Proper Manuscript Formatting

How many times have you submitted your best stories here and there and everywhere and they were never accepted? Since most rejections come with no enlightening comments, you may never know why.

This article is not meant to make anyone feel inconsequential. However, there are some very fine elements relative to manuscript preparation that, without them, we stand a good chance of getting our work rejected.

If you have spent hours of hard labor concocting the perfect story, the most informative article, even novellas and book manuscripts, and still get everything rejected, the reason for rejection may have nothing to do with the writing in your great piece of prose.

Writers don’t seem to think much about how their manuscripts are formatted. As I continue to edit a few writers, I’m seeing these age-old problems that need to be addressed. I’ve never used one of the modern story writing programs that’s supposed to do it all for you. In my findings, they evidently do not.

Formatting Behind the Story

I write in Microsoft Word and always check my formatting before sending anything out for new eyes to view. Even the slightest error in formatting could be reason for instant rejection, with no one able to see past the glaring construed formatting. Since everything is sent electronically these days—thanks goodness we no longer have to print out our huge manuscripts and send them in the mail—it doesn’t matter if you’re publishing online or in paper. The electronic submission will show the formatting errors behind the prose the publisher will either have to clean up or reject. Most don’t have the time to re-format a manuscript for you.

This article jumps out of my editing past experience. I have seen the following formatting problems numerous times and thought the new writing programs might have improved and offered solutions for writers. That may not be the case. I’ve pulled from memory some incorrect manuscript formatting issues that I’ve seen for years, and writers are still making these errors. A way to easily correct these errors is given at the end of this article.

Learn formatting. What follows is plain English so you don’t have to search for hours to learn these steps. Then you make it easy for others to accept your work. These are common errors and ways to make corrections if you use Microsoft Word to create your manuscripts.

I suggest you make a second copy of a small piece of prose, maybe a page full, to use as a TEST. Mark it as a test. I don’t want you playing around with a good piece of prose and then click a wrong button and lose it all. Make a TEST copy and mark it so. Then try these explanations and functions I list below.

Making It Easier

~~ Learn to turn on the backward P (called a Pilcrow) in the formatting bar at the top of the Word page where all the functions appear. Check to see if every line in your manuscript ends with a backward P. To avoid this….

Do not hit Enter when your partial sentence reaches the right margin. That’s what causes that backward P. Word has an automatic wrap feature and will immediately jump to the next line as you continue to bang away at the keys, without you having to tell it to do so. This is true even if you have set the right margin to justify. Every time you come to the right margin and then hit Enter in the middle of your sentence, what you’re telling the program to do is set a new paragraph. Yes, your next line may fall right under the previous one. That’s because you have your manuscript line spacing set incorrectly. More on line spacing below.

~~ Do not right margin justify unless it is required. You do not know the size of book page or column spacing your publisher will use, so you should right margin justify.

~~ When many writers finish a sentence, they hit the space bar at least once, some tap it three or four times. Maybe they are thinking what to do next and don’t realize they are throwing their manuscript into a muddle. Finish your sentence with the appropriate punctuation and do not hit the space bar again.

If you’re finishing a paragraph, hit Enter once to start a new paragraph. Depending on how a publisher sets up your manuscript, hitting the Space Bar one or more times at the end of a sentence adds unnecessary spaces after the period or final punctuation. These extra spaces could easily cause the manuscript to skip many lines before the next paragraph begins. Add no spaces when you finish a sentence or paragraph.

To see this, you should have the backward P turned on. Then glance through all your endings. If you have hit the space bar one or more times, you will see tiny dots between the final punctuation and the backward P. All those dots represent how many times you’ve hit the space bar before moving on. Backspace to remove the dots.

~~ Avoid hitting the Space Bar twice between sentences. This is a definite no-no. It used to be allowed but in the effort to save space, it is now passé and just not acceptable any longer.

If your story or book has been published with the right margin justified, and you notice some wide spaces between words, it is the formatting program that’s creating extra spaces in order to keep a certain number of words on the line without having to hyphenate at the right margin. You have no control over these spaces.

~~ Do not add bullets or numbers to your document, unless your manuscript can’t live without them. Simply set your indent for sub-paragraphs using the instructions at the bottom of this article.

When you set a sub-paragraph with a 5 space indent on the left margin, remember to also set a 5-space indent on the right margin too.

~~ In writing for an eBook, always set the line spacing at 1.5. Always left margin justify the first paragraph, 3 spaces all other paragraph beginnings. BUT after asterisks *** which divides your story or changes a scene, then the first paragraph is left margin justified, all others 3 spaces. Every time you insert ***, the first paragraph following is left margin justified.

~~ Indent paragraphs properly and do not leave line spaces between paragraphs. If a publisher will publish in paperback or other formats, this makes it easy for them to convert the whole manuscript to a single line space manuscript in one swoop.

~~ When indenting or creating sub-paragraphs, or moving a title to be centered, do not do this with your Tab key. With your backward P turned on, you will see little arrows representing each time your clicked on the Tab key. This is another way to throw your formatting into a muddle. The publisher would have to convert this. You need to set the indents yourself.

~~ It’s safe to use Times New Roman 12 pt for any and all submissions unless you are told which other fonts are acceptable. Again, a publisher will have to convert your entire file to Time New Roman, unless they plan to do something artsy with your story presentation. Then they will choose the font and size. You probably won’t know what fonts and spacing they will use, so place it safe and use the standard acceptable Times New Roman 12 pt. Creating your stories should never include haggling over which font you might use.

Setting Paragraphs, Spacing, and Indents

At the top of the Word screen, just an inch or so to the left of the backward P you’ll find an icon with up and down arrows and 5 tiny horizontal lines. Click on that. Then click on Line Spacing Options. Most of your corrections can be managed from this window. You’ll be working in your TEST document so it doesn’t matter if you make a mistake. That icon is where you will set indents, line spacings, centering, and a whole lot of other functions to make your writing smoother and less worrisome. Ultimately, I hope when you learn to clean up your manuscript, and that you begin to get more work accepted. That is the whole point of this article.

It’s my wish that after the toil and time it takes to finish writing anything, we all have a much deserved measure of success.