My manuscript contains text messages from one character to another. How would you suggest I format them?

When you present an exchange of text messages in fiction, you're essentially presenting a different form of dialog. As such, if I were doing it, I'd treat the messages the same as any other dialog—except that I'd underline the text instead of enclosing it in quotation marks.

Underlining (or rather italics, which is what underlining in a manuscript indicates) is the generally accepted way to indicate in a story that you're quoting from written or printed material—say, a note or a sign. Or, in today's world, a text message or email.

In fact, I can show you an example from the novel I'm writing now, Waking Vishnu. This passage involves instant-messaging on a computer, but the principle is the same:

The chime sounded again:

am i dreaming

Hasta tried to type, but her shaking fingers turned the words to mush.  She backspaced furiously and tried again:

I dont know.

Then, because that seemed somehow insufficient, she typed:

Sometmies when I deram, I cn fly.

The typos made her wince--as did simply typing with her hurt fingers--but a moment later a response came:

i always can fly

I wish I cd fly, Hasta typed.  Id fly right out of here.

stay in school, chimed her mysterious chat partner.  education gives u wings

She snorted.  Big help, thx a lot.

It might be that, in print, your editor or book designer will decide the text messages should be set in bold instead of italics, or in some contrasting font. That's fine, but it's a decision that'll be made down the road. For your purposes now, though, just underline.

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.

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."