helvetica to be used for sans serif. These files
are part of the PSNFSS2e package, which is freely available
from many Internet sites (and is often part of a standard in-
stallation).
Leave the setcounter for section number depth com-
mented out and set at 0 unless you want to add section num-
bers to your paper. If you do add section numbers, you must
uncomment this line and change the number to 1 (for sec-
tion numbers), or 2 (for section and subsection numbers).
The style file will not work properly with numbering of sub-
subsections, so do not use a number higher than 2.
If (and only if) your author title information will not
fit within the specified height allowed, put \setlength
\titlebox2.5in in your preamble. Increase the height until the
height error disappears from your log. You may not use the
\setlength command elsewhere in your paper, and it may not
be used to reduce the height of the author-title box.
The Following Must Appear in Your Preamble
\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage{aaai19}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{helvet}
\usepackage{courier}
\usepackage[hyphens]{url}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\urlstyle{rm}
\def\UrlFont{\rm}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\frenchspacing
\setlength{\pdfpagewidth}{8.5in}
\setlength{\pdfpageheight}{11in}
% Add additional packages here.
%
% The following
% packages may NEVER be used (this list
% is not exhaustive:
% authblk, caption, CJK, float, fullpage, geometry,
% hyperref, layout, nameref, natbib, savetrees,
% setspace, titlesec, tocbibind, ulem
%
%
% PDFINFO
% You are required to complete the following
% for pass-through to the PDF.
% No LaTeX commands of any kind may be
% entered. The parentheses and spaces
% are an integral part of the
% pdfinfo script and must not be removed.
%
\pdfinfo{
/Title (Type Your Paper Title Here in Mixed Case)
/Author (John Doe, Jane Doe)
/Keywords (Input your keywords in this optional area)
}
%
% Section Numbers
% Uncomment if you want to use section numbers
% and change the 0 to a 1 or 2
% \setcounter{secnumdepth}{0}
% Title and Author Information Must Immediately Follow
% the pdfinfo within the preamble
%
\title{Title}\\
\author\{Author 1 \ and Author 2\\
Address line\\
Address line\\
\ And\\
Author 3\\
Address line\\
Address line
}\\
Preparing Your Paper
After the preamble above, you should prepare your paper as
follows:
%
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
%...
\end{abstract}
The Following Must Conclude Your Document
% References and End of Paper
% These lines must be placed at the end of your paper
\bibliography{Bibliography-File}
\bibliographystyle{aaai}
\end{document}
Inserting Document Metadata with L
A
T
E
X
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
accurately. Document metadata for author and title are RE-
QUIRED. You may not apply any script or macro to imple-
mentation of the title, author, and metadata information in
your paper.
Important: Do not include any L
A
T
E
X code or nonascii
characters (including accented characters) in the metadata.
The data in the metadata must be completely plain ascii. It
may not include slashes, accents, linebreaks, unicode, or any
L
A
T
E
X commands. Type the title exactly as it appears on the
paper (minus all formatting). Input the author names in the
order in which they appear on the paper (minus all accents),
separating each author by a comma. You may also include
keywords in the optional Keywords field.
\begin{document}\\
\maketitle\\
...\\
\bibliography{Bibliography-File}\\
\bibliographystyle{aaai}\\
\end{document}\\
Commands and Packages That May Not Be Used
There are a number of packages, commands, scripts, and
macros that are incompatable with aaai19.sty. The common
ones are listed in tables 1 and 2. Generally, if a command,
package, script, or macro alters floats, margins, fonts, siz-
ing, linespacing, or the presentation of the references and
citations, it is unacceptable. Note that negative vskip and vs-
pace may not be used except in certain rare occurances, and
may never be used around tables, figures, captions, sections,
subsections, subsections, or references.
Table 1: Commands that must not be used.
\abovecaption \abovedisplay \addevensidemargin \addsidemargin
\addtolength \baselinestretch \belowcaption \belowdisplay
\break \clearpage \clip \columnsep
\float \input \input \linespread
\newpage \pagebreak \renewcommand \setlength
\text height \tiny \top margin \trim
\vskip{-\vspace{-
Table 2: LaTeX style packages that must not be used.
authblk babel caption cjk
dvips epsf epsfig euler
float fullpage geometry graphics
hyperref layout linespread lmodern
maltepaper natbib navigator pdfcomment
psfig pstricks t1enc titlesec
tocbind ulem
Page Breaks
For your final camera ready copy, you must not use any page
break commands. References must flow directly after the
text without breaks. Note that some conferences require ref-
erences to be on a separate page during the review process.
AAAI Press, however, does not require this condition for the
final paper.
Paper Size, Margins, and Column Width
Papers must be formatted to print in two-column format on
8.5 x 11 inch US letter-sized paper. The margins must be
exactly as follows:
•Top margin: .75 inches
•Left margin: .75 inches
•Right margin: .75 inches
•Bottom margin: 1.25 inches
The default paper size in most installations of L
A
T
E
X is A4.
However, because we require that your electronic paper be
formatted in US letter size, the preamble we have provided
includes commands that alter the default to US letter size.
Please note that using any other package to alter page size
(such as, but not limited to the Geometry package) will result
in your final paper being rejected.
Column Width and Margins. To ensure maximum read-
ability, your paper must include two columns. Each column
should be 3.3 inches wide (slightly more than 3.25 inches),
with a .375 inch (.952 cm) gutter of white space between the
two columns. The aaai19.sty file will automatically create
these columns for you.
Overlength Papers
If your paper is too long, turn on \frenchspacing, which
will reduce the space after periods. Next, shrink the size of
your graphics. Use \centering instead of \begin{center}in
Figure 1: Using the trim and clip commands produces frag-
ile layers that can result in disasters (like this one from an
actual paper) when the color space is corrected or the PDF
combined with others for the final proceedings. Crop your
figures properly in a graphics program – not in LaTeX
your figure environment. For mathematical environments,
you may reduce fontsize but not below 6.5 point. You
may also alter the size of your bibliography by inserting
\fontsize{9.5pt}{10.5pt} \selectfont right before the bibli-
ography (the minimum size is \fontsize{9.0pt}{10.0pt}.
Commands that alter page layout are forbidden. These
include \columnsep, \topmargin, \topskip, \textheight,
\textwidth, \oddsidemargin, and \evensizemargin (this list
is not exhaustive). If you alter page layout, you will be re-
quired to pay the page fee plus a reformatting fee. Other
commands that are questionable and may cause your paper
to be rejected include \parindent, and \parskip. Commands
that alter the space between sections are forbidden. The ti-
tle sec package is not allowed. Regardless of the above, if
your paper is obviously “squeezed” it is not going to to be
accepted. Options for reducing the length of a paper include
reducing the size of your graphics, cutting text, or paying the
extra page charge (if it is offered).
Figures
Your paper must compile in PDFL
A
T
E
X. Consequently, all
your figures must be .jpg, .png, or .pdf. You may not use
the .gif (the resolution is too low), .ps, or .eps file format for
your figures.
When you include your figures, you must crop them out-
side of L
A
T
E
X. The command \includegraphics*[clip=true,
viewport 0 0 10 10]... might result in a PDF that looks great,
but the image is not really cropped. The full image can
reappear (and obscure whatever it is overlapping) when page
numbers are applied or color space is standardized. Figures
1, and 2 display some unwanted results that often occur.
Figure 2: Adjusting the bounding box instead of actually removing the unwanted data resulted multiple layers in this paper. It
also needlessly increased the PDF size. In this case, the size of the unwanted layer doubled the paper’s size, and produced the
following surprising results in final production. Crop your figures properly in a graphics program. Don’t just alter the bounding
box.
Type Font and Size
Your paper must be formatted in Times Roman or Nimbus.
We will not accept papers formatted using Computer Mod-
ern or Palatino or some other font as the text or heading type-
face. Sans serif, when used, should be Courier. Use Symbol
or Lucida or Computer Modern for mathematics only.
Do not use type 3 fonts for any portion of your paper,
including graphics. Type 3 bitmapped fonts are designed
for fixed resolution printers. Most print at 300 dpi even if
the printer resolution is 1200 dpi or higher. They also often
cause high resolution imagesetter devices and our PDF in-
dexing software to crash. Consequently, AAAI will not ac-
cept electronic files containing obsolete type 3 fonts. Files
containing those fonts (even in graphics) will be rejected.
Fortunately, there are effective workarounds that will pre-
vent your file from embedding type 3 bitmapped fonts. The
easiest workaround is to use the required times, helvet, and
courier packages with L
A
T
E
X2e. (Note that papers formatted
in this way will still use Computer Modern for the mathe-
matics. To make the math look good, you’ll either have to
use Symbol or Lucida, or you will need to install type 1
Computer Modern fonts — for more on these fonts, see the
section “Obtaining Type 1 Computer Modern.”)
If you are unsure if your paper contains type 3 fonts, view
the PDF in Acrobat Reader. The Properties/Fonts window
will display the font name, font type, and encoding proper-
ties of all the fonts in the document. If you are unsure if your
graphics contain type 3 fonts (and they are PostScript or en-
capsulated PostScript documents), create PDF versions of
them, and consult the properties window in Acrobat Reader.
The default size for your type should be ten-point with
twelve-point leading (line spacing). Start all pages (except
the first) directly under the top margin. (See the next sec-
tion for instructions on formatting the title page.) Indent ten
points when beginning a new paragraph, unless the para-
graph begins directly below a heading or subheading.
Obtaining Type 1 Computer Modern for L
A
T
E
X. If
you use Computer Modern for the mathematics in your
paper (you cannot use it for the text) you may need
to download type 1 Computer fonts. They are available
without charge from the American Mathematical Society:
http://www.ams.org/tex/type1-fonts.html.
Nonroman Fonts If your paper includes symbols in other
languages (such as, but not limited to, Arabic, Chinese, He-
brew, Japanese, Thai, Russian and other Cyrillic languages),
you must restrict their use to bit-mapped figures.
Title and Authors
Your title must appear in mixed case (nouns, pronouns, and
verbs are capitalized) near the top of the first page, cen-
tered over both columns in sixteen-point bold type (twenty-
four point leading). This style is called “mixed case,” which
means that means all verbs (including short verbs like be,
is, using,and go), nouns, adverbs, adjectives, and pronouns
should be capitalized, (including both words in hyphenated
terms), while articles, conjunctions, and prepositions are
lower case unless they directly follow a colon or long dash.
Author’s names should appear below the title of the paper,
centered in twelve-point type (with fifteen point leading),
along with affiliation(s) and complete address(es) (includ-
ing electronic mail address if available) in nine-point roman
type (the twelve point leading). (If the title is long, or you
have many authors, you may reduce the specified point sizes
by up to two points.) You should begin the two-column for-
mat when you come to the abstract.
Formatting Author Information Author information can
be set in a number of different styles, depending on the
number of authors and the number of affiliations you need
to display. In formatting your author information, how-
ever, you may not use a table nor may you employ the
\authorblk.sty package. For several authors from the same
institution, please just separate with commas:
\author{Author 1, ... Author n\\
Address line \\ ... \\ Address line}
If the names do not fit well on one line use:
\author{Author 1} ... \\
{\bf \Large Author ... Author}\\
Address line \\ ... \\ Address line
}
For two (or three) authors from different institutions, use
\And:
\author{Author 1\\ Address line \\ ... \\ Address line
\And ... \And Author n\\
Address line\\ ... \\ Address line}
To start a separate “row” of authors, use \AND:
If the title and author information does not fit in the
area allocated, place \setlength\titlebox{height}after the
\documentclass line where {height}is 2.5in or greater.
Formatting Author Information — Alternative Method
If your paper has a large number of authors from different
institutions, you may use the following alternative method
for displaying the author information.
\author{AuthorOne},\textsuperscript{\rm 1}
\author{AuthorTwo},\textsuperscript{\rm 2}
\author{AuthorThree},\textsuperscript{\rm 3}
\author{AuthorFour},\textsuperscript{\rm 4}
\author{AuthorFive}, \textsuperscript{\rm 5}\\
\textsuperscript{1}AffiliationOne}\\
\textsuperscript{2}AffiliationTwo}\\
\textsuperscript{3}AffiliationThree}\\
\textsuperscript{4}AffiliationFour}\\
\textsuperscript{5}AffiliationFive}\\
\{email, email\}@affiliation.com,
email@affiliation.com,
email@affiliation.com,
email@affiliation.com
L
A
T
E
X Copyright Notice
The copyright notice automatically appears if you use
aaai19.sty. Do not disable it. If you do disable or change
the copyright line, your paper cannot be published by AAAI
Press.
Credits
Any credits to a sponsoring agency should appear in the ac-
knowledgments section, unless the agency requires different
placement. If it is necessary to include this information on
the front page, use \thanks in either the \author or \title
commands. For example:
\title{Very Important Results in AI\thanks{This work is sup-
ported by everybody.}}
Multiple \thanks commands can be given. Each will result in
a separate footnote indication in the author or title with the
corresponding text at the botton of the first column of the
document. Note that the \thanks command is fragile. You
will need to use \protect.
Please do not include \pubnote commands in your docu-
ment.
Abstract
Follow the example commands in this document for creation
of your abstract. The command \begin{abstract}will auto-
matically indent the text block. Please do not indent it fur-
ther. Do not include references in your abstract!
Page Numbers
Do not ever print any page numbers on your paper. The use
of \pagestyle is forbidden.
Text
The main body of the paper must be formatted in black, ten-
point Times Roman with twelve-point leading (line spac-
ing). You may not reduce font size or the linespacing. Com-
mands that alter font size or line spacing (including, but not
limited to baselinestretch, baselineshift, linespread, and oth-
ers) are expressly forbidden. In addition, you may not use
color in the text.
Citations
Citations within the text should include the author’s last
name and year, for example (Newell 1980). Append lower-
case letters to the year in cases of ambiguity. Multiple au-
thors should be treated as follows: (Feigenbaum and Engel-
more 1988) or (Ford, Hayes, and Glymour 1992). In the case
of four or more authors, list only the first author, followed by
et al. (Ford et al. 1997).
Extracts
Long quotations and extracts should be indented ten points
from the left and right margins.
This is an example of an extract or quotation. Note the
indent on both sides. Quotation marks are not necessary
if you offset the text in a block like this, and properly
identify and cite the quotation in the text.
Footnotes
Avoid footnotes as much as possible; they interrupt the read-
ing of the text. When essential, they should be consecu-
tively numbered throughout with superscript Arabic num-
bers. Footnotes should appear at the bottom of the page, sep-
arated from the text by a blank line space and a thin, half-
point rule.
Headings and Sections
When necessary, headings should be used to separate major
sections of your paper. Remember, you are writing a short
paper, not a lengthy book! An overabundance of headings
will tend to make your paper look more like an outline than
a paper. The aaai.sty package will create headings for you.
Do not alter their size nor their spacing above or below.
Section Numbers The use of section numbers in AAAI
Press papers is optional. To use section numbers in L
A
T
E
X,
uncomment the setcounter line in your document preamble
and change the 0 to a 1 or 2. Section numbers should not be
used in short poster papers.
Section Headings. Sections should be arranged and
headed as follows:
Acknowledgments. The acknowledgments section, if in-
cluded, appears after the main body of text and is headed
“Acknowledgments.” This section includes acknowledg-
ments of help from associates and colleagues, credits to
sponsoring agencies, financial support, and permission to
publish. Please acknowledge other contributors, grant sup-
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
footnote to the required statement, and put the remaining
acknowledgments at the back. Please try to limit acknowl-
edgments to no more than three sentences.
Appendices. Any appendices follow the acknowledg-
ments, if included, or after the main body of text if no ac-
knowledgments appear.
References The references section should be labeled
“References” and should appear at the very end of the paper
(don’t end the paper with references, and then put a figure by
itself on the last page). A sample list of references is given
later on in these instructions. Please use a consistent format
for references. Poorly prepared or sloppy references reflect
badly on the quality of your paper and your research. Please
prepare complete and accurate citations.
Illustrations and Figures
Figures, drawings, tables, and photographs should be placed
throughout the paper near the place where they are first dis-
cussed. Do not group them together at the end of the pa-
per. If placed at the top or bottom of the paper, illustrations
may run across both columns. Figures must not invade the
top, bottom, or side margin areas. Figures must be inserted
using the \usepackage{graphicx}. Number figures sequen-
tially, for example, figure 1, and so on.
The illustration number and caption should appear under
the illustration. Labels, and other text with the actual illus-
tration must be at least nine-point type.
If your paper includes illustrations that are not compatible
with PDFT
E
X (such as .eps or .ps documents), you will need
to convert them. The epstopdf package will usually work
for eps files. You will need to convert your ps files to PDF
however.
Low-Resolution Bitmaps. You may not use low-
resolution (such as 72 dpi) screen-dumps and GIF
files—these files contain so few pixels that they are always
blurry, and illegible when printed. If they are color, they
will become an indecipherable mess when converted to
black and white. This is always the case with gif files, which
should never be used. The resolution of screen dumps can be
increased by reducing the print size of the original file while
retaining the same number of pixels. You can also enlarge
files by manipulating them in software such as PhotoShop.
Your figures should be 300 dpi when incorporated into your
document.
L
A
T
E
X Overflow. L
A
T
E
X users please beware: L
A
T
E
X will
sometimes put portions of the figure or table or an equation
in the margin. If this happens, you need to scale the figure or
table down, or reformat the equation. Check your log file!
You must fix any overflow into the margin (that means no
overfull boxes in L
A
T
E
X). Nothing is permitted to intrude
into the margin or gutter.
The most efficient and trouble-free way to fix overfull
boxes in graphics is with the following command:
\resizebox{.9\columnwidth}!{ }
Using Color. Use of color is restricted to figures only. It
must be WACG 2.0 compliant. (That is, the contrast ratio
must be greater than 4.5:1 no matter the font size.) It must
be CMYK, NOT RGB. It may never be used for any portion
of the text of your paper. The archival version of your paper
will be printed in black and white and grayscale.The web
version must be readable by persons with disabilities. Con-
sequently, because conversion to grayscale can cause unde-
sirable effects (red changes to black, yellow can disappear,
and so forth), we strongly suggest you avoid placing color
figures in your document. If you do include color figures,
you must (1) use the CMYK (not RGB) colorspace and (2)
be mindful of readers who may happen to have trouble dis-
tinguishing colors. Your paper must be decipherable without
using color for distinction.
Drawings. We suggest you use computer drawing soft-
ware (such as Adobe Illustrator or, (if unavoidable), the
drawing tools in Microsoft Word) to create your illustra-
tions. Do not use Microsoft Publisher. These illustrations
will look best if all line widths are uniform (half- to two-
point in size), and you do not create labels over shaded ar-
eas. Shading should be 133 lines per inch if possible. Use
Times Roman or Helvetica for all figure call-outs. Do not
use hairline width lines — be sure that the stroke width of
all lines is at least .5 pt. Zero point lines will print on a laser
printer, but will completely disappear on the high-resolution
devices used by our printers.
Photographs and Images. Photographs and other images
should be in grayscale (color photographs will not reproduce
well; for example, red tones will reproduce as black, yellow
may turn to white, and so forth) and set to a minimum of 300
dpi. Do not prescreen images.
Resizing Graphics. Resize your graphics before you in-
clude them with LaTeX. You may not use trim or clip op-
tions as part of your \includegraphics command. Resize the
media box of your PDF using a graphics program instead.
Fonts in Your Illustrations You must embed all fonts in
your graphics before including them in your LaTeX docu-
ment.
References
The AAAI style includes a set of definitions for use in for-
matting references with BibTeX. These definitions make the
bibliography style fairly close to the one specified below.
To use these definitions, you also need the BibTeX style
file “aaai.bst,” available in the AAAI Author Kit on the
AAAI web site. Then, at the end of your paper but before
\enddocument, you need to put the following lines:
\bibliographystyle{aaai} \bibliography{bibfile1,bibfile2,...}
Please note that you are required to use
\bibliographystyle{aaai}for your references. You may
not use named, plain, apalike, acm, ieeetr, siam, chicago,
or any other style. Use of natbib is also not acceptable. (In
addition to natbib, the aaai19.sty file is also incompatible
with the hyperref and navigator packages. If you use
either, your references will be garbled and your paper
cannot be published.) If you used natbib commands, you
may put the following in your preamble (after removing
\usepackage{natbib}
\newcommand{\citet}[1]{\citeauthor{#1} \shortcite{#1}}
\newcommand{\citep}{\cite}
\newcommand{\citealp}[1]{\citeauthor{#1} \citeyear{#1}}
References may be the same size as surrounding text.
However, in this section (only), you may reduce the size to
\small if your paper exceeds the allowable number of pages.
Making it any smaller than 9 point with 10 point linespacing,
however, is not allowed. A more precise method of reducing
the size of your references is by means of the following com-
mand:
\fontsize{9.8pt}{10.8pt} \selectfont
You must reduce the size equally for both font size
and line spacing, and may not reduce the size beyond
{9.0pt}{10.0pt}.
The list of files in the \bibliography command should be
the names of your BibTeX source files (that is, the .bib files
referenced in your paper).
The following commands are available for your use in cit-
ing references:
\cite: Cites the given reference(s) with a full citation.
This appears as “(Author Year)” for one reference, or
“(Author Year; Author Year)” for multiple references.
\shortcite: Cites the given reference(s) with just the
year. This appears as “(Year)” for one reference, or
“(Year; Year)” for multiple references.
\citeauthor: Cites the given reference(s) with just the
author name(s) and no parentheses.
\citeyear: Cites the given reference(s) with just the
date(s) and no parentheses.
Formatted bibliographies should look like the following
examples.
Book with Multiple Authors
Engelmore, R., and Morgan, A. eds. 1986. Blackboard Sys-
tems. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Journal Article
Robinson, A. L. 1980a. New Ways to Make Microcircuits
Smaller. Science 208: 1019–1026.
Magazine Article
Hasling, D. W.; Clancey, W. J.; and Rennels, G. R. 1983.
Strategic Explanations in Consultation. The International
Journal of Man-Machine Studies 20(1): 3–19.
Proceedings Paper Published by a Society
Clancey, W. J. 1983. Communication, Simulation, and Intel-
ligent Agents: Implications of Personal Intelligent Machines
for Medical Education. In Proceedings of the Eighth Inter-
national Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 556–
560. Menlo Park, Calif.: International Joint Conferences on
Artificial Intelligence, Inc.
Proceedings Paper Published by a Press or Publisher
Clancey, W. J. 1984. Classification Problem Solving. In Pro-
ceedings of the Fourth National Conference on Artificial In-
telligence, 49–54. Menlo Park, Calif.: AAAI Press.
University Technical Report
Rice, J. 1986. Poligon: A System for Parallel Problem Solv-
ing, Technical Report, KSL-86-19, Dept. of Computer Sci-
ence, Stanford Univ.
Dissertation or Thesis
Clancey, W. J. 1979. Transfer of Rule-Based Expertise
through a Tutorial Dialogue. Ph.D. diss., Dept. of Computer
Science, Stanford Univ., Stanford, Calif.
Forthcoming Publication
Clancey, W. J. 2020. The Engineering of Qualitative Models.
Forthcoming.
Producing Reliable PDF
Documents with L
A
T
E
X
Generally speaking, PDF files are platform independent and
accessible to everyone. When creating a paper for a proceed-
ings or publication in which many PDF documents must be
merged and then printed on high-resolution PostScript RIPs,
several requirements must be met that are not normally of
concern. Thus to ensure that your paper will look like it does
when printed on your own machine, you must take several
precautions:
•Use type 1 fonts (not type 3 fonts)
•Use only standard Times, Nimbus, and CMR font pack-
ages (not fonts like F3 or fonts with tildes in the names or
fonts—other than Computer Modern—that are created for
specific point sizes, like Times˜19) or fonts with strange
combinations of numbers and letters
•Embed all fonts when producing the PDF
•Do not use the [T1]fontenc package (install the CM super
fonts package instead)
Creating Output Using PDFL
A
T
E
X Is Required
By using the PDFT
E
X program instead of straight L
A
T
E
X or
T
E
X, you will probably avoid the type 3 font problem alto-
gether (unless you use a package that calls for metafont).
PDFL
A
T
E
X enables you to create a PDF document directly
from L
A
T
E
X source. The one requirement of this software is
that all your graphics and images must be available in a for-
mat that PDFL
A
T
E
X understands (normally PDF, jpg, or png).
PDFL
A
T
E
X’s default is to create documents with type 1
fonts. If you find that it is not doing so in your case, it is
likely that one or more fonts are missing from your system
or are not in a path that is known to PDFL
A
T
E
X.
dvipdf Script Scripts such as dvipdf which ostensibly by-
pass the Postscript intermediary should not be used since
they generally do not instruct dvips to use the config.pdf file.
dvipdfm Do not use this dvi-PDF conversion package.
Ghostscript
L
A
T
E
X users should not use GhostScript to create their PDFs.
Graphics
If you are still finding type 3 fonts in your PDF file, look at
your graphics! L
A
T
E
X users should check all their imported
graphics files as well for font problems.
Proofreading Your PDF
Please check all the pages of your PDF file. Is the page size
A4? Are there any type 3, Identity-H, or CID fonts? Are all
the fonts embedded? Are there any areas where equations
or figures run into the margins? Did you include all your
figures? Did you follow mixed case capitalization rules for
your title? Did you include a copyright notice? Do any of
the pages scroll slowly (because the graphics draw slowly
on the page)? Are URLs underlined and in color? You will
need to fix these common errors before submitting your file.
Improperly Formatted Files
In the past, AAAI has corrected improperly formatted files
submitted by the authors. Unfortunately, this has become an
increasingly burdensome expense that we can no longer ab-
sorb. Consequently, if your file is improperly formatted, it
will not be included in the publication. If time allows, how-
ever, you will be notified via e-mail of the problems with
your file and given the option of correcting the file yourself.
A resubmission fee (which can easily exceed $75.00) will be
required for this service). If you opt to correct the file your-
self, please note that we cannot provide you with any addi-
tional advice beyond that given in your packet. Files that are
not corrected after a second attempt will not be included in
the publication.
L
A
T
E
X 209 Warning
If you use L
A
T
E
X 209 we will not be able to publish your
paper. Convert your paper to L
A
T
E
X2e.
Naming Your Electronic File
We request that you name your L
A
T
E
X source file with your
last name (family name) so that it can easily be differenti-
ated from other submissions. If you name your files with the
name of the event or “aaai” or “paper” or “camera-ready”
or some other generic or indecipherable name, you bear all
risks of loss — it is extremely likely that your file may be
overwritten.
Submitting Your Electronic Files to AAAI
Submitting your files to AAAI is a two-step process. It is
explained fully in the author registration and submission in-
structions. Please consult this document for details on how
to submit your paper.
Inquiries
If you have any questions about the preparation or submis-
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 style
file, please contact an expert at your site. We do not provide
technical support for L
A
T
E
X or any other software package.
To avoid problems, please keep your paper simple, and do
not incorporate complicated macros and style files.
AAAI Press
2275 East Bayshore Road, Suite 160
Palo Alto, California 94303
Telephone: (650) 328-3123
E-mail: See the submission instructions for your par-
ticular conference or event.
Additional Resources
L
A
T
E
X is a difficult program to master. If you’ve used
that software, and this document didn’t help or some
items were not explained clearly, we recommend you read
Michael Shell’s excellent document (testflow doc.txt V1.0a
2002/08/13) about obtaining correct PS/PDF output on
L
A
T
E
X systems. (It was written for another purpose, but it has
general application as well). It is available at www.ctan.org
in the tex-archive.
Acknowledgments
AAAI is especially grateful to Peter Patel Schneider for his
work in implementing the aaai.sty file, liberally using the
ideas of other style hackers, including Barbara Beeton. We
also acknowledge with thanks the work of George Ferguson
for his guide to using the style and BibTeX files — which
has been incorporated into this document — and Hans Gues-
gen, who provided several timely modifications, as well as
the many others who have, from time to time, sent in sug-
gestions on improvements to the AAAI style.
The preparation of the L
A
T
E
X and BibT
E
X files that im-
plement these instructions was supported by Schlumberger
Palo Alto Research, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Morgan Kauf-
mann Publishers, The Live Oak Press, LLC, and AAAI
Press. Bibliography style changes were added by Sunil Is-
sar. \pubnote was added by J. Scott Penberthy. George Fer-
guson added support for printing the AAAI copyright slug.
Additional changes to aaai.sty and aaai.bst have been made
by the AAAI staff.
Thank you for reading these instructions carefully. We look
forward to receiving your electronic files!
