Formatting questions and suggestions

[vasilygrz]

Hi @edzer,

I'm learning spatial statistics and I'd like to, first of all, thank you and @rsbivand for publishing this open access book. Currently, I've read more than half of it and I'd to ask the following questions:

1. What style guide are you following?
2. Why function arguments within the text end in =? For example, 'Durbin= argument' from Ch. 17. Would removing them create unnecessary confusion?

Regarding the style guide, I've noticed that dashes aren't used in the text. Following the New Hart's Rules: The Oxford Style Guide (2014), which I use as a reference, we can choose between en (–) or em (—) dashes.

4.11.1 En rule (p. 86) The en rule (US en dash) (–) is longer than a hyphen and half the length of an em rule (—). Many British publishers use an en rule with space either side as a parenthetical dash, but Oxford and most US publishers use an em rule.

If we chose the en rule, this is how it would look like (Examples from Ch. 1):

• 'Figure 1.1: A first map: birth counts 1974–78, North Carolina counties' [1]
• 'When we have longer time series associated with geometries, neither option – distributing time over multiple columns, or stacking columns while repeating geometries – works well, and a more effective way of storing such data would be a matrix or array, where one dimension refers to time, and the other(s) to space.' [2]

Similarly, there are a few typos regarding linking chapters. Instead of [3]

is shown in @fig-tmapstars. More examples of the use of tmap are given in Chapters -@sec-area - -@sec-spatglmm.

it should be

is shown in @fig-tmapstars. More examples of the use of tmap are given in @sec-area–@sec-spatglmm.

It also happens in 10.2 Support and statistical modelling.

I can correct this punctuation issue if you want me to.

[edzer]

Thanks. We didn't follow an external style guide. I think in text, Durbin= should be Durbin, but I'm hesitant to introduce dashes where there currently aren't. The chapter linking typos can be a result of fixes/changes in quarto, corrections are very welcome!

[vasilygrz]

Thank you for response, @edzer.

1. The = sign after the argument can be found in Ch. 14-17. Can I remove them?
2. Adding dashes would be the proper thing to do from a grammatical point of view. I'd also have to add them to correct the chapter linking typos. Can I do it?

[edzer]

1. Yes; 2: only to correct chapter linking typos.