I took your code and embedded it in this document: ------- \documentclass{article} \usepackage{epic} % required by ecltree and fancybox packages \usepackage{ecltree} % to draw the GP trees \usepackage{fancybox} % required by \Ovalbox % minimum distance between nodes on the same line \setlength{\GapWidth}{1em} % draw with a thick dashed line, very nice looking \thicklines \drawwith{\dottedline{2}} % draw an oval and center it with the rule. You may want to fool with the % rule values, though these seem to work quite well for me. If you make the % rule smaller than the text height, then the GP nodes may not line up with % each other horizontally quite right, so watch out. \newcommand{\gpbox}[1]{\Ovalbox{#1\rule[-.7ex]{0ex}{2.7ex}}} \begin{document} \begin{center} \begin{minipage}[!ht]{1cm} \begin{bundle}{\gpbox{L}}\chunk{\begin{bundle}{\gpbox{L}}\chunk{\begin{bundle}{\gpbox{L}}\chunk{\begin{bundle}{\gpbox{P}}\chunk{\gpbox{2}}\chunk{\gpbox{1}}\end{bundle}}\end{bundle}}\end{bundle}}\end{bundle} \end{minipage} \end{center} \end{document} -------- I have attached a PDF showing the result: as you can see, it looks fine. If you don't get the same result, you may want to look into your latex system (I'm on the latest MacTeX version). Sean