Learning Enhancement Team
Essay Presentation
This guide explains how to lay out your essay as a formal piece of scholarly work.
It describes the conventions of setting out an essay and explains why essays look
the way they do.
Related guides: ‘Planning an Essay’ and ‘Writing an Essay’.
Why is presentation important?
The way your essay looks may seem unimportant compared to the ideas it contains.
However, presenting your assignment appropriately and carefully gives a good
impression and makes the process of reading your work more pleasant for the reader. It
will also give them confidence that you are a competent author who has taken care with
all aspects of your work, from the superficial details to the more in-depth analysis.
Essays should normally be word-processed. This makes them much easier to read for
the lecturer and means that you will not lose marks if your handwriting is hard to
understand. Word processors are also very helpful in composing your essay, allowing
you to make and change drafts easily.
The page
The page should have margins of at least an inch (2.5 cm) at the top, bottom and both
sides. Your word-processor will normally do this for you, but you can alter the margins
using the ‘page set-up’ menu. Margins create space for your lecturers to write clear,
detailed feedback next to the precise part of your essay that they want to comment on.
They must also be taken into account when binding a longer piece of work such as a
thesis or dissertation.
It is helpful to insert page numbers at the bottom of the page, so that your essay will be
easier to reconstruct if pages get out of order. You can do this using the ‘insert’ menu on
your word processor.
On the first page, you should write the essay question so your reader knows immediately
what question you are answering and doesn’t have to work it out. Don’t forget other vital
information that you may be asked for, such as the word count, your name or
identification number, or that of the unit or course. Consult your course handbook for
further details.
To alter margins, select the Page Setup option from the File menu. Page numbers can
be added through the Insert menu.
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Font and font size
A good font size to choose is 12 point. Anything smaller can be hard to read.
The most common font used in essays is Times New Roman. It is often the default
font on word processors and creates an authoritative impression.
Slightly simpler (sans serif) fonts such as Arial are also used sometimes, as they can be
easier to read, especially for readers with dyslexia.
Avoid unusual or difficult-to-read fonts just to create an impact. Essays should be
appropriately formal in both language and appearance.
Font, size and style (eg bold, italic) can be altered in the Format menu through the Font
option, or in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
Spacing
Double-spaced, or 1½ spaced lines make your essay easy to read and give your lecturer
space to write specific comments on your work. Do not use close line spacing or smaller
fonts to try to disguise an essay that is over the word limit.
Line spacing can be altered in the Format menu, through the Paragraph option.
Paragraph layout
Paragraphs should be laid out in one of two ways. You can start a new line, and indent
the first line of the paragraph using the tab key (a), or you can leave a blank line in
between paragraphs (b). The purpose is to allow the eye to locate the beginnings of
these subsections easily when moving down the page.
(a)
(b)
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Fig. 1: two examples of paragraph layout.
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An essay in which the paragraphs are not clearly laid out, or which uses either no
paragraphs or too many (a sentence or two is not a paragraph) can be tiring on the eye.
See the study guide Using Paragraphs for more information.
Use of Headings
How to format headings
Headings and subheadings can be useful ways to make your structure clear to the
reader. You can make them stand out using different sized font or different font styles
such as bold text or italics. If you wish to show a difference between headings and subheadings, you could use a combination of font sizes and styles, or a combination of
numbers and letters, or a combination of Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) and Roman numerals
(i, ii, iii). This study guide has used these techniques:
Use of Headings (Section 1)
How to format headings
(Sub-section a)
Be consistent in the way you format headings. Note that the use of headings is not
accepted in all subjects. They are often expected in reports, but not in literature essays,
for example. Check with your lecturers for guidance. If headings are not conventionally
used in your discipline, then you can make the first sentence of your paragraph (or ‘topic
sentence’) do the same job of signaling the topic of the section. See the study guide
Using Paragraphs for more information.
Layout of quotations
If you wish to include short quotations in your essay, it is common to integrate them into
your paragraphs, signaled by ‘single quotation’ marks:
As Smith (2006) reminds us, ‘the novel’s closing words give a sense of finality’.
“Double quotation marks” may also be used, but are more common in American
styles. They may also be used for quotations within quotations.
Longer quotations of several lines should be laid out separately from your paragraph,
by leaving a blank line at the beginning and end. They should be indented by 0.5 cm
and single spaced. As this indicates that it is a quotation, you do not need to use
quotation marks.
If you alter a quotation, you should make this clear to the reader. If you have left out a
section, because it is not relevant to your point and does not change the sense of the
quotation, then indicate this with three full stops in square brackets.
Smith summarizes this view: ‘the novel is a significant […] landmark in eighteenth
century literature’.
You can also use square brackets to indicate where you have had to change a
quotation slightly to make it fit in your own sentence.
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Smith’s view of this text is true of all texts of the period; they provide ‘fascinating
record[s] of the tastes of a generation’.
Conventions for referencing quotations can be found in the study guide Referencing
your work. You can use the same conventions to indicate the titles of books or articles
in your text, for example, by using italics for book titles and inverted commas for
articles. This may avoid confusion:
In his influential article, ‘Reading the Novel’, Smith (2006) offers an in-depth
analysis of The Book.
Indentation can be altered in the Format menu, through the Paragraph option.
Diagrams
If you include diagrams, tables, pictures or any other kind of figures in your essays,
give them a clear caption, and a number or letter so that you can refer to them clearly
in your essay as is demonstrated in figures 1 and 2.
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Fig. 2: Example of a diagram.
Options in the Table menu can be used to format your tables neatly.
The Insert menu gives you options to include diagrams and pictures.
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Want to know more?
If you have any further questions about this topic you can make an appointment to see a
Learning Enhancement Tutor in the Student Support Service, as well as speaking to
your lecturer or adviser.
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https://portal.uea.ac.uk/student-support-service/learning-enhancement
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