Indicating boldface type
A reader writes to ask: I have perused your formatting advice and have a question. You advise underline to indicate italics, what about bold? Make it "actual" or use asterisks, etc? I need to...
TypographyA collection of 9 posts
Why you won't go to hell for putting two spaces after a sentence
Back in January, Slate's Farhad Manjoo set the blogosphere a-boil with a vitriolic philippic against the evils of...
Testifying with boldface
A reader writes to ask: Is the occasional Bold word in a manuscript okay? Because every time I change point-of-view, I leave an empty line (which from now on will be filled with a #), and make...
Regarding line height, close is good enough
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...
Proper manuscript format for the 21st century
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'...
Publishers who ask for camera-ready copy
A reader writes to ask: I read your article on proper manuscript submission and found it to be very informative. I submitted my manuscript to a publisher and received an email that they would like to...