Titles of scientific papers

The title of an article requires close attention from both authors and editors. A title should be concise, accurate and informative, even when it appears on its own, e.g. quoted in a bibliography or listed in a current-awareness publication. Recommendations are made about the preferred length of an article title, the balancing of brevity and optimum information content, the choice and order of words, biosystematic and geographical detail, inevitable punctuation, and the omission of abbreviations, formulae and exotic letters and signs.