Formatting Your IB Extended Essay

Revised October 2017

The Final Submission

DO 
• Use a 12 pt. Arial or Times New Roman font
• Double spacing
• Indent at the start of paragraphs
• Bold your research question in the introduction
• All in-text citations (Ham, 2017) must have a
corresponding citation in the Reference List.
• For direct quotations include the page number
where available (Ham, 2017, p. 34).
• Use italics to denote book titles within the body
of the essay (do not underline)
• Use quotations sparingly and succinctly.
Paraphrase where possible (Cite these as well)
• Lengthy quotations (more than 4 lines of text)
should be indented and justified one inch rather
than placed in quotations
• You may use headings to denote the various parts
of the paper but name them purposefully (do not
use Body, Main, etc.)
• State word count clearly on the title page
DON’T 
• Do NOT have any personal identifiers (your
name or your supervisor’s) on the title page or
within the essay
• Do not put quotations in italics or bold font
• Don’t use footnotes (APA6 does not use
footnotes)
• Don’t overuse tables and charts such that they
break the flow in the paper
• Do not use photographs or images unless they
illustrate a specific point. If used they must be
captioned/annotated and cited
• Don’t underline your title or put it in
quotation marks – Italicize any titles
• Do NOT use URL shorteners such as tiny url,
bit.ly or goo.gl since your reader can’t see the
source of your reference.

• 10MB limit file size

Order of Items
• Title Page (your research question) Include word count.
• Contents page (all pages of essay included except for the title page, and contents page)
• Introduction
• Body of essay (with section headers if desired)
• Conclusion (EE word count on final page)
• References
• Appendices

*Note that the 4,000 word limit does NOT include the contents page, visuals, citations, references, and appendices.

Nanjing International School Tom Johnson – PhD Candidate

 References
DO 
• Start on a new page
• Centre title at the top (References)
• Use double spacing
• Use a hanging indent (format>text>layout> indents>left 1cm or CMD+Tab) This bumps the second line in.
• Alphabetize by author’s last name or title of work (when author is unknown. For titles skip the words A, An
and The to alphabetize)
• When there are 2-7 authors, use an ampersand “&” before the last author (Smith, S., Lee, R. & Kim, J.)
• Capitalize only the first word of book titles and articles. Italicize the title and subtitle (do not underline).
• Cite any photos, maps, graphs at the bottom of the image as well as in the References
• Use the words “Retrieved from” before URLs (include the date accessed as well- the IB likes this :)
• Hyperlink your URLs so that the reader may access the sources.
• Use DOI for journal articles when known
• All in-text citations in the body of the essay must have a matching pair in the References.

DON’T 
• Separate the sources into categories (ie: books, websites etc.)
• Don’t use bullets or numbering in the References
• Don’t use “Unknown Author”- skip the author and go straight to the title.
• Don’t use ‘ibid’ (this is Chicago style), if several sources are by the same author.
• Do not use URL shorteners like bit.ly or goo.gl since the reader can’t identify the source from the URL

How to lose points on your EE ...

• Not have a clearly stated research question

• No conclusion
• No contents page, pages not numbered, no citations and no reference list

Make sure you read the EE Rubric for your subject area. Many points are lost for very small errors like those listed
above. If you do not have the EE rubric, please make sure to ask your supervisor

Access the NIS APA guides located on the library website at:
http://share.nanjing-school.com/library/library-home-2/apa-guides/

If you are still unsure, use this website. It has the answers to all questions about APA6

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Specific information about footnotes can be found here:

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/04/

Nanjing International School Tom Johnson – PhD Candidate