IPA & Syntax Trees

Making sure IPA symbols and syntax trees appear correctly in your work

IPA and other symbols

For any essays using IPA symbols (or, indeed, any symbols not commonly used in English orthography), make sure that the symbol you are using actually shows up in the file you hand in.

For phonetic symbols, the easiest way to do this is to use a Unicode font set that includes the symbols. Once these look the way you want on your machine, you should save the file as a PDF before submission.

PDF files are generally the preferred submission format because they ensure that we see what you see.

Nonetheless, you should always check your PDF file to make sure this is the case prior to submission.

Submitting your file as an editable .docx file means it might look different depending on who is opening the file (and with what operating system)

If you have no Unicode font installed on your machine which has phonetic symbols, you have several options:

• You can download Charis SIL, which is a font designed for readability across character sets.

• Doulos SIL is another option, but it does not have bold/italic forms.

• IPA TypeIt is an online IPA keyboard. You can type the required symbols and copy and paste them into your document.

• You can install an IPA keyboard locally on your computer.

It is crucial that you save your file as a PDF file and that you check that the PDF is readable and that all fonts appear as they should before submission. Phonetic symbols that print out as empty boxes will not enhance your mark.

Syntactic Trees

Students should draw syntactic trees with one of the following programmes:

• RSyntaxTree

• Syntax Tree Generator

• TreeForm

Once created, the syntactic trees must be inserted into Microsoft Word (or an equivalent word processor) as an image.

As with IPA symbols, it is important that you make a PDF of your document and ensure that trees appear correctly before submission.