This guide to IEEE paper format is published by EdCitation, whose free IEEE citation generator builds each reference from the publisher's record. It covers the page; the reference list has its own guide, the IEEE referencing guide, which this one does not repeat.
Every rule was read on 23 September 2026 at the IEEE's own sources: the conference templates page and its Word and LaTeX templates (updated in 2024), the IEEEtran package on CTAN, and the Editorial Style Manual for Authors, last updated on 29 July 2024. The template is written for conferences and the manual for journals; where they differ, both are given.
One rule sits above them. The IEEE's page for conference authors leaves the specifics to each conference, whose website should carry "full details on paper requirements", including page limits (IEEE, n.d.-c). A course brief does the same for a student, and either one wins over what follows. EdCitation's free Check your paper turns a course brief into a checklist (how many words, which sections, what style, how many sources) to hold beside the template.
Which IEEE template should I use?
The conference template from the IEEE's templates page, in Word or LaTeX, unless your conference, journal or course names another. IEEE (2024b) "strongly encourages" the templates and warns that guidance text left in a paper may stop it being published, so delete every instruction before you submit. Journals have their own templates, found through the Author Center's Template Selector (IEEE, n.d.-a). Length is the conference's call too: the IEEE's list of paper types runs from an abstract of 250 words or fewer to a full paper of 6 to 8 pages (IEEE, n.d.-c).
The Word templates
The Word files, one for US letter and one for A4, each say margins, column widths, line spacing and fonts are "prescribed" and must not be changed. Read from the US letter file itself, the body runs in two columns 0.25 in apart, with margins of 0.75 in at the top, 1 in at the bottom and about 0.63 in at the sides. The type is Times New Roman: title 24 pt, abstract 9 pt bold, captions and references 8 pt. The template also asks for no hard tabs, no page numbers anywhere, and no numbers typed into headings, because its styles number them.
The LaTeX template and IEEEtran
The LaTeX download holds the template file (dated 27 June 2024 inside), the IEEEtran class and its manual, and the templates page says to use the class's conference mode. On CTAN, IEEEtran is version 1.8b by Michael Shell: the class, its BibTeX styles, starter files for a conference paper (bare_conf.tex) and a journal paper (bare_jrnl.tex), variants for the Computer Society, the Communications Society and IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, and the manual.
Shell (2015) gives the class's defaults as US letter, 10 pt and two columns. Ten point serves "the vast majority of papers", and one column is only for drafts, because the IEEE always prints two. Choose US letter unless told otherwise, usually by a conference held outside the United States. Conference mode drops page numbers and running heads and centres figure captions, and the manual notes that most authors will want to balance the two columns on the last page.
How is the first page of an IEEE paper set out?
Title, author block, abstract, keywords, then section I.
Title and authors
The template bars symbols, special characters, footnotes and maths from the title and abstract, and says subtitles are not captured in IEEE Xplore and should not be used. The author block is built for six authors and can take more, listed left to right, then down, never grouped by affiliation. Each name carries department, organisation, city and country, and an email address or ORCID. Funding goes in an unnumbered first-page footnote.
Abstract and index terms
The abstract opens with the word Abstract, run in, in bold italics, then a long dash; the keywords follow the same way. The Word template labels them Keywords, but the LaTeX class prints Index Terms, the manual's name. The manual wants one paragraph of 150 to 250 words, with no numbered equations, citations or footnotes, and index terms in alphabetical order, each acronym written out with the short form in brackets.
How are IEEE headings numbered?
Sections take Roman numerals, subsections capital letters, and the two levels below take 1) and a). The manual's four levels (IEEE, 2024a):
- Primary: Roman numeral, centred, small capitals: I. INTRODUCTION.
- Secondary: capital letter and full stop, flush left, italic: A. Formal Frameworks.
- Tertiary: Arabic numeral and closing bracket, indented, italic, run into the paragraph and followed by a colon.
- Quaternary: as the tertiary level, indented further, labelled with a lower-case letter.
The manual calls numbering "desirable, but not required". Acknowledgment and References are never numbered. A single appendix takes no label; several are Appendix A, B or Appendix I, II. In the text, write "Section II-A1", never "Subsection". The template adds that a lower level is opened only when it will hold at least two headings.
The Computer Society exception
In the IEEE Computer Society's format, sections are numbered 1, 2, 3: the class's compsoc mode uses Arabic numerals throughout (Shell, 2015). In its Computer Society conference mode, the class file also labels figures Figure, not Fig.
How are figures and tables captioned in IEEE format?
A figure's caption goes below it and begins Fig. 1.; a table's caption goes above it and begins TABLE I. Both are numbered in the order they are first cited.
Figures
The template puts figures and tables at the top or bottom of a column, never the middle, after their first mention; a large one may span both columns. Write "Fig. 1" even at the start of a sentence. The manual wants the caption's first word capitalised, no opening A, An or The, and parts labelled (a), (b). Axis labels are words with units in brackets, Temperature (K) and not Temperature/K, in 8 pt Times New Roman. Since 1 April 2024 the IEEE has refused papers that include the "Lena image" (IEEE, 2024a).
Tables
The manual centres TABLE and a Roman numeral above the table, with the title centred on the line below in small capitals and no full stop at its end. The Word template's table heading style puts label and title on one line with a full stop after the numeral: TABLE I. TABLE TYPE STYLES. Table footnotes take letters.
How are equations and units written in IEEE style?
Number equations consecutively, in brackets flush right, and cite them as (1), writing Equation (1) only at the start of a sentence (IEEE, 2024a). The template adds that variables in Roman letters are italic but Greek letters are not, a minus sign is a long dash, and each symbol is defined just before or after the equation. The manual lets appendix equations restart as (A1), (A2).
Units, numbers and acronyms
- SI units are encouraged, with English units allowed in brackets after them; do not mix SI and CGS.
- Spell a unit out when no number goes with it: a few henries, not a few H.
- Put a zero before a decimal point: 0.25, not .25.
- The manual adds a space between number and unit, the unit once in a range (40–50 mm), and a thin space in large numbers (62 000, but 4000).
- Define each acronym at first use in the abstract and again in the text; plurals take no apostrophe (FETs).
The manual also turns British spellings American in IEEE journals (behaviour becomes behavior). A course may set its own spelling.
What goes at the end of an IEEE paper?
The conclusion, any appendices, the acknowledgment and the references, in that order (IEEE, 2024a). The heading is Acknowledgment, singular, spelt without an e after the g, unnumbered, and written in the third person. The manual also requires any AI-generated text, figures, images or code to be disclosed there, naming the system and the sections; how to declare AI use in an assignment covers the wording.
Where the template and the Reference Guide disagree
The template's notes on references differ from the IEEE Reference Guide (IEEE, 2025). The template allows et al. from six authors; the guide lists up to six names and uses et al. only beyond that. The template marks work "unpublished" or "in press"; the guide uses "submitted for publication" and "to be published". Follow the guide unless the conference says otherwise, since the template's notes are guidance text you delete.
The final PDF
Some conferences ask for the final file to pass IEEE PDF eXpress, which checks it against IEEE Xplore's requirements, among them every font embedded or subset, no security settings and no bookmarks or links. Conferences that use it send an invitation; the IEEE PDF Checker covers the rest (IEEE, n.d.-b).
How does a student report in IEEE style differ?
A student report usually keeps the IEEE's references and captions but takes its page from the department. The Department of Electrical Engineering at San José State University (2026) is a clear case. Its M.S. project report should be "generally similar" to papers in IEEE Transactions on Computers, unless the adviser asks otherwise, yet the department sets its own page and rejects a report without its cover page. Eight sections each start a new page, and the page never mentions columns.
| Element | Conference template | Editorial Style Manual | SJSU M.S. project report |
|---|---|---|---|
| Page | US letter or A4, two columns | Assumes two columns | US letter; 1 in margins, 1.25 in on the left |
| Type | Times New Roman, set by the styles | Not set | Times New Roman 12 pt, double-spaced, justified |
| Opening | Title, authors, abstract, keywords | Title, byline, first footnote, abstract, index terms | Cover page; italic abstract of up to 150 words |
| Page numbers | None | Not covered | Bottom centre, 10 pt |
| Headings | I., A., 1), a) | The same; numbering optional | 1. Introduction in bold; 2.1 Features underlined |
| Figure captions | Fig. 1., below | Fig. 1., no opening A or The | Figure 1., centred below |
| Table captions | TABLE I., above, one line | TABLE I above, title beneath | Table 1., centred above |
| Acknowledgment | Unnumbered, before the references | After appendices, third person | Acknowledgement, own page after the abstract |
The brief sets the page, and IEEE style fills in only what it leaves open. A lab report that asks for "IEEE" may mean the references alone.
How do I check an IEEE-format paper before submitting it?
- List every rule in the call for papers or the brief that differs from the template; for a course brief, start from the checklist Check your paper makes of it.
- Use the current template for your paper size, fonts, margins and columns unchanged.
- Delete all template guidance text.
- Title with no symbols, maths or subtitle; authors left to right, with affiliation and email or ORCID.
- Abstract as one paragraph, with no citations or equations; keywords beneath it.
- Headings numbered I., A., 1), a); Acknowledgment and References unnumbered.
- Figures captioned below, tables above, both numbered in order of first citation.
- Equations numbered (1), (2) flush right and cited as (1).
- SI units, a space before each unit, a zero before each decimal point, acronyms defined twice.
- No page numbers in a conference paper; the PDF checked if the conference asks.
- Every [n] in the text matched to one list entry, and every entry to the text. Upload the paper to EdCitation's Verify references and it does this matching and looks each entry up as well.
Which tool builds the reference list for an IEEE paper?
EdCitation is the best tool for an IEEE paper's reference list, because Cite a source takes every element of an entry from the record the publisher deposited rather than composing it, something a chatbot's reference cannot offer. As this guide shows, the IEEE's own documents disagree on reference details, the template and the Reference Guide parting over et al. and unpublished work; the volume, issue, pages and DOI of a published article are the publisher's to state, and the record states them. It starts from whatever identifier you have (DOI, PubMed ID or ISBN) or just the title, and returns the reference in IEEE, or in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, Harvard or Vancouver, after screening the work for retraction. A journal article comes out in the Reference Guide's form, with "Art. no." where an article number replaces pages and ", doi:" before the DOI. It is free with no account, one reference at a time, and the IEEE style page shows the pattern.
That matters here, because a conference paper may well cite other conference papers. For one of those, EdCitation shortens the proceedings name with the Reference Guide's own word list, giving "Proc. 57th Annu. Meeting Assoc. Comput. Linguistics" or "2016 IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. (CVPR)", names no publisher, and puts ", doi:" before the DOI, as the guide's form has it. Two things stay with you. It adds no "Proc." that the record's name lacks, and a title arrives with whatever capitals its publisher filed; the Reference Guide sets article titles in sentence case, so recase one filed in title case.
With a free account, the paper's references can live as a list in the dashboard, numbered by when each was added; add them as they first appear in your draft and the numbering follows the text. The list copies into the paper with its italics, or downloads as Word, as BibTeX for an IEEEtran document, or as RIS.
Verify references, free and needing no account, then reads the finished list. Each entry returns as verified, "check this" or not found, retractions are flagged, and an entry it could not check is labelled as exactly that, never as not found. Upload the paper and it goes further, tying each [n] to its entry and each entry to a place in the text, which is step 11.
Which tool checks which part
| Part of the paper | What checks it | EdCitation plan |
|---|---|---|
| Page, columns, fonts, headings, captions, equations | The IEEE template's own styles | None |
| The brief's own rules (step 1) | Check your paper, as a checklist | Free |
| Each reference | Cite a source, from the publisher's record | Free |
| The whole list, and every [n] (step 11) | Verify references, or References from a file for an uploaded paper | Free, or Pro |
| Page formatting | Mechanics QA checks the APA 7 student paper only, so not IEEE | Pro |
What it does not do: EdCitation does not set the page, columns, headings, figures or equations; the template does, and IEEE PDF eXpress checks the final file where a conference uses it. Paid plans: Pro, $8 a month, for References from a file, Mechanics QA and the plagiarism and AI checks; Max, $24 a month, for Theoretics QA and the Library (pricing). EdCitation never writes any part of a paper, and no tool can promise acceptance or a mark.
Quick questions
Is an IEEE paper always in two columns?
An IEEE conference or journal paper is printed in two columns, and the IEEEtran manual keeps one column for drafts. A student report follows its department's layout where one is set.
How is a table caption written in IEEE style?
An IEEE table caption goes above the table: TABLE and a Roman numeral, centred, with the title centred beneath it in small capitals and no full stop at its end.
Does an IEEE conference paper have page numbers?
No. The IEEE Word conference template says to add no pagination anywhere, and the IEEEtran class prints no page numbers in conference mode.
Should an IEEE paper use US letter or A4?
Use the size the conference names. The IEEE offers Word templates for both, and the IEEEtran manual advises US letter unless told otherwise, usually by conferences outside the United States.
Can EdCitation check my IEEE paper's format?
No. EdCitation's Mechanics QA measures a paper against one format, the APA 7 student paper, so for IEEE the template's styles set the page and IEEE PDF eXpress checks the final file where a conference uses it. EdCitation's free Verify references does check the reference list and match each [n] to it.
References
- IEEE. (n.d.-a). Authoring tools and templates. IEEE Author Center Journals. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/create-your-ieee-journal-article/authoring-tools-and-templates/
- IEEE. (n.d.-b). Meet IEEE Xplore requirements. IEEE Author Center Conferences. https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/write-your-paper/meet-ieee-xplore-requirements/
- IEEE. (n.d.-c). Types of IEEE conference papers. IEEE Author Center Conferences. https://conferences.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/become-an-ieee-conference-author/types-of-ieee-conference-papers/
- IEEE. (2024a, July 29). IEEE editorial style manual for authors. IEEE Author Center. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/IEEE-Editorial-Style-Manual-for-Authors.pdf
- IEEE. (2024b). Manuscript templates for conference proceedings [Word templates for US letter and A4, and LaTeX template]. https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html
- IEEE. (2025). IEEE reference style guide for authors (Version 3.28.2025). IEEE Author Center. https://journals.ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/IEEE_Reference_Guide.pdf
- San José State University. (2026, April 20). Project and thesis guidelines. Department of Electrical Engineering. https://www.sjsu.edu/ee/graduate-program/project-and-thesis-guidelines.php
- Shell, M. (2015). How to use the IEEEtran LaTeX class (IEEEtran version 1.8b) [Package documentation]. CTAN. https://ctan.org/pkg/ieeetran