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I'm working on this draft for a submission to some conference which - woe is me - uses IEEEtran. I could rant about that class for days, but never mind right now... the point is, I need to squeeze about 8.475 pages into 8 (ignoring references which don't count of course). I have already gone to some pains to rephrase my text, to make it less verbose, to avoid unessential comments, etc. Now, if push comes to shove I'll do some serious re-editing and eventually resign myself to cut some content, but obviously I want to avoid that - so I want to try to squeeze space some.

I've read the general version of this question:

Squeezing scientific paper to fit within page limits

and I already use:

\usepackage[subtle]{savetrees}
\usepackage{microtype} 
\usepackage[font=footnotesize]{caption}
\addtolength{\parindent}{-1mm}

which is pretty tame.

I need to get a bit more violent... so,

  • In the general case you can't touch anything which the class might be imposing. With IEEEtran, maybe there's some tolerance for some fiddling with some values?
  • The use of \usepackage[moderate]{savetrees} helps, but it give me hideous spacing between elements on some pages. Can I disable the "keep lines on same page" feature for a specific paragraph as an ugly way around this phenomenon?
  • I think maybe I can get away with reducing space around figures, and between figures and their captions. How do I that (and not be considered an IEEEtrans criminal)?
  • What do you think might be the most helpful in this situation?
  • Can I squeeze horizontal spacing between glyphs, or words, a bit more?

Notes:

  • Please, no lecturing about improving grammar and writing less. If it helps you, suppose after I've done that they go and change the number of pages from 8 to 7 :-)
  • I have multiple figures, but almost no equations.
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einpoklum
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    apply some editorial changes to the words? – David Carlisle Apr 12 '15 at 23:08
  • @DavidCarlisle: For shaving off an extra line from a paragraph here -and-there? I need stronger medicine, doc. – einpoklum Apr 12 '15 at 23:15
  • compared to impairing readability by squeezing interword space, it must always be preferable to consider rephrasing the text with less words. – David Carlisle Apr 12 '15 at 23:16
  • @DavidCarlisle Fewer words. – cfr Apr 12 '15 at 23:52
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    @cfr fewer words and gooder grammer! – David Carlisle Apr 12 '15 at 23:54
  • Why do you think that you can get away with doctoring the output, given that you are required to use that class? Apart from issues of legibility, what makes you think this will still comply? (Can you really use savetrees with a journal/conference class and get away with it?) More generally, this is why specifying length limits in terms of page count is ridiculous. – cfr Apr 12 '15 at 23:54
  • @DavidCarlisle For the very bestest results. – cfr Apr 12 '15 at 23:55
  • @cfr: 1. I was asking specifically about the extent to which I can doctor. 2. IEEEtran looks exceedingly ugly anyway; suprisingly, savetrees doesn't hurt the appearance much... 3. When I organize a conference, I won't have that. – einpoklum Apr 13 '15 at 05:12
  • Then the question is off-topic here and should be asked on academia se, perhaps. 2. That isn't really the point: journals and conferences have standard styles and expect all papers to use them. Whether their choices are typographically well-judged or not is a different matter.
    • – cfr Apr 13 '15 at 11:09
  • Did you read the comments on the question you linked? E.g. http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/674/squeezing-scientific-paper-to-fit-within-page-limits#comment758_674. The answers there are explicitly addressing a situation in which only the margins are standard - the document class etc. is left to the author's choice. (And savetrees violates that single constraint by changing the margins anyway.) – cfr Apr 13 '15 at 11:17
  • @cfr: savetrees doesn't change the margins with subtle or moderate. Anyway, I've gone down to subtle after gaining a bit from playing with some float separator lengths. – einpoklum Apr 13 '15 at 11:21
  • Use ieeeconf from the conference website. IEEE conference mode is simply ugly and weird. Many dropped its usage some time ago. – percusse Apr 13 '15 at 11:22
  • @percusse: I'm not sure I understand what you mean. You're saying I can replace IEEEtran with something else? Or I you saying that the something-else (ieeeconf document class) is something I should avoid? – einpoklum Apr 13 '15 at 11:24
  • Sorry. I meant: the conference mode of ieeetran is almost never used anymore. Instead you can find the ieeeconf document class which is usually recommended by the conference author kits. Especially paperplaza (or papercept) links should provide it. – percusse Apr 13 '15 at 11:25
  • @percusse: The conference CFP directed me here ... I can't just use another doc class (and it's too late to start inquiring about that now.) – einpoklum Apr 13 '15 at 13:03
  • Look fpr the submission page not CFP or Use this page. And it cannot be late as it is just a one line change. Also if you squeeze too much the editor will ask you to trim off anyways. So you can't get away with zipping the contents in a page. Trust me I've published more than enough papers on IEEE conferences. – percusse Apr 13 '15 at 13:21
  • Well, I'll try creating two versions and tell the organizers I have a "nicer-looking" one. – einpoklum Apr 13 '15 at 13:41
  • Is there any news here? – Johannes_B Feb 25 '18 at 12:21
  • @Johannes_B: Yes and no. Will add an answer. – einpoklum Feb 25 '18 at 13:34