An Introduction to Essay Formatting

This is largely intended as a supplementary guide for using word to achieve

proper essay formatting: the nuts and bolts of headers, footers, double-
spacing and the like. You should make an effort to familiarise yourself with
Word there are many nifty things it can do for you but in the mean time,
this little guide should help with your presentation.

Headers and Footers

Your essays should have my name and your name at the top of every page.
Heres how to insert these:

1. Go to the View menu at the top of the screen,
and click on Header and Footer.

2. A box will open at the top of the screen that looks
like this:


This is where you can enter things like your name,
and the name of your tutor. Your name should go
on the right-hand side, your tutors of the left.

3. Enter your tutors name, then press tab twice to enter your own at the
opposite side of the page; which should look something like this:


These will now appear automatically at the top of every page.

4. A toolbar will have popped up when you selected to view your header and
footer. When you want to exit this, click the close button on that:


The footer is at the bottom of the page, as the name suggests. It can be used
in a similar fashion.





Page Numbers

Your essays should also be numbered. This is easy to do.

1. Go to the Insert menu, and click on Page Numbers:

2. A window will open, allowing you to select
where on the page you want the numbers to
appear at the top, or the bottom; in the
middle, to the left, or to the right

3. When youve selected what you want, click
OK. Every page will now automatically be
numbered.

Line Spacing

All your essays should be at least 1.5 spaced, and preferably double-spaced.
To do this:

1. Go to the Format menu, and select Paragraph


2. A window will open. Go to the Line Spacing drop-down menu and select
Double:


3. Click OK.

Other General Pointers

Paragraphs should either be indented, or have a space between them, but
preferably not both.

Bibliographies should be on a separate page from the end of your essay.
They should also be single-spaced, and preferably be labelled Bibliography
at the top.

You must include a word count at the bottom of the last page. I have a feel for
when an essay is over-long or short, and I will count and pull you up on it,
especially if you did not include a word count. Note: you will be marked
down, according to the guidelines in the handbook, even if you are only
one word over the limit.

All essays should have an essay title at the top of the first page, even if you
have attached a coversheet that has the title on it.

Referencing

You should all know this by now, but referencing is very important. If you do
not reference I will have to hand your essay over to the Examinations Officer,
and even if you were just being careless, you will be assessed for
plagiarism. It is not sufficient to simply list the books you read in your
bibliography. If you give someones view, argument, or interpretation, you
must cite it as theirs, complete with page number. If you quote someone, you
must say where the quote is from.

It may seem very strict, but plagiarism is a very serious academic offence,
and it is very sad for us when a student has to leave university for something
that could have been so easily avoided.

How to reference:

Departmental style follows the Harvard system of in-text referencing, as
opposed to footnotes, but the important thing to remember is that you need
the name of the philosopher, the date of the text (i.e. the edition that you are
using), and the page number. These point to the longer bibliographical
reference at the end of your essay. This is Harvard style:

Name (date: page number), or (Name date: page number)

E.g. Descartes (2006: 8) writes that: Eggs are nice

It has been argued that: Eggs are nice (Descartes 2006:8)

Alternately: Descartes (2006: 8) gives an argument for the niceness of eggs

These short, in-text references point to the fuller reference in the bibliography,
which should include the following information:

Author Surname, Author Forename or Initials
1
(date of publication), Title of
Chapter/Article (page numbers of chapter/article), Title of Book, name(s) of
any editors and/or translators followed by (trans.), (ed.), or (eds) as
appropriate, Place of Publication: Publisher

e.g. Kant, I (1978), Introduction: I. Of the Difference Between Pure and
Empirical Knowledge (pp. 25-26), Critique of Pure Reason, J M D Micklejohn
(trans.), New York: Dutton

1
The name should be as it appears on the cover/title page of the book if you know Kants
first name was Immanuel, but the title page says I. Kant then list it in your bibliography as:
Kant, I not Kant, Immanuel. Note also that footnotes can be used to provide useful bits of
information that are extraneous to your main argument. However, these should be included in
your word count, and should be used sparingly.