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The IB Extended Essay (EE) allows students to independently investigate a topic of personal interest and develop strong research, writing, and critical thinking skills. If you are formatting your Extended Essay, read this post for some guidance on the appropriate spacing to use to keep your work professional and easy to read.
IB Extended Essay Spacing
According to the official guidance from the IB, there is no fixed line-spacing requirement for the Extended Essay. This means students are free to choose whatever spacing they like, as long as the essay is easy to read. However, it is strongly recommended that you use 1.5 spacing or double spacing throughout your Extended Essay to ensure readability of the work and a clear presentation.
While single or 1.15 spacing is not explicitly prohibited, it can make the text appear crowded and more challenging for the examiner to follow. Closely packed text can also make it more likely for important points to be overlooked if the essay looks like a wall of text rather than being appropriately spaced out. In addition, examiners often annotate or comment on student work. Using wider spacing, such as 1.5 or double spacing, makes this annotation process much easier for examiners.
Although spacing itself does not directly affect your mark, presentation still matters since a well-formatted essay creates a stronger overall impression and helps your ideas stand out more clearly. For this reason, we recommend using 1.5 or double line spacing, a font size of 12, and a clear, readable font style (e.g. Times New Roman, Arial). The IB does not set a page limit for the Extended Essay, so using wider spacing will not cause any issues. However, you must still stay within the maximum word limit of 4,000 words, regardless of the spacing you choose.
We hope you found this post helpful in learning more about the Extended Essay spacing. For more useful materials associated with the IB, check out the wide variety of IA, EE and TOK exemplars available at Clastify and other guides available on our blog.
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