Gotta Question

[R Nitelight]

I have a lot of experience with print submission, but I'm new to this high-tech internet voodoo. So Basic Manuscript 101: is it still necessary to double space everything, or does the computer do that for the editor?

 

[Whispersecret]

If I wasn't feeling lazy, I'd go look it up for you. The site has a page that tells about how to go about submitting a manuscript.

I submitted my story to Laurel single-spaced, except for paragraphs, which required double-returns and no indentation. Unless you happen to be one of those authors who submits a story that is also one continuous paragraph.

If you need special formatting, like italics or underlining, you have to tell Laurel so she doesn't inadvertently get rid of it.

To be sure, though, you should go see her requirements. Best of luck on your writing.

 

[Weird Harold]

I have a lot of experience with print submission, but I'm new to this high-tech internet voodoo. So Basic Manuscript 101: is it still necessary to double space everything, or does the computer do that for the editor?

Basically, the computer does it for you.

The way the stories are formatted here, they will word wrap to fit the size of the page. All you need to do is make sure the paragraph breaks are in the right places and there are no extra paragraph breaks.

(In the computer world, paragraph breaks, line feeds, carriage returns, tabs and such are just as much characters on the page as the printable characters are.)

The new script based submissions procedures are going to be very much like posting a message on the BB. You can cut from your word processer and paste into a text box and preview before submitting. It will automatically accept italics and boldface, but maight choke on some special characters like "smart quotes" or single character fractions.

You'll also have the option of submitting a "flat text" file. I.e. a file that contains only ASCII text with only a double CR/LF pair between paragraphs. It's the most basic of text file formats and doesn't give any leeway for italics and boldface, or any special characters.

Until the new scripts are in place, if it looks right in Wordpad it will probably look right when converted to HTML for posting.

 

[R Nitelight]

Thanks, guys.