Manuscripts: Saving Time and Money, 2
In our last post, I began a series called Saving Time and Money at the Manuscript Stage, mostly meant for self-publishing authors and for operators of small presses. Today I’d like to mention a few things you can do as you are entering copy into your word processor—or, if you’re a publisher, some basic word processing guidelines that you can and should require your authors to follow.
For authors, each of these hints will help make your manuscript look more professional, which will help immensely in your effort to find a publisher. No editor wants to work with a rank amateur, and so if the initial impression your manuscript creates is amateurish, it may work against acceptance of an otherwise publishable work. If you are self-publishing, these devices will save you money. For publishers and packagers, encouraging your authors to adhere to these simple rules will save you hours of unnecessary work and frustration and many dollars in editors’ and graphic artists’ time. So…listen up!
Please double-space throughout!
This means everything. All parts of the manuscript should be double-spaced!
· The table of contents should be double-spaced.
· Heads and subheads should be double-spaced.
· Indented block quotations should be double-spaced.
· Tables should be double-spaced.
· Footnotes and endnotes should be double-spaced.
· The bibliography (reference list) should be double-spaced.
· Appendices should be double-spaced.
· The index should be double-spaced.
Everything. All of it. Double-spaced.
Yes, dear author. I know it’s digital copy on a computer and that the copyeditor can hit Ctrl-A Format > Paragraph > Line spacing > double. But why should she have to do that when you should have done it in the first place? And why should she have to undo the messes that this can make in copy whose author has played with the keyboard like a Tinker-Toy set to build all sorts of outlandish DIY constructions?
Remember, your final printed book will look different from the way it appears on an 8 x 11 1/2-inch page. All your careful layout will go away when it is poured into a page layout program and resized to fit the pages of your publisher’s book. The editor and the page layout artist can best work with plain vanilla double-spaced copy, and in some instances must have it formatted that way. Save these worthies some headaches and yourself a lot of grief and hassle, and just double-space everything.
Refrain from entering an extra space between paragraphs.
It’s OK to indicate the start of a new paragraph by entering a hard tab at the start of the first line of each new paragraph. If that seems like too much work, it’s OK to let your word processor automatically indent each first line. But please. do. not. double-space between grafs.
Use the same font size throughout.
It’s OK to set the chapter titles a little larger, if that makes you feel good. But please set all the subheads and sub-subheads in the same font size as the rest of the copy. Distinguish between levels of heads and subheads by using (consistently!) boldface and italic.
Do not use reduced type for indented block quotes. Do not use reduced type for footnotes and reference lists.
Select a standard, widely used font such as Times, Times New Roman, or Garamond, and use 12-point type for all of the body copy, heads and subheads.
Thank you.
Please use your word processor’s automatic functions to create hanging indented paragraphs and block indents!
Do not under any circumstances construct DIY hanging indents and block indents with the “enter” and the “tab” keys. This trick creates a huge mess for someone else to clean up.
In Word, the hanging indent function is at Format > Paragraph > Special > hanging. The block indent function can be engaged by clicking on the “increase indent” icon: it looks like a little page with a couple of lines indented next to a right-pointing arrow. Unengage this function by clicking on the “decrease indent” icon. If you can’t find these icons at the top of your screen, then go to Format > Paragraph and see the choices under “Indentation.” Selecting “Right” allows you to indent copy in 1/10 of an inch increments (.5 is pretty standard); selecting “Left” allows you to move back to the margin (enter 0 to do that].
Sometimes when you copy and paste passages from the Internet, your word processor will format them with hard returns and tab indents. Please delete these, so that the copy wraps normally. In Word, you can tell whether this is happening by clicking on the little icon that looks like a ¶ sign. When this toggle switch is clicked on, it shows each blank space with a little raised dot (·), each hard return (where someone has pressed the “enter” key) as a ¶ symbol, and each hard tab as a little right-pointing arrow (→). So, an incorrectly formatted hanging indent (for example) will look like this:
Lorem·ipsum·dolor·sit·amet,·consectetur· ¶
→ adipiscing·elit.·Curabitur·porta,·leo·eu·¶
→ scelerisque·volutpat,·diam·diam·¶
→ condimentum·dui,·ut·ultrices·risus.·.·.·.¶
If you find this in something you have pasted into your MS, or if (God forfend) you have done it yourself, please go through and delete each hard return and each hard tab space. Once the copy wraps normally, please format the material using your word-processor’s hanging indent (or, as appropriate) block indent function.
Please type one space ONLY, not two spaces, after periods, colons, exclamation points, and question marks!
If you are of a certain age, you learned in typing class to hit period-space-space at the end of every sentence. And that is correct if you’re using a typewriter.
It’s not correct when you’re setting type for print. And when you are using a word processor, you are performing the first stage in setting type for print. Remember: a word processor is not a typewriter!
The reason for the difference is that in the font used by typewriters (usually Courier or Elite), each character is the same width. An i is the same width as an m. But in grown-up fonts, character widths differ:
iiiii
mmmmm
With a typewriter’s uniform-width characters, entering two spaces after punctuation eases the eye and makes it easier to distinguish a new sentence. Try that in typeset copy, though, and you’re apt to get “rivers of white”: meandering vertical stripes of white space. It looks funny. Typeset copy has never been set with two spaces after every period.
So: either get used to hitting the space bar once after punctuation or learn to eliminate extraneous spaces with a search-&-replace function. In Word, this very easy:
Edit > Replace (on a PC, the keyboard command is alt-e-e)
Next to Find what, press the space bar twice, entering two blank spaces.
Next to Replace with, press the space bar once, entering one blank space.
Now click Replace all (the PC’s keyboard command is alt-a).
This will replace all the double-blank-spaces with single blank spaces. Click Replace all until Word tells you it has completed the search and made 0 replacements; because some people use the space bar with great enthusiasm, it may take more than one search to get rid of all the extraneous spaces.
When indicating a long (one-em) dash, use the same symbol consistently, throughout the manuscript.
The long dash is called an “em-dash” because it is approximately the same width as a letter m in a scalable font.
There are other dashes. The shorter “en-dash,” for example, is about the width of a letter n. A hyphen is shorter still. A minus sign is about the size of an en-dash; although the two are not the same, many typesetters use the en-dash to signify subtraction.
i
- hyphen
n
– en-dash
m
— em-dash
En-dashes are most commonly used in inclusive numbers:
1966–67, not 1966-67
Most recent versions of Word default to create an em-dash when you type two hyphens with no space between the characters on either side. WordPress defaults to convert two hyphens to an en-dash (who knows why?), and so to illustrate this I’ll have to substitute en-dashes.
Lorem ipsum––dolor sit amet becomes Lorem ipsum—dolor sit amet
In newer versions of Word, typing a single hyphen with a space between the characters on either side morphs to a word, a space, a one-en dash, a space, and a word. This is British style:
Lorem ipsum - dolor sit amet becomes Lorem ipsum Lorem ipsum – dolor sit amet
Any one of these typing quirks is fairly easy for an editor or typesetter to replace globally. But please. Use the same set of keystrokes to indicate a one-em dash. Whatever makes you happy, do it consistently throughout the manuscript! Having to replace two, three, four combinations that some author has dreamed up gets to be very old, very fast.
Why do these arcane issues matter?
Because, dear author, dear publisher: they cost you money!
If you are an author who is self-publishing a book, you will hire an editor and a typesetter to help put your magnum opus into a form acceptable for marketing. Editors and typesetters have specialized skills that ordinarily sell for around $60 an hour. Do you really want to pay $60 an hour (or more…sometimes much more) to have someone retype your manuscript? This is something you can and should do yourself.
If you are going through a print-on-demand publisher, trust me: you pay for editing and typesetting. Decent POD publishers subcontract their customers’ books to book packagers, who sub-subcontract the editing and typesetting to editors and graphic designers. If an editor has to waste untold hours to fix your typing, that cost will be reflected in the amount you pay the POD company.
And if you are a publisher, of course you would like to maximize your profits. Having to pay editing and design rates for low-level tasks that amount to typing naturally will cut in to your profit margin.
Get the word processing right from the get-go. Save time—your own or someone else’s—and save money.
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March 20th, 2009 at 12:32 am
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