A rant on proper manuscript formatting

[ellen_datlow]

Recent reading and editing has brought to my attention the fact that some writers have suddenly (well, since using computers and email) decided that the usual rules of mss preparation are no longer necessary.

Three examples:
1) I have received print submissions without PAGE NUMBERS (not often, but still, this should never happen).

2) I have increasingly been the recipient of manuscripts that don't underline words meant to be italicized in the story's final, printed form. The reason editors/copy editors/and whoever does the production on a mss need to see underlines is that some typefaces don't show italics very well, and even if they did--it's quicker to "see" underline than italics

3)I have been receiving mss without anything indicating space breaks. What happened to ###? I'm in the middle of reading a printout that seemed to be missing at least two pages because there were no transitions...When I checked the efile, lo and behold, the sentence breaks were in different places so I could actually see that there were supposed to be space breaks. Writers--new and pro--please please show your space breaks by putting in hash marks.

4) Paragraphing--before online publishing, paragraphing was shown by indenting margins...Guess what, folks? Most publishing (especially of books) is still print, which means that paragraphs are indented.

Rant over

Comments

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

My lame excuse for the Haunted Legends MSS which may or may not make it to you, is that it had proper indents before I turned it into an RTF file.

I shake my fist first at myself for not doing the right thing and turning off auto-indent and damn well using tabs, and second at the sorry state of RTF exports for not letting me get away with less-than-optimal formatting.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Yeah (and not that I got a haunted legend story done, but) conversion to .rtf tends to lose my page numbers as well as my indents. And of late, my line spacing too. Don't know why; it all shows up fine on my screen.

That's where I think hard copy wins over an e-sub: you know what it'll look like on the other end.

[jtglover.livejournal.com]

Don't know why; it all shows up fine on my screen.

Now THAT is scary to me. I always think about how it might appear to others when I'm writing HTML, or anything that's going to be read on a browser, but I've never once thought about how a file might appear perfectly good on my machine, but not an editors.

Huh. I'm going to see about turning off my auto-indent.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I don't worry about page numbering in efiles--it's the printing out of mss without page numbers that aggravates me....just think about it. I drop the mss, or I put it down and it gets knocked over....am I going to try to piece together the order without page numbers? I don't think so ;-).

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Oh goodness, yes, that seems just plain careless to me. (On the authors' parts, I mean).

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I'll also chime in that RTF gives me problems. And as it's hard to know what the editor's using to view the RTF, it's hard to know exactly how that RTF is showing up on their screen. RTFs look horrible in TextPad for example -- you can see all the code. Or at least, the RTF that OpenOffice generates.

I feel a little safer saving it as .doc from OpenOffice.

PDF's really the only way to make sure everyone's seeing the same thing though.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I convert rtfs to word on receipt.

How would one edit a pdf file? (or am I behind on the most recent pdf upgrade?)

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Red pen?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Ah, you mean print it out first :-) but then it's single space...not really good for line editing.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Er, I mean I use pdfs when I have to submit hardcopy, and would never inflict them on someone who wanted to edit on the computer.

The program I use makes magic courier-font underline-for-italics double-spaced one inch margin header-and-page-number manuscript pdfs. Rtf conversion is much harder, here.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I had the recent hellish experience of going over a pdf file of copyedits already incorporated into the text and having to switch back and forth between the original word file of each story, the raw copy edit as a word file (with tracking changes)of each story, and the pdf file to see what was done...so I'm not feeling too warmly towards pdf files right now :-)

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

eek.


*fans self, looks around for vinaigrette, faints*

[silviamg.livejournal.com]

Depends how major the edits are. Adobe Acrobat Professional allows you to do edits on a PDF (simple ones, I wouldn't recommend removing 4 paragraphs) or to convert it back into a Word document, preserving its elements and look.

[silviamg.livejournal.com]

Version 9 of Adobe Acrobat btw. I can't remember the capabilities of the older ones.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I have acrobat 9 but I wouldn't edit on that anyway as it's single spaced (or can you adjust it?)

[silviamg.livejournal.com]

Single space is a big problem. If it's single space I would just use the convert to Word function and then work in Word. It might save you some grief rather than copy and pasting depending on how intricate the formatting was in the first place.

[julieandrews.livejournal.com]

I think you need to buy Adobe Acrobat (not just the Reader) to edit PDFs. I was thinking more of the accept/reject phase of things, not actual editing. PDFs definitely not top of the list for editing.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Someone mentioned the rtf problem this evening at dinner. If that's the case and someone actually DID have indents and they disappeared in rtf, then I apologize (but since I haven't named anyone you all know who you are!)

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I was given a good long lecture at Viable Paradise on formatting and this very issue came up. It was suggested (by PNH, if memory serves) to never use auto-indent and instead use tabs for every new 'graph, since that survives even epic RTF mangles.

And then I got so swept up in the terrifying notion of actually having a story in front of both Nick and you that I forgot to fix my paragraphs when I changed to courier for submission. So I maintain my apology to you, since I was just nervous and goofed up something I technically know how to do properly.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Apology accepted (I don't think Nick has passed your story on to me--but he might still).