alg | (no subject)

The thing I've never gotten is that formatting is the only aspect of your manuscript's reception that is completely under your control. The editor may take against your character, your setting, your world-view, or your inability to find the caps key, but by gum, she can't quarrel with your format! If, that is, you follow some quite simple guidelines...

P.S. The manuscript rules have changed since I began submitting: it used to be Courier or Death, whether or not you were using a word-processor to produce the Mss. I'm glad Times is okay now. Does it make the manuscript harder to mark up?

This makes total sense to me, as do

jonquil's comments. Two of my jobs as a writer, as far as I can tell, are to write the best story I can, and submit it in as appealing a format as I can -- which means standard manuscript format, in an envelope which can be opened easily by the editor.

I read your other post and was going to leave a comment.

(Yes, this is shallow, here's what it was.)

*runs around rejoicing*

Not guilty! I didn't do it!

(Yes, well, I told you it was shallow. *g*)

As a copyeditor, I really appreciate writers who use Courier. Times is very dense, and it's harder to spot typos in it. Also, because it doesn't take up as much room, I'm expected to copyedit more words per hour than I am with Courier. (Most production departments--and I say this with fifteen years' experience--expect a freelancer to copyedit ten pages per hour, regardless of how those pages are formatted.) That's a lot when you have as many things to take care of in a manuscript (http://deannahoak.livejournal.com/38288.html) as we do.

I think (though I cannot be sure) that many writers don't understand that they can use any formatting they want to *write* the novel/short story/whatever. The editor will never see that, and if some editor were to magically intuit that I like Palatino, single-spaced and double-space between paragraphs I have trouble believing they would care as long as they didn't have to read it like that.

And fixing the format takes, like, five minutes. Really.

Heck, it's part of my process to shift over into correct manuscript format, print, and mark-up. It means I've changed process. I'm not writing this anymore, I'm editing it...

I'm another who just doesn't get why people might have issues with formatting a manuscript the way a publisher's guidelines asks them to format the manuscript. It ain't exactly tough. And if you make yourself a template for manuscript files in your word processor of choice, you don't even have to worry about reformatting the whole thing later.

Now if I can just whip one or two of these books bubbling out of my brain back out into the wild in their properly formatted glory... ;)

As far as I am concerned, Times is fine for my eyes. On the other hand, as you will see below, copyeditors take care of different aspects than line editors/acquiring editors do, and they prefer Courier.

You know, I sometimes freelance copyedit, too, and I never put these things together before, and now that you've pointed it out, I will always make sure that I transmit my own manuscripts to production in Courier New. I love copyeditors and I want to make their lives easier!

(I cannot believe I never put two and two together before and realized these things. *hides face in shame*)

And here I was recently having spasms over a contest entry where the rules specified (among other things) that the page numbers be on every sheet except the first. I cannot figure out how, in Pages, to turn it off on the first page (I remember how in Word, but Pages has its little quirks). After a while of fighting with my printer over a cranky cartridge, and a good thirty pages' worth of test printing just to get things looking decent, I gave up and printed everything exactly as it already was, page number 1 and all.

Now, if I get disqualified for THAT, I will be officially pissed off. ;)

...but, um, yes, I double-space everything in Courier.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

When i repost that, eventually, you can leave this comment again. *g*

YES.

(Oooh, the envelope thing. OMG. I should mention that at some point.)

(And I owe you an email! I will reply tonight. Sorry!)

YES OMG YES.

I think a lot of writers don't consciously understand about moving out of writing-mode and into editing-mode. (A lot of writers who have livejournals do, though, and I wonder if that is partially a function of moving out of fiction writing mode, and into non-fiction writing mode?)

LOL--cool--thanks. *g*

Hee.

I have discovered that if I sit down to write something, it absolutely has to be formatted in Way A. Even if it's just a freaking memo to be sent around explaining how to fax something. (Which I've done.)

But memos are formatted Way B. So I just.... reformat when I am done! Easy.

Heeeeeeee. You know what you can do?

Buy a bottle of Wite-Out next time. (Or Liquid Paper. I'm not brand-loyal.)

I think I love you.

Am linking. Again. :)

I used to write all my fanfic in good ol' Notepad. Now that I've whipped up a manuscript-format template in Word, I have to use it to write everything I work on, or else it just looks wrong. :) And this includes the query letters!

I plan to. ;)

(I'd actually tried using the copier feature on said printer, with the corner folded over so the 1 didn't get copied, but it only exacerbated the printing flaws when it copied. And by then it was late and I was immensely frustrated, as one can get when a terribly expensive printer does not do your bidding. I tried! I read the rules! Really, I did! *sob* ;)

...and I didn't mean to use the word "copied" that many times. Ahem.

You are forgiven.

*gives you absolution*

That actually seems like kind of a stupid rule. I wonder what they have it for.

Detecting one's ability to read the fine print?

Hey, sometimes the fine print is important!

It may be about shifting from one mode to the other. It's definitely not just fiction vs. non-fiction, because I see it as a tech writer too. (It's even more confusing as a tech writer: I don't own this Standard Operating Procedure. Some guy in manufacturing owns it. And he's going to ask for changes, and those changes will be to make it better because he knows what it needs to be faaaaaaar better than I do. So why is anyone upset?)

I think it may be about ownership or distance or some other thing I can't quite put my finger on. (And I'm certainly not the best at it, but I try.)