Itchy Bitesized 31: Five Things About Presenting a Manuscript
Make sure your writing is a painless pleasure for professionals to read
When you send your novel or creative non-fiction out to find a home, you want your writing to be read seriously by professional strangers who you hope will publish it. What we still call a manuscript, even though from writer’s brain to published ebook it may never actually be embodied in paper, is still the tool for publishing; most of the conventions come from what editors and typesetters have always needed to do, and the conventions that have evolved for the digital world are often not nearly so suitable.
This latest post in the Itchy Bitesized series is a round-up of the key points about presenting your MS*.
Why it matters: Publishers, examiners and agents don’t ask for certain kinds of formatting to make your life difficult, or as some arcane test of whether you’re an ‘insider’: it’s simply that they read a lot, and they know what makes it easiest for them to grasp what the writer’s really doing, edit and make notes - and what, conversely, gets in the way. Their eyes are also really, really tired.
It shouldn’t look like a printed book. Yes, underlining is no longer the only instruction a typewriter was capable of for the typesetter to put something in italics - we italicise for ourselves, thanks to computers. But if you’ve ever tried doing detailed mark-up on a book’s page you’ll know why we at the MS end of things bang on about double-line spacing.
Read the darned website, and do what it says. Otherwise you might as well be stamping your manuscript, Dear Publisher, I doesn’t care enough about you to find out what you need in order to work well.
The absolute basics haven’t changed since typewriter days because the act of reading is still analogue and physical. If the website’s no help, these are the classic requirements:
A4 page in Europe, Letter in the USA, other areas are probably one or the other. You could show you care even more, by working to where continent you’re sending it to, not to where you are.
12pt minimum point size. Probably not bigger, unless your chosen font is particularly mini. But see below for fonts.
double-line spacing. It’s easier for the eye to track each line and return accurately to the beginning of the next, and comment balloons don’t get squished up. (It’s fine to single-space synopses, by the way.)
margins of at least 1”/2.5cm all round - keeps the line-length sensible for eye-tracking, and leaves space for comments. 10½”/3cm looks even better and classier.
page numbers on the page - OK, they’re probably not reading a stack of paper on a breezy hill, but referring to anything in a manuscript without a page number is pretty-much impossible. You do want them to be engaged like that, don’t you?
a title page which clearly states the title, your name, the wordcount (rounded to the nearest thousand) and your contact details.
a docx file, of the kind which is the default in MS Word. Some agents and editors don’t mind pdfs, but some absolutely loathe them because they’re vast, take forever to load and are a pain to work on. Don’t risk a pdf unless they specifically say they don’t mind.
You will make the professional reader’s life easier (and why wouldn’t you want to?) with these:
a filename which is helpful but not ridiculously long. Something like DICKENSBarnabyRudge May24.docx would do nicely, whereas AGENTSNAMEBarnabyRudge Final.docx is less useful to the agent. The date is useful for you and a quiet (OK, passive-aggressive?) reminder to them. For yourself, make sure you track who has received which version of your book, particularly if you’re prone to fiddling with work-in-progress.
a serif typeface/font such as the Times New Roman which this post is written in: the little flicky bits on the ends of the strokes help to lead the eye smoothly and securely along the line. Conversely, sanserif fonts are much more wearing to read over long distances, and acres of italics are also hard on the eye and mind. Script agencies have much stricter rules about layout and fonts: google, and do as you’re told.
lines ranged left (even left margin and ‘ragged’ right margin) is standard. Justified lines (even margins both sides) makes word-spacing go funny, and is really irritating to edit.
no extra line-space between paragraphs. The basic unit of storytelling is the paragraph, they’re crucial for knowing who-says-what, and we need to feel them, but without a jerky dead stop of space between each paragraph.
indent the first line of each paragraph. The indent is essential, so readers see and feel the move from one paragraph to the next. Preferably use Styles, rather than the tab key, and never, ever the spacebar: every editorial assistant has horror stories of having to take those out manually.
* MS is the traditional abbreviation for ‘manuscript’ in the singular. Nerds will enjoy Wikipedia’s details:
The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS., ms or ms. for singular, and MSS., mss or mss. for plural (with or without the full stop, all uppercase or all lowercase) are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural; by an old convention, a doubling of the last letter of the abbreviation expresses the plural, just as pp. means ‘pages’.
I remember reading a similar post from you Emma and took note of how you put the page number both top and bottom of the pages having watched your editor scan for them :) Here's hoping a future publishing editor will be impressed by how mindful I am being of their time - and should they mention it I will of course pass on your 'copyright' of the tip! :)
I've been told by an Agent that they prefer Word to PDFs because PDFs don't work properly on Kindles.
And whereas I can quite see that if you're sending something to an Editor you want double spacing to allow detailed comments, isn't 1.5 spacing fine for a Submission - because they're reading it to see if they want to represent you not to do line-editing.
Interestingly one Agent (I've just submitted to) wants the first 10pp pasted into the email, not as an attachment. I suspect this is to make sure it can be read on whatever device they are using.