Get familiar with the text editor in Essay questions - for candidates – Inspera Help Center

Introduction

The question type Essay is a text editor that is often used for questions that require longer text responses. In addition to text, you can insert bullet points, tables, formulas and drawings in your answer.

The essay question has a toolbar with functionalities such as:

Full screen editor
Temporary Backup Snapshots
Edit formula
Table
Spell Checker
Word Counter
Insert Drawing

Tip: By hovering your mouse pointer over the various icons, the toolbar will display a label with a description for each icon.

Full-screen editor

Press the Expand button to expand the text editor into full screen. This will give you a bigger picture to work with. The text editor will then fill most of your screen, and the question text will no longer be visible. To see the question text again, press the Expand button again to return to normal view.

When in full-screen mode, the toolbar will always be at the top of the screen, no matter the length of your text.

Note: If you are writing long text in normal view, you have to scroll up to get to the toolbar in the text editor. It is therefore advisable to write long texts in full-screen view.

Temporary Backup Snapshots

With Temporary Backup Snapshots, you can revert to an earlier version of Essay-questions. The backups are created as long as you are inside and type in the same question. A new temporary backup is taken every 15 minutes and is stored in the browser's memory. This means:

That it works both online and offline.
You can navigate between questions without resetting the backups.
The backups, which are temporarily stored, are only available while in the same session. When logging out, the list of temporary backups is cleared.

If you restore an earlier version, your current version will be saved, so that you optionally can return to it later.

Edit formula

By pressing the Edit formula button, you can insert formulas into the Essay question. Note that there are two tabs in the formula editor:

Basic	Advanced

Note: It is possible to insert characters from Advanced into the formulas under Basic.

Press "Done" to insert the formula into your answer.

Table

When you press the Table button, the "Table Properties" window opens:

1) Here you can select the number of rows and columns.

2) Insert headings in the table. Headings can be inserted in the first row, first column or both.

3) Determine the thickness of the frame in pixels. If you set the value to 0, the dashes will not appear.

Tip: You can use a borderless table to organize the text. If you want to indent your text (where you would use the tab key in regular word processing programs), you may want to place a table in the background without a frame size. Then you can use the columns as indents.

4) Write a caption for the table. The caption will appear above the table.

5) Specify the width of the table. Entering a number in the text box sets the width in pixels. You can also use units such as %, in, cm, mm, em, ex, pt or pc.

Tip: If you select 100 %, it will always fill the entire text box in width and be responsive.

The table can be changed after it is created by right-clicking on the table. You will then get an action menu where you can edit the entire table, insert multiple rows and columns, and edit at the cell level. You may want to put cell size under Cell Properties so that you have full control of your table.

Spell Checker

Note: Spell Check is only available if the one who created the test has enabled this.

In Essay, there are two types of spell checks available:

1. Spell check as you type (SCAYT)

This spell checker underlines misspelled words as you type and allows you to correct directly by right-clicking on the selected words.

SCAYT can be activated by clicking on the icon in the tool menu and selecting "EnableSCAYT". If the spell checker is already enabled, you will get the option "Disable SCAYT" instead.

The SCAYT language can be set by selecting "Languages" after clicking the spell check icon.

2. Spell Checker dialog box

This is a separate dialog box that goes through the entire text and provides options for marked words.

The dialog box is used in this way:

1. Select "Check Spelling" after clicking the spell check icon in the tool menu.

2. Words that need to be checked appear underlined in the spell check window. Suggested changes are appearing at the bottom. The word for which proposed changes are displayed appears in red and underlined in the text.

3. Select a change and press "Change to". If you do not want to change, click "Ignore word".

4. When you are finished, press "Finish Checking".

Note: You cannot add words to the dictionary.

Tip: If you find that SCAYT is disruptive as you type, you can select "Disable SCAYT" and use the Spell Check dialog box instead.

Word Counter

The text editor lets you keep track of how many words you have written. Word count appears in the right bottom corner.

Maximum number of words

In some cases, you may be asked not to type more than a certain number of words. The restriction then appears as <number of words written>/<maximum allowed words>. Example - Words: 66/200.

In the example, the limit is set to 200 words, and you have typed 66.

When the maximum limit is reached, the indicator turns red, and you are not allowed to type more words. Example - Words: 200/200.

Insert Drawing

Note: This option might not be available in all tests, depending on the settings used by your school.

Draw freehand drawings in Essay questions using you mouse. If you have a touch screen, you can use the stylus or your finger.

1) In the drawing tool you can draw with freehand, create different shapes, use an eraser and insert text.

2) Choose thickness. Here you can choose the thickness of the pencil or/and the frames on a figure.

3) Set colors:

Stroke: Color of the frame around shapes.
Fill: Fill color of shapes.
Bg: Background colors on the canvas.

Note: If you are going to set a color or thickness of a shape's border or drawing, this must be selected before you start to draw.

To insert the drawing into the text box, press "Save and close".

You can continue to draw, or edit your drawing, by clicking the drawing and then the drawing icon.