Formatting APS Journal Articles :: Main Text
APS style is not to use bulleted or numeric lists in the form of separated, indented text within a paragraph. If you encounter such things, note that when you run Cleanup in the Toolkit on a paper, it removes all bullets and any Word-generated numbers. Consider the list carefully to evaluate the best course of action. More often than not, the list can be renumbered into our style and the text run in to form one sentence, i.e., We ate the following fruits: 1) apples, 2) kumquats, and 3) kiwis. At times, however, you can change the items into level 3 headers, provided that it makes sense to do so.
Occasionally, you may receive a document where the author has designated the levels of headings using outline style (denoted by sections using roman numerals, alphabetical designations, or regular numbers). As a general rule, APS does not use outline style, so you should delete the letters or numbers preceding the sections. However, this organization gives you a very clear idea as to the levels of headers you are dealing with, so the process of formatting them becomes much easier.
There is, of course, the rare exception to this. For extremely complex papers, like math-heavy header-filled modeling papers, it can really help to retain the outline style as long as the author is consistent. This is only if the author provides the manuscript that way; don't construct the outline yourself. This is especially relevant if the author cites subsections within the text.