Spacing

2. The common ground rules of spacing vary according to the type of document in which they are used. The following suggestions incorporate the latest notions of good practice when using word-processors for academic writing.

3. You may wish to use single spacing for the lines of the question or title at the head of your essay – but for the body of the text you should use one-and-a-half or even double spacing.

4. Remember that an essay or a dissertation is an academic exercise that will normally call for written comment from your tutor. The purpose of this extra spacing is to leave room for this comment – from which you have an opportunity to learn.

5. You may be tempted to produce the body of your text in single spacing so as to imitate the page layout of a printed book. Resist this temptation. Let your work 'breathe freely' to produce its best effect.

6. There should normally be extra spacing between paragraphs. If you have chosen one-and-a-half or double spacing for your body text, just add one extra space. Alternatively, indent the first line.

7. If you adopt the system of extra spacing between paragraphs you do not need to indent the first line. This is only really necessary in single-spaced texts such as commercially printed books where there is an economic imperative to fit as much text as possible onto each page.

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8. Each sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop, followed by a single space before the next sentence (which begins with another capital letter).

9. Some people trained in the older conventions of spacing from the era of typewriters (remember those!) use a double space after the full stop.    Like this.    It is not incorrect, but it is no longer necessary.

10. A quotation which is three lines of your own text or longer should normally be double-indented. If you follow this practice, the quote may be single spaced to set it off typographically from your own argument.

Remember that you might also wish to reduce the font size by something like one point [like this] for the same reason. (If you are quoting accurately, your tutor is very unlikely to wish to correct it in any way.)

11. It is useful to appreciate the difference there may be between TAB and INDENT.

• Pressing the TAB key shifts the start of your present line to the next tab setting point. The next line will start at the left-hand margin as usual. 
• Pressing INDENT creates a new and temporary left-hand margin at the next setting point: the remainder of your paragraph will align with this margin. 

12. Do not put spaces before points of punctuation, but they do go after them, before continuing with your text:

RIGHT      the conclusion, provisionally, is this 
WRONG    the conclusion , provisionally , is this 

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