What does it mean?

[Sunnie]

I'd rather sound like a moron in front of you guys than in front of a potential publisher, since you guy will probably just make fun of me and then move on .

So what does it mean when publishers ask for a submission in "standard manuscript" form?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

There's some differences in Standard Manuscript Form for different publications, but in general I think they want standard 11- or 12-point font (either Times New Roman, or Arial un;ess specified), double spaced, one-inch margins on right and left, 1.5 on top and bottom. Number the pages, usually in the upper right.

If you use MSWord, you can create a Style called SMF and use things like paragraph indents or extra spaces between paragraphs that might not actually be kosher SMF but make your mss easier to read on the screen. They're easy to remove, though, by reformatting the style. That saves you the trouble of having to go through and change everything manually.

You can also use the Search & Replace function to remove some things. I'm in the habit of double-returning for every paragraph for stories I submit to Lit. If I want to change to SMF for a publisher, I just do a Search & Replace on double carriage returns.

 

[elsol]

Look on their website:

The publishers that have them usually have their 'standard' posted.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Sunnie]

Awesome, thanks guys!

Dr -- I never thought of creating a form in Word for that... That'll be so much easier!

...Yeah, I'm married to a geek, but I'm a bit of a techno-dunce sometimes.