Many skin excisions are submitted in an elliptical shape. This is because it creates wounds parallel to the skin tension lines, so they tend to heal with less scarring. Elliptical skin specimens frequently have sutures to indicate how the specimen was oriented on the body. Embed these skin shapes so that the cut surface of the tip (the broadest surface of the triangle) is down in the block face. This results in successive sections progressing towards the tip and becoming smaller over multiple sections. This orientation allows the residual tumor, if present, to be traced out to the tiniest point of the tip. The body, or midsections, of the specimen, will be placed on the cut surface to be serially sectioned at an angle perpendicular to the epidermis.
