Monday, September 18, 2000 11:12 AM
There have been a number of discussions here about how to format your work for submission. If I have it right, the industry standards seem to be:
Double-spaced (or set your document's line spacing to "exactly" 25, which gives you 25 lines to the page.
At least 1 inch margins all around.
Use a 12 point font. Courier New or Times New Roman font seem to be preferred, but don't use a different font to standout in the crowd. Agents and Editors find these fonts the easiest on their eyes. The goal seems to be to average 250 words per page on a full page of text.
Do not bind your manuscript in any way. You can put a rubberband around it, but don't go for anything more elaborate.
Many people/places recommend putting your name and the book title on each page's header. Although putting the title/surname and page number on ms pages is correct, they shouldn't be put on the first page of each chapter, which starts halfway down with Chapter One (or whatever). And make sure you number your entire manuscript sequentially and place the page number on the right hand side, either in the header or footer.
You can read about formatting your title page and so forth up in the BookMarc conference, towards the end of the entries.
----by Jane B. with additions from Lauri Hart