Paragraph Text

• Alignment – Body paragraphs should be left-aligned, i.e. aligned along the left margin of the page. If the style manual of your discipline employs full justification, you may fully justify your paragraphs instead left-aligning them, though we recommend against it.
  • We strongly recommend against fully-justifying reference/works cited lists to avoid excessive kerning.
• Indents – The first line of body paragraphs should be indented one-half inch (0.5”), or one tab space.
• Spacing – Body paragraphs should be double-spaced, with no additional line spacing before, after, or between them.
• Widowed and orphaned text – The first paragraph of a section should appear, in part or in full, on the same page with its section heading.
  • Avoid separating the first or last line of a paragraph from the rest of the paragraph because of a page break. These separated lines are called orphans and widows. In Microsoft Word, you can turn on “Widow/Orphan Control” to automatically prevent this from occurring in your document.

• Alignment – Numbered/bulleted lists should be left-aligned. If the style manual of your discipline employs full justification, you may fully justify your paragraphs instead left-aligning them, though we recommend against it.
  • We strongly recommend against fully-justifying reference/works cited lists to avoid excessive kerning.
• Indents – A list's numbers/bullets should be indented 0.5", and list entries should be aligned at 0.75", to help distinguish them from paragraph text. If an entry is longer than one line of text, subsequent lines should be aligned with the first line.
  • You may use alternative indentation schemes in your disquisition, but all lists should be formatted similarly.
• Spacing – Numbered/bulleted lists should be double-spaced, with no additional line spacing before, after, or between them.
• Number/bullet style – The number/bullet style should be consistent for all lists of the same type. For example, if a numbered list uses a parenthesis to punctuate list numbers, all numbered lists should use a parenthesis to punctuate list numbers.

When you include a URL (or other linked text) in the document (such as links to internet sources), make sure that it is not underlined or otherwise appearing as a hyperlink.

Additionally, URLs should not contain anchor text or query strings unless they are necessary to access the page. Anchor text is the part of the URL that appears after the “#” sign, and a query string is the part of the URL that appears after the “?” sign. Removing these from URLs decreases the incidence of link rot, and this text can contain personally identifying information.