Incidentally, I’ve written this post specifically with regard to electronic submissions, but the rules below apply equally to printed submissions (though the reasons may vary). The six rules below should help you to do that. And the easiest way to make the formatting disappear is to make it look exactly the same as all the others. The idea is to make the formatting itself disappear, so that the focus is on the words and nothing else. The key thing to remember about manuscript formatting is that it’s not about looking pretty, or showing off creative or literary credentials.
(If the editor spends the first 30 seconds with your manuscript adjusting it to be easily read, that’s your first impression gone.) It doesn’t just show professionalism on the author’s part: it also helps the editor to connect to the words themselves. But even in the digital age, getting manuscript formatting right is very important.
These days, a lot of people submit just by Googling variations on ‘short story submissions’, or just by contacting their favourite publications direct, and so maybe miss out on that useful information. They were right next to the lists of magazines and book publishers, and hard to miss for writers getting ready to send out work. A few years ago, the standard way (in the UK) to plan your submissions was to get hold of a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, which had handy sections on manuscript preparation. I suspect this is partly due to the Internet. Something I’ve noticed over the last couple of years is that most writers have trouble getting their manuscript formatting right.
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