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Advice on how to use the MNRAS LaTeX class file mnras.cls, version 3.0


In 2015 May MNRAS released version 3.0 of the LaTeX class file mnras.cls for preparing papers. However, this is mangled in various ways, with the instructions/template provided not being consistent with the mnras.cls file.

Note: a revised version of mnras.cls was released on CTAN on 2020 July 4th. This is called version 3.1 in the announcement, although – very confusingly – the version number given in the new mnras.cls file (and the associated files) is still set to 3.0, and still the release date is given as 2015/05/22. The changes made are ‘increasing page efficiency and including a new “Data Availability” section’, and the advice below also applies to this new version 3.0 mnras.cls. If your mnras.cls produces an abstract that uses the full width of the page, then it is the 2020 version, otherwise download it from CTAN.

So, here is some advice/hints about how to use the MNRAS class file.


Here is what I used at the start of a MNRAS paper.

   \documentclass[fleqn,usenatbib,usedcolumn]{mnras}
   %==============================================================================%
   \usepackage[british]{babel}             % British English hyphenation
   \usepackage{newtxtext}                  % Good fonts
   \usepackage[slantedGreek]{newtxmath}    %   "    "   (slanted Greek)
   %
   \let\la=\lesssim % for less than similar from newtxmath, not \la from mnras.cls
   %
   \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}                % Good font encoding
   \usepackage{graphicx}                   % Including figures
   %
   ...
   \begin{document}
   ...

Notes:

Also note that, with pdfLaTeX, you are likely to get warnings such as ‘;warning (ext4): destination with the same identifier (name{figure.1}) has been already used, duplicate ignored’ (as the hyperref package is loaded too early by the mnras.cls file). Such warnings can be ignored.

If you want to include landscape figures, using the rotating package, then add these lines to the preamble of your .tex file (i.e. before the \begin{document}):

   \usepackage{rotating}
   \makeatletter
   \let\@makecaption=\SFB@makefigurecaption
   \makeatother
   \setlength{\rotFPtop}{0pt plus 1fil}
   \setlength{\rotFPbot}{0pt plus 1fil}

Then you can use \begin{sidewaysfigure*} ... \end{sidewaysfigure*} to include a sideways figure.


Previously I also provided more advice about how to change several things to make submitting an MNRAS paper to arXiv easier, as arXiv was running a rather old LaTeX implementation, which did not have the newtx font packages. But from early 2017 arXiv has been running more up-to-date versions of TeX Live, that do include newtx, which makes it much simpler to submit a MNRAS paper to arXiv.

Still, I would recommend the following.


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