July 2003 - Issue 8

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If you've formatted your document correctly, you will have set a tab five (5) spaces in from the left margin. Pressing the TAB Key ensures every paragraph in your manuscript is indented to the same level. The exceptions are the first line of a new chapter and the first line of the paragraph following a scene break.

Consistency of punctuation is another vital component of presenting a manuscript properly - whether paper-based or electronic. For instance, you should choose either single or double quote marks for your dialogue (according to your target publisher's requirements), then use the opposite for items placed in inverted commas.

There are many other issues that affect the electronic excellence of your manuscript. These are just some of them:

• Pauses - How do you present pauses? (three dots). Be consistent and check whether the publisher requires a space before and after the dots if the pause is in the middle of a sentence.

• Dashes - There are three types of dashes - the hyphen entered from the keyboard (used to hyphenate words), the en-dash and the em-dash. Be consistent with their use. and check which type your publisher prefers for dashes other than hyphens.
• Capitalisation - At Livewire, we prefer lower case for such things as tv's, vcr's and other equipment. We also prefer "okay" rather than "OK".
• Paragraph endings - At the end of paragraphs, I often see in electronic manuscripts a full stop and one or more spaces or TAB Key impressions, then the paragraph ending symbol. All excess spaces and tabs at paragraph endings should be deleted because they cause  type-setting problems. To view them, click on the ¶ on your toolbar and all electronic symbols (eg. tabs and spaces) display in your document.

An electronically clean manuscript has more chance of being accepted by a publisher than one that has a lot of type-setting work to be done to make it production ready. If you have queries about manuscript presentation issues, check with your target publisher for clarification before submitting your work.

© 2003 Robyn Lidstone
All content and articles in this newsletter are the intellectual property of Robyn Lidstone and Livewire Publishing and must not be reproduced in any format without the written consent of the author.