Formal paper and Capitalization (inside parenthesis or about special elements -Tables, figures etc-)

Question

In a thesis, or a formal paper written in English. What is the correct way to write inside a parenthesis and what is the correct way to refer to a table, or figure or section etc.?

Also, do we have to capitalize the first letter of words like "table" or "figure" when followed by the number of it? If so, when?

1. Example 1

Example 1)

There are many cases that the mean value we measured is different than the expected (See Table 1).

or

There are many cases that the mean value we measured is different than the expected (see Table 1).

or

There are many cases that the mean value we measured is different than the expected (see table 1).

1. Example 2

There are many cases (referred in in Section 2) that the mean value we measured is different than the expected.

or

There are many cases (referred in in section 2) that the mean value we measured is different than the expected.

1. Example 3

There are many cases (Do not forget the Table 4) that the mean value we measured is different than the expected.

or

There are many cases (do not forget the Table 4) that the mean value we measured is different than the expected.

or

There are many cases (do not forget the table 4) that the mean value we measured is different than the expected.

Answer 1

Capitalise the word "Table". Don't capitalise the word "see". (but follow any specific guidelines which may overrule this)

The APA Style blog gives an example:

This was a larger percentage than we hypothesized. Two woodchucks (33.3% of the virtual subjects) would not chuck wood (see Table 1).

(The blog post is actually about the presentation of percentages, but it includes this example)

An uk government site, which uses a dash to set off the parenthesis has

A change in use may involve an increase in flood risk if the vulnerability classification of the development is changed – see Table 2.

The same principle would be applied to your Examples 2 and 3. However, in these examples the parenthesis is unnecessary and disturbs the flow of the text.

There are many cases that the mean value we measured is different for that we expected. These cases are analysed in Section 2.

However some users of APA style seems to put the word "section" in lower case. There is clearly some variation here.

to set off letters that identify items in a series within a sentence or paragraph (see also section 3.04 on seriation)

If you need to put a complete sentence inside parentheses, then capitalise and punctuate as you would any other sentence.

There are many cases (A full summary of these cases can be found on our website.) that the mean value we measured is different for that we expected.

But it would normally be better to move a full sentence out of the parentheses

There are many cases that the mean value we measured is different for that we expected. A full summary of these cases can be found on our website.

As always, a particular style guide may instruct you to do something different. In which case you need to follow that guide.