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| If your book is already 100% Microsoft Word you are ready to format it. It must be formatted according to our guidelines before you send it to us. The guidelines below are not difficult, but it will require attention on your part. Be sure to click the links that will give you a more in depth explanation of each point. If you didn't originally write your book in Microsoft Word 97 or later, go here for instructions on how to make a successful conversion to MS Word. PAGE LAYOUT: Click on the links for a fuller explanation (Notice that some points are obvious so aren't linked to explanatory text.) 1> 1" margins all around 3> No page numbers 5> No indents at beginning of paragraphs-no tab markers 6> Single space lines within paragraphs 7> Single space after periods at the ends of sentences 8> Double paragraph return/hard break at end of each paragraph 9> Center chapter heads using FORMAT CENTER, not tab key; and put one hard break before and after it. 10> Center scene breaks using FORMAT CENTER, not the tab key; the preferred format is * * * (14-point) with no spaces and one hard break before and after. 11> Spell out number of chapter (i.e., "Three" not "3"). 12> Page breaks: should be used after last paragraph in a chapter, insert one hard break then a page break MANUSCRIPT STYLES: Click on the links for a fuller explanation (Notice that some points are obvious so aren't linked to explanatory text.) PUT A TITLE ON YOUR BOOK! You would be amazed how many authors send us manuscripts without a title! PUT YOUR NAME BELOW THE TITLE! Again, you'd be surprised how many authors forget to tell us that they are the author! This may seem like a minor thing to you, but we are approaching 200 published titles from Awe-Struck and keeping track of the new files that come in is becoming a real problem. I would also greatly appreciate it if you would put your EMAIL addy below your name. This won't be included in the published version of your book, but it will help me keep track of all the data I need to take your book through its final edit. 13> Use Arial, and set it for 12 point. 14> Turn off all special formatting (like curly quotes and em dashes). 15> Do not use styles. They will have to be removed for formatting. Electronic publishing requires a very 'stripped down' file to work with. 16> In fiction numbers are generally spelled out. Some numbers are acceptable, such as year (1863, 2005), a full date (25 January 1973, July 4, 1776) military time (0745, 2230), house numbers (421 Main, 20512 East Thirty-fourth Street), but when in doubt, check a good style manual or English composition text. 17> Avoid the use of symbols or abbreviations whenever possible (e.g., percent, not %; Avenue, not Ave.). 18> Foreign words should be italicized. Be careful about diacritical marks; they are often important and a wrong or missing one can make a word's meaning change. Foreign names and place names are usually not italicized. 19> Use italics instead of underlines for inner thoughts, emphasis and foreign characters/words. Do not use underlined characters. We seldom use underlined characters in novels. You used underlined characters back when you were pounding out your novels on a typewriter. Think 21st Century. <g> 20> Avoid using em dashes. Instead use 2 simple hyphens--the character you access with a simple press of the hyphen key--in place of the one long em dash, instead of using parentheses for parenthetical expressions. They should be 2 hyphens with no spaces before and after. If you use spaces we could end up with 2 hyphens on its own line because they can break into the next line at these spaces and orphan themselves from the preceding parent sentence. Dashes are used exactly like parentheses--to add information or to introduce momentarily a different topic--and as discussed below. Don't overdo them; they're distracting. Warning! MS Word has an automatic em dash so that when you type 2 hyphens, Word will automatically replace them with 1 em dash. Please turn off this irritating feature in your Word preferences. Just type in 2 hyphens, with no spaces between and no spaces at front or back. The 2 hyphens should sit--between words like I've just illustrated. 21> Use ellipses for omissions in quoted material or for showing incomplete thoughts or faltering speech or thought. We follow the Chicago Manual of Style: Ellipses for "faltering or fragmented speech accompanied by confusion, insecurity, distress or uncertainty... reserved for that purpose...Dash to show "some decisiveness and should be reserved for interruptions, abrupt changes in thought, or impatient fractures of grammar without the confusion or indecisiveness suggested by ellipses." Do not format ellipses and do not space between the periods in an ellipsis. (i.e., ... not . . .). Spaced periods will wrap around from the middle of an ellipse. Then we have half the ellipse at the end of one line and the other half at the beginning of another. Warning! MS Word has an automatic ellipse. Please turn it off in your Word preferences. Just type in 3 periods, no spaces between and no spaces at front or back. The 3 dots should sit...between words like I've just illustrated. 22> Ending sentences. Whenever possible, stick with periods or question marks to end sentences. Use exclamation marks sparingly; they have far more effect that way. When a sentence ends with an ellipse, (3 dots) you can leave it as if it is deliberately or grammatically incomplete (e.g., "If you ever..." or "I wish..."). There are instances where adding a fourth dot, a question mark, or an exclamation point is correct, but they are rare, so the rule here is not to do it unless you are absolutely certain it is correct. When in doubt, use a period and you'll probably be safe.
Use Arial as your font. Microsoft Word uses Times New Roman as the default. Kill it, kill it, kill it! (This is the graphic designer side coming out in me. <g>) Do not use section breaks. Section breaks are useful and necessary when making a book for print. Should they be needed in a print version, Kathryn will use these in the appropriate places. Since your placement will not match hers (Kathryn uses her own template), there is no point in you using them. Further, ebook formats don't recognize section breaks. Do not use headers and footers: Headers and Footers are crucial in books in print, but they are useless in an ebook. Every device uses a different sized screen, so page numbers in a header would be useless. And whatever other information you might put in a header will take up screen real estate badly needed for the book itself. If you have already established headers or footers in your book, delete all content within them. If your book eventually goes to print, we'll put the headers back. No indents : Some ebook formats don't recognize TABS. This would have disastrous results if paragraph separation depends on indents separating paragraphs. No doubt you've already used TABS to indent and now you're thinking, "Help! What do I do now?" This is what you do-- 1> First single space the entire document. This is very important. Think about what will happen here. It will find all those instances where the last character in a paragraph is followed by a paragraph marker and then a tab character (next paragraph is indented). Word will replace the first paragraph marker with another paragraph marker, which is equivalent to leaving the paragraph marker alone. But it will replace that dreaded TAB character with a paragraph marker. This kicks the beginning of that previously indented sentence to flush left, and it also kicks the paragraph down one line so that the paragraphs are separated. Pretty neat, aye? :-) Oh, what you learn here boggles the mind. <g> Single-space after periods. Your computer is not a typewriter. You are using proportional fonts, not the old monospaced fonts of long long ago. Double-spacing after periods when using proportional fonts looks geeky. Open any modern novel and you'll see that single-spacing is used throughout. If you can't break this old typewriter habit, don't despair. We will do a quick search and replace to fix this. We (and you can do this as well) search for two spaces and replace with one space, and you do this in the search and replace box. You need to click the Search/Replace button, repeating the search-replace, until "0" appears in the box. When you see the zero you will know that all double spaces have been replaced by single spaces. And when you see that zero you will have automatically joined the authors of the 21st Century. <g> Congratulations! :-) Double paragraph return refers to two lines separating each paragraph with no indents (Tab characters) used. If you don't know how to delete the Tabs and replace with a double hard return between paragraphs using search and replace, go here. Do not use the TAB key to center text! When centering, use the format button available to you in the menu bar, or on the format dropdown menu which is now used in the newer versions of Word. Using the TAB key does not center. It only approximates. Centering using TABS will be unrecognized in most ebook formats and that formatting will be lost. So please don't center this way. Turn off things like curly quotes and em dashes. If you don't know how to do this, we'll fix it on our end, but before you send your file please search for the long em dash and replace it with two standard dashes. Ebook formats don't recognize the em dash so we want two short dashes to "stand in" for the unrecognizable em dash. Do not use styles. This may come as a shock to you because it seems everyone loves styles. The style code isn't recognized in the ebook formats we use at Awe-Struck. And, once again, if your book eventually makes it to the in-print stage, Kathryn will use her own styles in the book. Styles are bothersome to work with because it constantly fights me when I try to put books into the simple RTF that I hotsync to my Palm. (I edit all books in Wordsmith on my Palm.) So, please, if you already have styles in your book file, Select all, then choose "Normal" for the style. You might have to put back attributes like italics and centering, The misuse and overuse of foreign words: Let me give you some sound advice about using foreign words. If you must use them, keep them to an absolute minimum. Many readers don't enjoy plowing through words with accent marks they don't know how to interpret. I'm a prime example. I have a BA in math, with a minor in Physics and Chemistry. I also have three semesters of Graphic Design under my belt in addition to graduate work in math. But I never took a foreign language in either high school or college, so foreign words with tricky accent marks slow me down when I try to stumble my way through them. These kinds of words are truly "foreign" to me. They have their place, but most authors overuse them. If you are writing your thesis for your Ph.D., or Masters, correctness is called for. This is when you would want to make very sure that accents are correct and appropriate words are italicized, (if there is a need for foreign words in the first place). It goes without saying that you will want to impress the thesis committee. <g> But people who read for recreation don't want to be impressed. They just want to enjoy a good read. So please, please use foreign words judiciously, if at all. Something else to be very careful of is not to use foreign punctuation marks like inverted question marks that appear in Spanish sentences. These marks are available in Word, but they are not available in simple text. Those who buy the PDB version of your ebook, (one of the Palm Pilot formats we make available to our customers), will see nonsense characters in place of foreign punctuation marks. Obviously, this would be a disaster to those who buy the PDB version of your book. Foreign words will be left as is. We will not attempt to correctly spell or change an incorrect word to the correct one. Same goes for references to popular culture or technical jargon of any type. Further, we discourage authors from overusing these references (foreign languages, etc.). While the author may understand the term, many readers might not and may be turned off to a book because of them. |
