The Copyeditor's Desk

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.

This is the third installment in a series of posts suggesting ways authors and small publishers can save headaches, time, and money at the manuscript stage. We’ve already talked about working with coauthors, using standard style manuals, and processing words like a pro. Now let’s discuss…

Images, Tables, and Textboxes

Please. Please, please, please DON’T embed these in the manuscript!

Tables, images, and textboxes do not just pop into InDesign or Quark. The graphic artist needs to place them, one by one, into the layout in the appropriate places.

If that’s not a good enough reason for you, here’s what happened when one author got fancy with tables:

At 1:30 one morning, I finally finished a perfectly awful amateur manuscript produced by one of my clients. Eager to get the work, when I quoted my page rate I hadn’t looked carefully at his “tables,” most of which were jury-rigged with tabs and hard returns, nor had I realized that half the copy consisted of these fake tables, because he hadn’t numbered them. The manuscript contained a good two dozen of them. One actually had been created in Word’s table function, but then somehow he’d embedded a graphic inside the table. Another was a table stuck inside a textbox, which I could not remove from the copy no matter how hard I tried. A third was a table over which the author had superimposed a text box, apparently unaware that he could merge cells to create a space in which to enter the paragraph he stuck there.

Because he was trying to do the page layout himself in Word—this document was a book accompanying a course in personal finance he was peddling, and he intended to have it printed at a KwikCopy—I converted his tab-and-return monstrosities into tables, cleaned up the real tables, and left them embedded in the edited file.

What a mess! It took hours and hours and HOURS to untangle, and by the time I finished, the $4.50/page quote I’d given him stuck me with an hourly rate of about three bucks. Finally, on the fourth night that I’d spent working until I couldn’t hold my eyes open another minute, I was about to wrap the job up…and Word hung. I managed to save the file and shut down the computer, and then I stumbled off to bed.

The next morning when I opened it to add a few finishing touches before sending it and my puny bill to the author, what should come up but an error message: “A table in this document has become corrupted. To recover the contents of the table: select the table and choose Convert Table to Text from the Table menu.” (This strategy, BTW, converts your table, all right: into scrambled eggs!)

This problem was a known issue in MS Word 2002. I was using Word 2004 and so never had encountered it until his Word 2002 file came along. Nothing I tried would recover the file. Days of eye-glazing work had been lost. I did not get paid for my time and labor, and my client did not get his edited copy.

This was a direct result of embedding large numbers of complex tables in a Word file.

The solution is to create the tables in a separate word file—one file per table, preferably, each given an identifiable filename, such as “table 1.doc” or “Jones table 1.doc.” Format the table according to Chicago style (or whatever style you’re following) and give it a title. Here’s an example.

In the MS where you want the file to appear, enter a call-out to the layout artist, like this:

<COMP: Please insert Table 1 here>

You can boldface or highlight them as you like; the compositor (layout artist) will use the layout program’s search function to look for a symbol such as < to find them all, and so is unlikely to miss any. Where she or he finds a callout, she will place the appropriate table in the layout, using InDesign or Quark.

Do the same for material you would like to place in textboxes.

Do not, do not, do NOT stick textboxes in a Word document and then drop the thing on a layout artist! This creates headaches of migraine caliber. Just because Word will do something does not mean you should do it!

For textboxes, you can use a single file. Call it something like textboxes.doc, Jones textboxes.doc, or chapt 1 textboxes.doc. Do not place the copy inside textboxes in this file. Just type it, and number each blurb in the order in which you would like it to appear.

Textbox 1

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Etiam nunc. Donec consectetur ipsum nec est. Quisque at dolor.

Textbox 2

Nunc luctus risus in tortor. Vivamus tristique, lectus a pretium aliquet, felis mi lacinia erat, sagittis rhoncus metus arcu accumsan ligula.

Indicate in the copy approximately where you would like to place the textbox:

<COMP: Please place textbox 1 near here.>

Remember that unless you’re publishing in 8.5 x 11-inch format, the page size for your published document will be different from Word’s default page size. In any event, because the layout program’s font size and margins will be different, what you type in Word will not look identical when it’s laid out. So all your effort to trick out pages using Word’s bells and whistles will be just so much wasted time and energy.

Images and graphs need to be saved as JPEGS or PDFs, and absolutely positively NOT embedded in Word files! An embedded image is useless to a layout artist. These are not print-quality images, and they do not flow into page layout programs in any sane manner.

Handling images and graphs entails three steps:

1. Save the file as a JPEG or a PDF.
2. Write a caption and save it (with all the other captions) in a separate Word file.
3. Type a callout in the manuscript to tell the layout artist where you would like to place the image.

Give your JPEG an identifying name, numbered in the order in which it should appear. Images are called “figures.” Thus:

Figure 1.jpg
Jones Figure 1.jpg
Jones Chapt 1 Fig 1.jpg
Jones Fig 1.pdf

And thus:

Nunc luctus risus in tortor. Vivamus tristique, lectus a pretium aliquet, felis mi lacinia erat, sagittis rhoncus metus arcu accumsan ligula. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Curabitur commodo purus. Nam varius. Aenean id sem quis sem porttitor adipiscing. Suspendisse tempor elit ac mi.

<COMP: Please place Figure 1 near here.>

Aliquam scelerisque lacus placerat purus. In hac habitasse platea dictumst. Quisque arcu. Vestibulum sit amet lorem. Nunc enim velit, placerat nec, fringilla vitae, elementum ac, arcu. Fusce mattis. Donec sodales. Donec augue tortor, pretium eu, posuere quis, volutpat non, nunc. Nullam varius dignissim nisl. Vivamus lobortis.

<COMP: Please place Figure 2 near here.>

Type all the captions in a separate file, in the order in which the images should appear, and clearly identify them:

Figure 1

Little League players at a public park in Cincinnati, 1951.

Figure 2

Like their big-league counterparts, Pop Warner teams had mascots, among them the Erewhon Lumberjacks’ Musky the Muskrat.

What You’ll Give the Publisher or Layout Artist:

So. When you finish compiling a manuscript that includes tables, pullouts (textboxes), and images, you’ll hand over a package for the layout artist that contains the following items:

The manuscript
Files containing the tables and their titles
Images and graphs formatted as JPEGs or PDFs
A file containing captions for the images and graphs.

This seems like a lot of trouble, eh? Well…trust me. It’s a LOT less trouble than a single Word file with all that stuff jumbled up in it. When someone else has to untangle the mess, the process is time-consuming and expensive (you, dear author, ultimately will pay for the time required), and the potential for error is hugely magnified.

Do it right the first time. Please.

The following heartfelt desideratum comes from the Conference of Historical Journals. Although it was written for scholarly authors, writers of any stripe can profit from most of its advice (except for the passages on peer reviewing).

What Journal Editors Wish Authors Knew

Submitting a Manuscript

Know your journal. Acquaint yourself with the scope and limits of a journal’s subject field before you submit your manuscript.

Consult the submission procedures outlined in the latest copy of the journal.  If the editor requires three copies of a manuscript, send them.  Observe stated word or page limits.  Most editors will respond to telephone inquiries.  Many journals, on request, will provide guidelines for the preparation of manuscripts.

Look at the footnote form employed by the journal to which you are submitting your manuscript and model your notes accordingly.

Double space your entire manuscript, including text, block quotations, tables, and notes.

Use endnotes rather than footnotes.

Many historical journals practice double-blind peer review.  Authors should therefore take steps to preserve their anonymity.  The author’s name and affiliation should appear only on a separate title page.  Do not place your name on the first page of the manuscript or in the running heads.  Do not reveal your identity in the notes through the use of the first person (such as, “In my recent article in the Journal of American History, I concluded that this hypothesis was balderdash”).

Do not send your manuscript to more than one editor at a time.  Historical journals frown on simultaneous submissions.

If submitting illustrations with your essay, send photocopies, not original photographs or artwork.

Most historical journals do not accept material that has appeared in substantially the same form elsewhere or is about to do so.  In addition, some journals will not accept material that is available electronically, such as through posting on a LISTSERV or mounting on a Web page.  If in doubt about a journal’s policies, explain your circumstances to the editor.

Always include a cover letter in which you outline the substance and significance of your work.  What makes your research different from everyone else’s?  You should also identify anyone who has critiqued your manuscript.  If the editors know who has read the work, they will not have to waste time asking someone to comment on an essay only to have that person decline because he or she has already read it.

Include in your cover letter your full physical address, phone number, FAX number, and e-mail address.

If you want your materials returned to you, enclose sufficient postage.

Be patient.  The solicitation of qualified outside readers and the gathering of evaluations often takes two to three months and sometimes more.

After Acceptance

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the necessary permissions to quote or cite copyrighted or manuscript materials or to reproduce illustrations.  As a courtesy, provide copies of the permission letters to the editor.

Tables are expensive to set, and some journals require authors who cannot provide camera-ready copy of their tables to pay for composition.  Clarify this point with your editor to prevent surprises.

Once a manuscript has been set in type, do not try to rewrite it.  Changes at this stage are very expensive.  Correct only errors in fact, grammar, usage, and spelling.

Reviewing Books

Most history journals do not accept unsolicited book reviews or requests by potential reviewers to review a particular title.

Always include the page numbers of quotations from the work under review and the title and page numbers from other works.  The reference will allow editors to check for accuracy even if the journal does not footnote reviews.

Be prompt.  The historical profession is a small one.  Authors and reviewers who are continually late get reputations among editors.

If for personal or professional reasons you cannot complete an assignment, return the review copy at the earliest possible date so that the editor may find another reviewer.  Remember that tenures and promotions are often affected by having one’s book reviewed.

If you decline an invitation to review, editors welcome suggestions for alternative reviewers.

Compiled for the Conference of Historical Journals by Sara B. Bearss, with the assistance of Roger D. Adelson, John C. Inscoe, Nelson D. Lankford, Michael McGiffert, Ann Gross, and John E. Selby

We just finished copyediting a manuscript that was freaking torture to read.

Why?

Not because the writing was so bad (well, it wasn’t great, but it could have been tolerable). The author turned an otherwise workable book manuscript into a horror show by infesting it with an unending series of word-processing quirks.

For reasons unknown to God nor Man, he set all the paragraphs hanging indent. Then, trying to fix that, he pushed the first lines flush with the indented lines by HITTING THE SPACE BAR. Over and over and over again. Where he wanted an indented first line, he hit the space bar a few more times. Where he wanted an indented block, he set the copy boldface.

Irrationally, he varied the fonts throughout the copy. Some of the stuff was set in Comic Sans! No, not heads & subheads: this would pop up in the middle of a paragraph.

And he had no clue about subheadings, and so he set them with zero consistency…at what appeared to be the same level, some were boldface, some were italic, some were bold-face run-in; some had line spaces before and after, some had no line spaces. Figuring out how to set the subheads turned into an endless, annoying guessing game.

If you are a writer, please: get smart about typing your manuscript. Even if you’re going through a vanity press—which this guy was doing—someone has to copyedit and typeset your golden words. Try not to make their lives miserable.

First, learn to use a word processor. If you don’t know how to use Word or WordPerfect and you don’t want to take the time to learn, hire a typist to prepare your manuscript.

Next, decide what the heads and subheads will look like and stick to it. Headings are organized by “levels”: Level A is the chapter heading. Level B is the highest level of subheading. Level C is the next level. And so on to infinity: these correspond roughly to what your copy would look like if it were outlined:

I. Level A
A. Level B
B. Level B
1. Level C
2. Level C
a. Level D
b. Level D

Each of these should have its own format.

Level A, a chapter heading, is typically flush left or centered, 14 points, roman (“regular” type), caps and lower-case.

This Is a Level A Head

Level B is commonly set boldface, 12 points (the same size as the body copy), caps and lower-case, flush left, one line space before and one line space after.

This Is a Level B Head

Level C is usually italic, 12 points, caps and lower-case, flush left, one line space before and one line space after. If your MS has no level D heads, then Level C heads may be set run-in: as the first line of the paragraph, set flush left.

This Is a Level C Head

Level D is usually italic, 12 points, sentence style, flush left, run-in to the paragraph.

This is a level D head. It is set run-in to the paragraph, like the first sentence of the graf only set in italic. It may or may not be a complete sentence, but all should be grammatically consistent. If one is a full sentence, they all should be full sentences.

All body copy should be set flush left, 12 points, sentence style, DOUBLE SPACED!!!!! No space between the paragraphs!

Hanging indents must be made with your word processor’s hanging indent function! Do not, do not, do NOT hit the return key at the end of each line and the tab key at the beginning of the next line! Writers who do this will spend eternity in Hell trying to learn the Devil’s Own Word Processing System.

In Word, go to the Format menu and scroll down to Paragraph. In the window that comes up, find the line that says “Special.” Click on the little down arrow next to that word and, in the tiny menu that comes up, select “hanging.” You can either highlight the typed copy you would like to set as hanging indent and apply this function retroactively, or you can select Format > paragraph > special > hanging before you start to type a passage. To stop the hanging indent, go back to Format > paragraph > special and select “None.”

Block indents are similarly NOT MADE by hitting the return key and the tab indent! Don’t even think of trying that stunt.

In Word, on your standard toolbar (at the top of the screen) you should see an icon (a tiny picture) that shows a little squiggly line of type, then a right-pointing arrow with two more little squiggly lines, and then another line below the arrow. This is the “increase indent” button. Click on this to make a whole paragraph indented. To undo it, find the similar icon with a left-pointing arrow. This is the “decrease indent” button. It will make an indented paragraph set flush left.

Again, you can highlight a passage you would like indented or simply turn the function on before you start to type material you would like to set as indented block and then turn it off when you’re done.

Use the same font throughout, and use a standard font! Restrain yourself from trying to be artsy-fartsy with your manuscript. Remember that the page size will be different from the 8 1/2 x 11-inch pages you are typing on, and so attempts to take a passage and “shape” it will be lost. The best you can do is suggest to the layout artist how you would like to see the passage (if, for example, it’s one of those poems where the bard tries to use line lengths to build an urn or some such). Do not expect that the printed version will look the same as your manuscript, and do not try to force it to do so. IMHO, the best choice of fonts, unless your publisher asks for 10-point Courier, is 12-point Times or Times New Roman.

Some writers and publishers like to use the Styles function. I personally do not care for this, because it can complicate on-screen copyediting, and I wish people would not use it.

So, the Rules:

1. Use a plain-vanilla font.
2. Double-space throughout.
3. Set body copy flush left, using either the indent first line function (Format > paragraph > special > first line) or the tab indent key to indicate the first line of each paragraph.
4. Use the word processor’s hanging indent function to create hanging paragraphs (Format > paragraph > special > hanging) and the block indent function to create block indent paragraphs for quotations and the like (“increase indent” and “decrease indent” buttons on toolbar).
5. Set subheads flush left, no indent.
6. Decide on formatting that will distinguish each level of subhead, and use it consistently.
7. Refrain from trying to create cute or artsy effects with the type. Leave that to the typesetter, please. Show the typesetter with a separate page demonstrating what you want, title the page something like “Graphic 1,” and mark the passage to be cutesified with a call-out: <COMP: please follow formatting shown on Graphic 1>.

This is not hard.

Academics the world over flinch in terror at the phrase “publish or perish!” Graduate students must publish to have any chance at finding a suitable position,and once said position is secured, promotion or tenure is awarded only if publishing of one’s work continues. Although there are no simple ways to get your work published, here are a matters to consider when submitting your work to a journal or scholarly press.

1. Is your work right for the journal or publisher you are submitting to?

All journals have mission statements. To get your work published, you must target your work to fit this mission statement. Seems simple. One of the journals I am familiar with,Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE), notes that

Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) is a quarterly international journal focusing on new developments in the fast-growing fields of mathematical biosciences and bioengineering. Areas covered include general mathematical methods and their applications in biology, medical and biomedical sciences and bioengineering with an emphasis on work related to mathematical modeling, nonlinear, and stochastic dynamics. The editorial board of MBE is strongly committed to promoting cutting-edge, integrative and interdisciplinary research bridging mathematics, life sciences and bioengineering.

Authors seeking to publish their work in MBE must ensure that it fits within these parameters. Most of the editor’s rejections happen when authors submit articles that have nothing to do with the biological sciences.

2. Does your work fit the submission guidelines?

In the case of scholarly journals, submission guidelines give authors information on acceptable word counts, formatting, and even the best means of ensuring that submitted material is reached by the editors. Go to the journal’s web site to find submission guidelines. If they don’t appear there, then you should obtain a hard copy of an issue and examine it for an author’s guidelines statement.

3. Do you have the patience for peer review?

Scholarly works are always sent out to be reviewed by two or three experts in the subject matter. This process, although seemingly simple, takes time. Reviewers are seldom compensated for their work and thus fit reviewing in with a number of other duties. It is in an author’s best interest to be persistent, yet patient, when asking for the status of a submission. This does not mean that a publisher should keep your work for years with no reply. It does, however, mean that a decision will not be made in a few weeks.

The bottom line is that editors reviewing submissions will not look at your work unless it fits within a basic framework. The content and format matter: even if your article is brilliant, if it contains too many words, it will be rejected.

-TM