When you’re sending a manuscript file electronically, there are some formatting decisions you have to make.
Some of the advice on formatting is fairly standard and easy to find. Most editors, publishers or agents will tell you to double-space between lines and single-space after a period, some will tell you what text font or size they prefer.
Standard wisdom, and I’ve said this myself, is that if there’s a guideline that isn’t mentioned, you don’t have to sweat it. It means that a little variation doesn’t matter. However, that’s not always true. Some standards are assumed and taken for granted. Others might impact the manuscript further down the line in ways you might not expect, or might just be extra work for you or someone else.
I thought I’d take a step back and cover some of the “unwritten” basics that you’re expected to already know.
- 1. Don’t send your manuscript as a .pdf file. I saw a topic on a writers’ forum recently where someone asked whether publishers and editors prefer .pdf to .doc because it minimizes the risk of virus transmission. To me, .pdfs also minimize the risk of editing. A publisher isn’t going to take your document and make a book out of it as-is. They’re going to send it to the copyeditor, then to the layout/design staff. It needs to be in a format that takes up as little disk space as possible, and is as flexible as possible. I prefer MS Word-compatible .doc because it accepts tracked changes, and I use the “track changes” function to do line edits and margin comments.
2. Don’t password-protect your file. See #1. Especially don’t password-protect your file and then neglect to pass along the password. Thank you for this nice lump of virtual coal, wish we could read it!
3. Include your name, title, and e-mail address in the body of the file. Attachments are meant to detach. If a manuscript gets separated from that vital information, it’s just as devastating as if you leave off page numbers from your hardcopy manuscript and the pages meet someone’s floor. Good luck getting it all back where it belongs! Your title page is a good place for all that stuff, and putting last name / title / page number in the header of the document (so that it shows on every page) is good practice, too.
4. Use the automated page number insertion tool, by the way. Don’t waste your time manually numbering every page. It’s too time-consuming and too unreliable — pagination can be shifted around too easily, by too many factors. Even a simple change in font can mess up all that work.
5. Plain black text, on plain white background. Not gray, not off-black, not switching back and forth randomly, or for emphasis. Simple, boring, easy-on-the-eyes black text. Please.
6. Tradition calls for emphasized words to be underlined in a manuscript instead of italicized, even though italics will be used in the final book. Historically, this was because typewriters didn’t have an italics setting. They might have had a separate italics flywheel that could be substituted in and out, but seriously… what a pain. It was easier just to backspace and underline, and then those instances of emphasis stood out clearly for the editors and typesetters. These days, underlining still makes those instances stand out more clearly, and it’s just one simple click in InDesign to convert them to italics in the final layout. Opinion will vary on this point, but I’d recommend doing it the old fashioned way unless instructed otherwise. Underlines do stand out more boldly to overworked eyes.
7. For section breaks within chapters, a single hash mark (number sign (#)) centered on a new line is the standard. I advise against using a plain blank line because it’s too easy for that extra blank space to go away during the layout process. Remember that the symbol is there to signal the section break to the typesetter.
You can get a little fancy with this and use three asterisks instead (* * *), but don’t get too fancy. There’s no need to pull out the dingbat fonts or make cute little ascii designs or anything like that. At worst, you’ll pick a font that your recipient doesn’t have and all they’ll see is a placeholder box or some messed up formatting. Even at best, that extra work is just going to go away when the manuscript goes to layout.
8. Look at your hidden characters.
The “show/hide all characters” option is usually indicated by a little paragraph-symbol character somewhere in the menu structure of your word processor. On mine, it looks like this:
Activating this option will show spaces as dots, will show paragraph markings, and tabs, and page breaks, and all sorts of formatting goodness. It’s like looking at the back of a piece of needlepoint and seeing how evenly the stitches were made. If you make unusual formatting choices, “show all” will give you away. See #9 and #10, below.
9. Indent your paragraphs with a single tab, or by going to the “format paragraph” menu and choosing to indent the first line by 0.5. Whichever you choose, make it standard throughout the manuscript. I’ve seen manuscripts indented with five spaces, like you might do on a typewriter. (Even on a typewriter, tab is more efficient!)
Indenting by space bar feels sloppy to me, and I think it increases the risk of formatting error later in the layout process. Plus, it’s extra work for you. Just use tab, or set a global preference once and ignore it. Then, hitting return will automatically indent your next line.
10. Since the word processor isn’t a typewriter, you also don’t need a carriage return at the end of every line. I just got a submission that did this. Every line was a fixed length with a “return” at the end of it. That’s fine for a set page width in Microsoft Word, but what happens if I change the font, or the text size? What happens if the copyeditor finds and corrects a repeated word on one line? What happens when the text is flowed into the layout program and changed in all sorts of ways, and now those paragraphs don’t look pristine and cohesive anymore? Letting your paragraphs flow will save time for you and for others down the line.
