In lieu of a Love/Hate post, as this is somewhat related to things I love and hate to see, here are a few common things you should know about editing and formatting as a writer:
Indent with tab - not spaces!
- And once you indent with tab, hitting "Enter" after the end of a sentence will automatically start your new paragraph indented correctly.
Use Track Changes
This is an essential editing tool for all writers to be comfortable with. Editors, agents and copy editors all use it to quickly and efficiently track what is changing, and by whom. If you haven't used this feature, give it a try; locate Track Changes in your version of Word, turn it on and make some changes.
- You must either accept or deny all changes (you can do a sweep and "accept all" if you like, or go one-by-one) in order for the comment bubbles and colored words/lines not to pop up when you send the document to someone else. Comments must be deleted as well, or those will also pop up when you send the document to someone else. Just changing the view to show "final without mark-up" will not hide your tracked changes from others.
- Also, please be kind and let your agent or editor know if you ARE sending a document with track changes...I have totally just forwarded a manuscript to my e-reader not knowing, and thought, wait, nothing changed! (It either meshes all the tracked changes in with the old manuscript, or just shows the old manuscript, on the e-reader - at least on my Kindle).
Insert: Page Break
USE THIS between chapters (unless stylistically you're not for some reason). It will prevent your chapters from running together in e-readers. It will also prevent your chapters from suddenly appearing in the middle of a page or at the end of a page if you make edits to the chapter before it.
Name your document professionally - and have a title page
I can't tell you how many "first 30 pages" or "synopsis"s I've uploaded to my e-reader. I won't remember what is what by the time I get to reading it, which is bad for you if I'm disoriented going into the read.
- So, please save your documents as a recognizable something ( such as "last name - title" or "last name - title synopsis") and pop in a title page with your full name and title.
- Bonus points if you include your query or hook in the title page, too, to get me excited all over again before I dive in
Standard font size is 12, Times New Roman preferred
- Courier is ok, and italicizing vs. underlining for emphasis can be up to you, though italicizing is preferred
