Part of the problem is that there isn't agreement on many aspects of formatting. A classic example is that of date formats. Everybody thinks that they know best. In Australia, you will see 10th February, 1997 February 10th, 1997 February 10, 1997 etc. etc. Note that we *do* consistently put the day before the month, if the month is written as a number. But then there are various formats for that too: 10/2/97 10/2/1997 10-2-97 etc. etc. Australians vigorously reject many (most?) forms of standardization and regulation. If you try to lay down the law, they will fight back. Individualism is far more important than being `right' according to a certain set of guidelines. (Other Australians on this list will probably disagree with me - which proves my point!) Personally, I follow the book which is the closest thing that we have to ,,Duden Rechtschreibung`` and `The Chicago Manual of Style'. It's called `Style manual for authors, editors and printers', and it's the standard guide for all aspects of the production of government (and other) documents in Australia. It specifies dates as 10 February 1997 abbreviated to 10.2.97 or 10.2.1997 Did you know that there's an international standard for the writing of calendar dates in all-numeric form? It's ISO 2014-1976, and it looks like this: 19970210 A hyphen or space may be used between year and month, and between month and day: 1997 02 10 1997-02-10 Another aspect that isn't as well understood as it might be, is orthography. Many people believe that `-ize- is `American spelling', and that the British (and Australian) spelling is always `-ise'. Although `-ise' is very common in Britain and Australia, it is not correct to label `-ize' as an Americanism, since, for example, `-ize' appeared as a verbal suffix in the thirteenth century. Fowler/Burchfield (`Modern English Usage', third edition) gives a lucid explanation of which words should have `-ize' and which must be spelled `-ise' (words that came to English via French, for example). As an example of the confusion that exists today, Oxford University Press `house rules' specify `-ize', whereas Cambridge University Press rules specify `-ise'. People who speak in defence of `-ise' sometimes make this claim: `The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) prefers ``-ise'''. Whenever I hear this, I invite them to *read* the Oxford English Dictionary. But I digress. In practice, following the rules in the `Style manual' is fairly simple. If there were a LaTeX package that implemented as much of it as possible, I'd use it. But I wouldn't expect many of my colleagues to be interested. Richard. -- Richard Walker [log in to unmask] Department of Computer Science Aust: (06) 279 8194 The Australian National University Intl: +61 6 279 8194 Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia Fax: +61 6 249 0010