Some notes on scientific writing
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1 references

The preferred referencing system is one where you give the 
author's names and the year of the publication. An example:
	 Smith and Jones (2004) showed that pigs could fly.
There are alternative ways to write this. You could write
      It has been shown that pigs can fly (Smith and Jones, 2004).
Note the change in punctuation.

If there is a single author then you write "Smith (2004) showed..."
etc. If there are two authors, always quote them both. If there
are three then you quote the full three names the FIRST time 
you refer to the paper. In later references to the work you 
use just the first name and put "et al." to indicate "and 
others". For example, a first ref might look like this

	 Later work by Martin, Bartin and Fargo (1992) contradicted
	 the earlier conclusions.

Later you would write
      But as shown by Martin et al. (1992), this was not correct.

If there are 4 or more authors, you go straight to the first 
name et al format and use it all the time. 

It can get confusing if you want to refer to a number of people
at the same time. eg

   This abundnaces in this star have been the subject
   of intense research in recent years (eg Smith (2007),
   Davies (2007), Martin, Nartin and Fargo (2008), 
   Jones et al. (2008))

Different journals have diffeent foirmats, using ; or not. 
So don't worry too much about this case, as long as its 
clear what you are writing.

Then put your references, in alphabetical order, at the end.
The format should be

    Author, A. B., 2004, Journal, 123, 456.

where 123 is the volume number and 456 is the first page. Sometimes
journals require you to put the page range, so youmight write

	 Author, A. B., 2004, Journal, 123, 456-463.

If there are up to three authors, you put them all. For 
four or more its OK to put the first and then "et al". 

It is not normally required that you put the title of the paper!

And you almost *never* put the title in the text of the 
article, unless there is a special reason for it.

2 figures

Figures are very useful but journal space is expensive. One
should only include a figure if it is relevant. If you can
describe everything OK in words, then you do not need a figure.
The figure goes in only if it really saves time in 
explaining what is going on or really adds to the understanding. 
If the figure is not referred to in the text then clearly you
DO NOT need it. You should refer to useful figures for
the text and then explain how the figure aids in understanding
something.

The figure caption should not contain new information, but rather
just info on thow to interpret the diagram. eg "The blue 
line indicates the H abundance and the red line shows the 
He abundance. The x-axis is time in units of 10^6 years."
That sort of thing...

3 tables

Very similar to figures. Sometimes these contain data 
that you expect someone might want to use. You do not 
necessarily need to refer to all the numbers in the text :-) 


4 Bibliography

A bibliography is not a list of references. A bibliography is a list
of relevant books or articles. They need not have been specifically
referenced, but rather they provide information about the field in
general. More background info for someone new to the area. In
research papers you never see a bibliography - you see references. 
These are pecific papers and books  referred to in the text.