Set up paragraph styles in your word processor to handle pesky tasks like indentation. Your editor and her staff will thank you for it.
The short story manuscript template for Microsoft Word that I recently added was apparently quite a success, at least to judge by the number of requests I've received to add a version for novel manuscripts. Accordingly, I've created that novel template, and you can now find
At long last, after more requests than it should have required, I've corrected a long-standing oversight and created a short story manuscript template for Microsoft Word. You can find it at this page: https://www.shunn.net/format/templates.html After you customize the template with your own
A reader follows up on an earlier question to ask: I have a contents page after the main title page, so I want to start the page numbering on the third page, which is where chapter 1 starts. Have tried everything but can't seem to do it — any
A reader writes to ask: I just wanted to know if you still include a header on the first page of your chapters, and if you still use Courier 12 in your manuscripts - as shown in your venerable novel manuscript format example template? Is there a way to set
A reader writes to ask: Please could you explain how, using MS word, I can use a header like the one on your manuscript of Silvertide? Each time I try it will only let me have EITHER the name of the book OR automatic page numbering, not both. I suspect
In response to an earlier post, a reader writes to ask: Quick question - as a new/aspiring writer, starting a manuscript, I'm curious to know if *you know* of a way to make it double spaced after each sentence. I'm used to writing documents that
A reader writes to ask: I am using 2010 microsoft office for my novel manuscript. I need to change the titles of movies from italics to underlines. Any quick way? It's a bit tricky, but there is a way to convert all the italics in your document to
A reader writes to demand: Setting everything according to the various suggestions for Word to lay out my pages for writing a book, I find it impossible to get 25 lines on an 8½ by 11 when double spaced. Explain. "Explain"? That's a rather imperious imperative
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
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
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