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After reading "The First Five Pages", I want to get my manuscript as flawless as possible. I was trained to type on a typewriter and so I double space after periods. I've read on other boards that computers are different and you don't need to double space after periods. Will most editors see the double spacing chuck my MS in the reject pile? Should I go back and change everything?
posted
Most editors won't care. The key thing is to be consistent. Whether you use one space after end-of-sentecne-periods or two, use the same throughout.
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I'm a two-spacer. I've only seen one guidelines that specified single space after periods. Easily fixed with search and replace. If not specified in the guidelines, use the standard, which is two spaces after periods.
Computers are not "different." Somebody probably told you that because their word processor is set to automatically put in two spaces after periods.
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I was a two-spacer and my colleague was a one-spacer and we argued about it (Believe it or not) when doing a report. So we asked another collegue who's an ex-Maths teacher. He rang his wife - an English teacher and she said it used to be strictly two-spaces but now either way is fine, as long as, like DeepDreamer said, you're consistent. That's just for general writing in English - I imagine the same applies to manuscripts. It'd be worth checking out submission guidelines just in case.
Posts: 92 | Registered: Jun 2006
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posted
I was always taught (from books) that it's two spaces after a period at the end of the sentence. Nowadays, I figure it's a matter of clarity in the (then typewritten) page. But it's also one of those too-ingrained-to-stop habits with me now...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
My sister, who was a professional desk-top publisher for a time, and I went around about this as well. Early on in her business, she'd hire me to do some simple typing and data entry, since I'm faster than she is. I was doing the traditional two spaces after each period, and she'd yell at me for it. I told her that's how I was PROPERLY taught to type (not hunt-and-peck like she does), and it was always two spaces.
She pulled out a manual about "standards" on the computer, and sure enough, it said using only one space was more and more becoming typical when typing on a computer or word processor. Each one of those extra spaces adds up.
Granted, this was the early 90s, before people had higher RAM and storage on their computers, so those little spaces could amount to a fair chunk of change.
I agree that it's most important to be consistent. From habit, I now do only one space; doing two would feel weird to me, since it's been years and years since I've typed on an actual typewriter.
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Ah, another computer thingy...I'm still trying to figure out why some markets don't want Times New Roman...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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You can do a find and replace on two spaces to easily change all of them to single spaces, but you can't do the opposite. Even if you do the find and replace for ". ", it still screws up things like abbreviations.
I use two spaces even typing into this text input, even though it doesn't matter because the forum display doesn't show the extra space. It's just an extra tap on the spacebar, after all. If that alone is enough to be a big deal for you, then don't bother asking, you're not going to do two spaces no matter what I say about it.
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I'm a two spacer, too. I've heard tell of single-spacers out there, but I've never met one that I know of.
Posts: 136 | Registered: Mar 2006
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At my highschool and community college I was taught to use two spaces. When I went to a four year university I they told me to use one space. Now I use one space out of habit, but I never notice how many are used when I'm reading anything.
A long way to say I don't think it should make a difference.
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Times New Roman: I think they don't want it because Times is a proportional font, and ... why that matters, I have no idea!
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
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On a sidebar issue---somehow, I learned to write a dash as three dashes---like these---though I learned later that a space, two dashes, and another space -- like these -- are the preferred method. It's ingrained habit, like most of my other pecularities.
All of which would be tolerable, except my current word processing program doesn't recognize three dashes---if it's at the end of the line, it'll split it up. I think I might be able to set something to recognize it for what I intend it to be, but, like so much else about computers and word processing, I haven't yet figured it out.
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I'm a one-spacer, and I don't plan to change. I am also a professional graphic designer, and the problem with two spaces wasn't so much the additional memory the extra space took as much as it screwed up the kerning of the letters. (Kerning = automatic adjustment of spacing between letters to fit them more comfortably together. A lower case "i" will take less room than a capital "M" and can be tucked more snugly next to adjacent letters.) Computers do kerning automatically unless you use a fixed space font like Courier.
A few years ago, desktop publishing would toss a Loooooot of extra space between sentences if it detected two spaces. The result was that there was a huge gap, sometimes as wide as half an inch, between sentences. And it was inconsistent, depending on the kerning to be done with the characters in the sentence.
I've recently upgraded my desktop publishing software to InDesign, and to my delight I've found that InDesign makes kerning adaptations to those extra spaces between sentences so I no longer have to go through a document and manually remove them, one by one.
But people.... just because you were trained on a typewriter doesn't mean it's best to stick to typewriter rules. Very few of us WORK on typwriters anymore. There are rules that have changed due to the conversion to new technology. After all, you don't slap a metal handle on the side of your computer when doing a hard return, do you??? And who gets caught sniffing the ink of reproduced copies since we no longer have ditto machines?
[This message has been edited by Elan (edited August 20, 2006).]
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And Robert, the dashes you are used to are simply poor substitutes for a single character refered to as an "Em Dash"... a dash the width of a capital "M". (An "En Dash" is the width of a capital "N"). You can insert the proper character by accessing it on your ASCII keyboard (if you are on a PC). The command for an Em Dash should be: ALT+0151 (for Times New Roman). Hold the ALT key down as you type the numbers on your number key pad. Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
As for the Times New Roman proportional font thing:
Each character in a fixed font takes up the same space as any other. In other words "I" and "M" have the same dimensions. With proportional fonts, the "I" is kerned, or in simpler terms, the "I" takes up less space in width than an "M". Kerning of course makes the actual "length" of the text in characters unpredictable. Fixed fonts on the other hand will always yield the same number of characters per line or page given the same margin settings.
My guess is that the editors and layout folks care more about actual publication text length than individual word count, i.e. how much text fits to a particular space.
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On rule changes---I've spoken on this before, and it usually cheeses people off, but...
When I look at the matter, why should I change my habits simply because somebody else is trying to change the rules? I'm still kinda annoyed that quotation marks moved off the top left keys down to the lower right. I'm willing to modify my habits---but I have limits for what is, after all, for me, a non-profit activity.
I figure I can---and see no reason why I shouldn't---submit a [printed] manuscript in Times New Roman. I also figure I can accomodate a market that wants to see it another way---a polite request, or waving the possibility of a check in front of my face, well, either would be a good way to get me to do it.
On e-submissions...the few times I've done it haven't been problem-free for me. I plan to avoid it in most cases, exceptions to be made as I see fit. Format changes for benefit of that are also under the same plan.
(And I've worked my old Smith Corona several times this year. I've been using it from time to time to break my writer's block with a page a day---starting from Square One, in effect---then rewriting the result by typing it into my computer right here. And I take it on vacations---I own no laptop and might not take one if I did.)
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