A reader writes to ask:

My memoir is divided into sections rather than having chapter titles. Some sections have as little as one chapter while the longest has seven. In a book I can see each section, which has a title and date range, having its own page to introduce the following chapter(s), but in a manuscript what is the proper formatting for this? Do I put the section title on the first line followed on the second line by the date range then half way down the page start the first chapter in that section and when a new chapter starts have a page break and start the new chapter half way down the next page? Or do I give each section it's own page and if so do I start the title half way down the page?

I suspect you might suggest I title each chapter but I'd rather not do that especially the way the book flows. So, I'm open to any and all suggestions. I just want to get it right and get going on sending it out to agents.

Also, I have seen conflicting information about where to start a chapter on the page. Some say half way down others say 12 spaces down. Perhaps I'm a stickler for perfection but as this is my first manuscript I want to give myself every opportunity for success.

Your question, if I follow it correctly, is about how to indicate large divisions in your book manuscript, divisions higher up than the chapter level. You're calling these large divisions "sections," but if you flip through a few novels from your bookshelf you might also find examples where they're called "books" or "parts." The Fellowship of the Ring, for instance, is divided into two large sections called "Book I" and "Book II," and each of those sections contains ten or twelve chapters.

In print, the section heading and/or title will often appear alone on its own page, the better to indicate a major division in the book. You shouldn't do it that way in your manuscript, though. Your initial idea is the right one, and is similar to the way I do it.

On the first page of a new section, I put the section heading about a third of the way down the page. I then put the section's first chapter heading about halfway down, with the chapter text starting a couple of lines after that. For subsequent chapters in the section, I again put the chapter heading about halfway down the page. (You can see an example of this in my sample novel manuscript excerpt.)

You also seem to be worried about how and whether to name your sections and chapters. There is no rule to dictate how to do this. Tolkien, in The Fellowship, did not give titles to the two large sections, but he did title each chapter within them. You could do it that way, or you could do exactly the opposite. You could use a date or a place or a character's name or anything else as a title. You don't even need to number your sections if you don't want to. Mix and match. The possibilities are endless:

Section 1
January - March

---

Part Two

---

Teen Trauma
1980 - 1983

---

Fall 1942

---

Book III
Vienna

---

Maude

---

Day Five: Hunger

---

VII

And the same goes for your chapter headings. Title or no title, it's up to you. Whatever you think is best for the book is fine.

So take a deep breath. The important thing is not the precise mechanics of what you do but being consistent about doing it.

A reader writes to ask:

Is there a guideline for when you want to include the text of some other text within your story? I'm thinking of something like Barry Malzberg's Herovit's World where parts of the novel were actually exerpts from the main character's novel that he was writing. In print these show up in a different font from the main text. How would this be done in manuscript? Would it be like a block quote? Or something different?

A very interesting question, and one that applies equally to fiction and narrative non-fiction. The material quoted in your work could be excerpts from a character's novel-in-progress, as you indicated, or could include such items as personal letters, diary entries, newspaper articles, or any other large chunk of text that your characters might read or write.

I wasn't positive of my answer right off the bat, so I polled a panel of three expert copy editors and/or book designers. The responses I got back differed in some details and caveats, but the basic meat of their answers was the same:

Block-indent the quoted passages.

Block indentation means to indent an entire passage one half-inch from the left margin. Within the indented passage, you still indent the first line of each paragraph that additional half-inch. Leave the right margin as-is, and center the # character on its own line before and after the quoted passage to indicate line spaces.

Here's an example:

While she was in the kitchen preparing our drinks, I wandered around the living room examining the tchotchkes and knickknacks.  My eye fell on a small, vinyl-bound diary on the coffee table.  It had a lock, but the lock was unlatched.

With a quick glance at the kitchen door, I snatched up the diary.  It fell open to the last page Suzette had written on.  In blue ink, it said:

#

Of course I'm really nervous about this date tonight.  I like Richard, he's exciting, but I'm still not sure I trust him.  He gets that skeevy kind of look in his eye sometimes when we're talking at the copy machine.

Hey, I just had a wicked idea.  I think I'll put a hair here between the pages and leave the diary out when Richard comes over.  Then I'll know for sure how skeevy he is.

#

The diary grew slippery in my grip.  There was no hair between the pages.

Heart pounding, I crouched down to see if I could spot one on the black surface of the coffee table.

It's fine for the block-indented passage to run several pages.

If you'd like the quoted passage to appear in print in a different font from the main text, that's probably something to take up with the editor once your manuscript has been accepted for publication and is going into production. "But," as one of my correspondents says, "the important thing is to communicate one's wishes with sufficient clarity as to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding."

A reader writes to ask:

I have a question about font. In your article, you suggested that only Courier or Times New Roman should be used, and you strongly recommended Courier. My version of Microsoft Word apparently does not support the Courier font, but it does have New Courier. I have attempted, to no avail thus far, to determine what I might do to change my Microsoft Word to allow the Courier font. Is New Courier an acceptable alternative (preferable to Times New Roman) or would you recommend using Times New Roman, assuming I cannot get the old Courier font to work on my Word version?

I should clarify that when I refer to Courier, I'm speaking of all fonts in the Courier family. This would include Courier New (not "New Courier"), which is the actual Courier font included by default with most computer operating systems. Courier New is absolutely fine and correct for you to use in your manuscript.

Some writers who prefer to use a Courier font find Courier New too light and spindly for their tastes. A favorite substitute for these folks is Dark Courier, which is free to download and install (at least if you're a Windows user).

Finally, just for the sake of interest, Slate has an interesting article on some of the history and uses of Courier, "Courier, Dispatched."

A reader writes to ask:

I have always used two spaces after the end of each sentence and someone recently said they believed that was no longer the correct method to use. Can you tell me if I should leave one or two spaces between each sentence in a paragraph or is it one of those inconsequential issues?

I receive more email on this topic than any other. For such a simple question, it stirs up plenty of passion, controversy, and bile on forums where these sorts of things are discussed. I would like to advise you that it's an inconsequential issue, but clearly it is not for many writers and editors.

The roots of this debate go way back to the days of typesetting by hand, when two different styles of sentence spacing emerged. French spacing was the practice of setting a single space between sentences, while English spacing meant using two spaces. The two-space method carried over into the realm of the typewriter when that device was invented. If you learned typing on a typewriter, you were no doubt taught to put two spaces after every sentence, and two spaces after every colon, too.

In the mid-20th century, with type no longer being set by hand, most publishers reverted to single-spacing between sentences. That's still how your work will appear in print, regardless of whether you use one space or two in your manuscript. These days, since your work is likely to go directly to print from an electronic file, using one space between sentences in a manuscript is more common. This makes the process of converting your file to a format fit for publication just a little more smooth.

Still, for many of us who've had it drilled into our heads that we should hit that spacebar twice at the end of a sentence, switching over to one space can be hard. Personally, I don't think it's that important. Most typesetting programs that I'm aware of make it easy to convert two spaces to one in an electronic manuscript, so I don't feel much obligation to save the typesetter a few keystrokes. In nearly twenty years of selling fiction, I've never had an editor or agent tell me I need to stop using two spaces, and I have no plans at this point in my career to change the way I type.

That said, the two-space practice is on the way out and is going to die. But despite all the Sturm und Drang, the choice really is still up to you. The rule of thumb I would offer is that if you use a proportional font like Times New Roman, you should definitely switch to one space, but if you use a monospaced font like Courier, you can keep on using two spaces if you want to. Your call.

A reader writes to ask:

Love your clear instructions on manuscript preparation and am wondering if the formatting is the same for memoir?

Yes, exactly. You should format a personal essay the same as a short story, and book-length memoir the same as a novel.

These are, in fact, the same formats you would use for many types of general nonfiction. As you move into more specialized types of writing, however—journalism, academic writing, scientific writing, technical writing—more specialized types of formatting are required, and you should consult a relevant style guide.

A reader writes to ask:

Why not have a triple space between paragraphs? (Because of the double space between the lines, the paragraphs are not distinguished.)

I infer from your question that you're confused about how to indicate the end of one paragraph and the beginning of the next. You don't see how this can be done without inserting any extra vertical space between the two. If each line on the page is the same distance from the one after it, in other words, how in the world can the reader tell where a new paragraph starts?

Several different styles of paragraph formatting exist, but for the purpose of this discussion I'm only going to talk about two. The first is called block format. Each paragraph in block format appears as a simple, left-justified block of text, with vertical space separating each paragraph from the next. Many business letters are written in block format, as are most types of online writing, including this blog entry.

But block format is inappropriate for your fiction manuscript, and in fact for most kinds of commercial writing. Take a careful look at most of the books you own, or at the articles in most magazines. You won't find any extra vertical space between paragraphs. Instead, you'll see that the start of each new paragraph is indicated using a style called first-line indentation. In this format, the first line of each paragraph starts a few spaces in from the left margin, as in this example:

     The Manual tells us that in the beginning the Builder decreed six fundamental Machines. These are his six aspects, and all we do we must do with the Six. We need no other machines.
     I believe this with all my heart. I do. And yet sometimes I seem to intuit the existence of a seventh Machine, hovering like a blasphemous ghost just beyond apprehension.
     There is something wrong with me, and I don't know what it is.

In the days of typewriters, a paragraph indentation was typed either by hitting the space bar five times, or by hitting the TAB key with a tabulator stop set at the appropriate horizontal position. In your word processor, you can set tab stops as well and use the TAB key to indent, or you can set up a paragraph style that automatically indents each first line for you.

When using Courier font, the first line of each paragraph should be indented one half-inch, or five spaces, from the left margin. In a proportional font, the indentations can be smaller.

(Please note, just to make things confusing, that when submitting a story in the body of an email, most editors will ask you to use block format. But that's a special case, not for general usage.)

A reader writes to ask:

When sending stories via email attachment, some markets insist on RTF, so I'll go to my Open Office files, where all my stories are .DOC, formatted in Standard Manuscript Format (SMF), and save the .DOC as RTF. Opened as RTF, the first paragraph is lined double spaced and then everything else is single spaced between lines. Then every once in awhile, a market will send it back saying they want it SMF. They've called for RTF, but then they say SMF. Okay, so what should I do, go back to .DOC and send it? or is there something I can do to get the RTF to be double spaced between lines??

You are confusing file format with manuscript format. When a market asks for an RTF file, they are only talking about the file format (in this case, Rich Text Format), which has to do with how your document is actually stored on your computer disk and what word processors can read it. You still have to make sure that the contents of your RTF file are formatted according to standard manuscript format, and that means making sure it's all double-spaced.

Fortunately, that's easy to fix. After you export the document, open the new RTF file in Open Office. Hit CTRL-A to highlight the full document. Then go into the formatting menu and change the line spacing from single to double. That should get the full document double-spaced for you. Save it again and send.

A reader writes to ask:

I came across your web site while searching for information on the correct way to format a manuscript. I failed to make a note about electronic file printing. Do you have any recommendations regarding the brand and model of a printer which can handle this type of printing?

I won't name any brands or models because almost any desktop printer you can buy these days is capable of producing a fine, readable manuscript. (It used to be advisable to avoid submitting dot-matrix printouts, but nowadays even those work plenty well enough.) I would suggest a laser printer over an inkjet or impact printer simply for the sake of speed, but you should look for something in a price range you're comfortable with, keeping in mind that paper plus toner or ink cartridges will be ongoing expenses.

Also, be sure to buy the correct high-quality paper to match your type of printer. Read the label before purchasing to make sure it's recommended for use with your printer.

A reader writes to ask:

Thanks for all the useful, easy-to-follow information about formatting on your web site. If I were submitting pages by snail mail, I think I'd be set. But the vast majority of agents I'm planning on querying ask for sample pages along with the query letter, and ask that the pages be submitted by email in the body of the message. This seems to make irrelevant a number of issues of formatting. For example, if it's translated into plain text, then the font and the spacing and so forth, that's all suddenly out of my control. Can I assume most will be able to read emails in html? In which case I am trying to approximate the format the best I can or..? I can't find advice on this anywhere. Help!

Formatting submissions for inclusion in the body of an email is indeed a very different beast from formatting them for paper or as email attachments. These days it's rare to find someone whose email client doesn't support reading HTML, but you still don't want to try to duplicate standard manuscript format in email. Instead you should reformat the message to match the medium.

The generally accepted guidelines are to single-space the text of your story, double-space between paragraphs, and not indent the first line of paragraphs—in other words, to format it just like this blog entry, as if you were posting it online. (Some markets expect you to go so far as to place _underscores like these_ around emphasized text instead of underlining or italicizing. I think that's a little excessive myself, but it's probably important to editors who read email in a text-only client.)

As always, check your market's submission guidelines carefully and be sure to comply with any variations they may specify. And remember, if they request that you send your submission as an attached file, standard manuscript formatting will still apply.

I wrote the original version of my manuscript formatting guide in 1993, modeling it after a much older two-page guide I received from Damon Knight in 1985. Back in those days, even for those who'd made the switch to composing prose on computers, the goal of formatting was to produce a document for submission that looked as much as possible like it had sprung to life rolling through the platen of a typewriter, offspring of holy intercourse between paper, typebar, and ink ribbon.

The world of writing and publishing has changed plenty in these past seventeen, or twenty-five, or God knows how many years. A manuscript used to be the mere blueprint for a printed book or story, instructions in a coded language to the typesetter who would laboriously rework the entire thing into clean, finished type. Now the gap between manuscript and book has shrunk to the size of a computer file. Electronic submissions mean that the only physical keystroke in the life history of a given letter in a published work may well be the one executed by the author himself.

The accepted and acceptable standards of manuscript formatting have evolved to reflect this. Proportional fonts are used more and more in manuscripts, while typographical tricks that were necessary on typewriters now no longer make sense. More and more writers are submitting manuscripts that would have looked unacceptable a decade ago, and more and more editors don't mind this one bit. With the almost complete dominance of the word processor, topics like word-count approximation and end-of-line hyphenation are no longer relevant to most of us. It was long past time to update my format guide to reflect this new reality.

You old-school writers and editors, don't worry. I won't abandon my Courier font and double sentence spacing (more on that topic in a future post) without a fight. If I have my way, the manuscripts I produce fifty years from now will look the same as the ones I produce today. But I did want to acknowledge that mores are changing, and that not everyone agrees anymore about what proper manuscript format even means.

The basics still remain, even if some of the details continue to evolve. To those hundreds of sites that have linked to my format guide over the years, I hope you still find it useful and relevant, if not more so than before. To those who've disagreed with it in the past, sometimes vehemently, I hope you find more common ground here now. And to those stumbling across it for the first time? God help you poor kids for wanting to be writers.

Please let me know what you think of the revised and updated version of "Proper Manuscript Format," and best of luck with your writing.