So now that you’ve gone through the final edit of your manuscript, before you submit your work, you have to take a look at the formatting and ask yourself, “How does it look?”

If you are submitting it to a publisher or agent, you really have to find out their requirements and follow them to a “T.” However, if who you are submitting your work to has no specific guidelines for submission, then you’ll just want to submit the clearest, cleanest copy you can. There are many books on the market that help with formatting—everything from query letters to manuscripts.

What your manuscript looks like says a lot about you as a writer. If you have several different fonts going on, some paragraphs are indented while others are not, or you flip-flop between capitalizing certain words it not only looks sloppy, but it shows that you don’t care much about your work and you may not be taken seriously. It also shows that you are an amateur. Whether you are a novice at writing or not, you can still present a clean copy. If this is something that you are submitting to a publisher, it can prevent your manuscript from even being read. Editors won’t waste their time trying to sift through a hodge-podge mix of formats.

The most important thing when thinking about your manuscript presentation is that consistency is key. If you start out putting your chapter headings in bold text, then continue throughout. If you start capitalizing a specific word or term in chapter one, then continue in that form. You get the idea. The inconsistencies can also be disconcerting to the reader; that is, if they continue to read it.

Obviously, a perfectly manicured and pristinely formatted manuscript cannot help you with poorly written content. So yes, the content is of utmost importance; but the appearance of your manuscript is what the reader, editor, agent, or publisher will see first, before they even read the first sentence.

Take the time to make your work presentable—it can make all the difference!

Related posts:

1. How to Prepare an Excellent Manuscript
2. How to Submit Your Article to a Magazine in Four Easy Steps
3. Proofreading vs. Editing – Another View

Tags: Article Submission, Christian Publication, Christian Writing, How to Submit an Article, Journal Submission, Manuscript Submission, Professional Editing, Submitting for Publication, Submitting to a Publisher, Thesis Editing, Thesis Planning, Writing for Publication

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 4th, 2009 at 12:50 pm and is filed under Christian Writing, Proofreading, Thesis/Research Writing, Writing for Publication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.