Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Writing Group => Topic started by: Chaos on March 28, 2008, 02:14:58 AM
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I was just wondering, when an author is writing is manuscript, what type of formatting should he do on it? Is there a specific type of formatting agents and publishers prefer in manuscripts? I would suppose you want to avoid formatting them too much, but what is the "base font", per se?
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For contests and stuff it's usually times new roman, or a similar font, 12 point, double spaced. That's the only real formatting I've ever come across
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Used to be places would demand Courier font, but this may be waning.
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I think courier is still one of the reccomended fonts, but I'm pretty sure times or times new roman are also acceptable.
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Courier used to be the standard. I've been hearing that Times New Roman has become acceptable.
12 pt. is still standard as far as I know. Double-spaced.
Just makes sure whatever font you use is easy to read. This kind of translates into generic.
The biggest mistake a writer can make when submitting is to use unusual fonts or try to show off their page layout or graphic designer skills. Even if you are a professional typographer or graphic designer, it's probably still best to stick to generic easy-to-read formatting. The publisher is really looking for your writing skills, not your design skills. Over formatting can also make some people to think accidentally that you've already published the piece.
This can cause a problem when you're a poor writer trying to save money on ink and paper, but giving some poor editor or slush-reader eye strain is not something worth risking.
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Times New Roman
12 pt font
1 inch margins
double spaced
ragged left margins (not justified)
Indent paragraphs, no extra blank lines
Window/Orphan turned off
Scene breaks with "#" symbol
White paper
top-right corner of every page, put your surname, a word from the title, and page number: such as Mistborn/Sanderson/1 (as an example).
And most important of all
Write a good book. ;D
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I think you mean ragged right margins.
The point of using Courier before was that you could tell the approximate word count from the page count because it uses a proportional font, and using the right point size, margins, and double spacing, the official approximate word count was 250 words per page. Magazine editors could then convert this to column inches for their magazines, and book publishers could convert to an approximate number of typeset pages.
Nowadays though pretty much everyone gives their editor an electronic copy of the book, and they can get the word count (or the character count divided by six) very easily by looking at the electronic copy. So the need to use a monospaced font isn't as important. Some copy editors, however, still prefer Courier because they say it makes mistakes easier to spot. See Deanna Hoak's blog (http://deannahoak.com/2007/07/02/font-yet-again/). (Actually, check out all her copyediting posts (http://deannahoak.com/category/blog/copyediting/).)
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I think you mean ragged right margins.
*cough, cough*
Ah hem, yeah, of course I meant RIGHT margins. ;D Was just making sure you were paying attention...
Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket.