Manuscript Preparation, Copyediting, and Proofreading

Q. This is a question regarding the use of boxes of text in a manuscript. The boxes will be numbered box 1, box 2, box 3, etc. When tables or figures are included inside such a box, should they be numbered? If so, should the numbering continue sequentially with the tables and figures appearing outside the box?

A. Normally notes and tables within boxed text are numbered separately from the rest of the text, because the exact placement of the box cannot be known until the pages have been composed. That is, the author may intend for a box to fall after table 6 in the text, but in typesetting there might not be room on that page, and the box might end up on the next page, after table 7. A separate numbering system for boxed tables or figures can use letters or whatever you devise, such as “table B1.1,” “table B1.2,” and so forth. And if notes in the manuscript are numbered with superscript 1, 2, 3, then any notes in the text boxes might have superscript letters (a, b, c) or roman numerals (i, ii, iii).