Skip to content

Shared style guide

Resources

Resources for R:

Style

Line length

In most programming languages, keeping line length under 80 characters is a common best practice for readability and consistency. Note that Python usually sets the standard at 79 characters, while many modern languages allow up to 100.

It's helpful to add rulers to the editor. In VS Code, you can add the following to settings.json: 

"editor.rulers": [80, 100],

Indentation

Language Compile-sensitive? Indent convention
R 2 spaces
Stata 4 spaces
Python Yes 4 spaces
MATLAB 4 spaces
Julia 4 spaces
SQL 2 or 4 spaces
LaTeX 2 (esp. inside environments) or 4 spaces
Markdown Yes (lists, code) 2 or 4 spaces
HTML 2 or 4 spaces
CSS 2 spaces
JavaScript 2 or 4 spaces
Bash 2 spaces
YAML Yes 2 spaces

Markdown:

  • TBD

\(\LaTeX\)

  • Indentation doesn't matter for compilation.
  • Overleaf uses 4 spaces for indentation by default. As of Aug 30, 2025, this setting can't be changed.

Comments

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Section breaks

# Heading 1 ----
## Heading 2 ----
### Heading 3 ----

**# Heading 1
**## Heading 2
**### Heading 3

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Trailing Newline

It is good practice to add a newline at the end of any text file, including scripts, to comply with POSIX standards and avoid issues in tools like Git.

Objects

Naming of objects

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Data types

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Functions

TBD

Placeholders

  • Use plain ALL_CAPS for code objects (e.g., DATASET, VARIABLE).
  • Use "[ALL_CAPS]" for free-form text (e.g., "[X_AXIS_LABEL]", "[PLOT_TITLE]").

TBD

TBD

TBD

TBD

Example:

git stash pop [--index] [-q | --quiet] [<stash>]

TBD

Programming

Modularization

TBD