Before you hit “print”
I sent a copy of my novel manuscript to an editor last week. Printing a good copy of the novel took several tries and way too many sheets of paper. Here’s what I learned from my mistakes:
1. First, consult a reliable source for the recommended format for manuscript submission. There are many details, and they are not all common sense or intuitive. Don’t fret that there is more than one authority. Pick a recently published, reputable one (I used my Children’s Writer’s Market) and format before you print.
2. Run spell check. Then run grammar check.
3. Do an eyeball check of every page before you print. I found a paragraph break I’d missed, plus I had several chapters end at the bottom of a page, followed by a blank, wasted page. I eliminated those hard page breaks. I also adjusted the page formats to eliminate widows and orphans–hanging words at the end of paragraphs or hanging sentences at the top of a page. (There is no consistent definition of either, so both words encompass both things.)
4. Check to make sure you have an adequate supply of paper, several times that of your page count.
5. Do not mix paper stock; it looks sloppy and makes the manuscript unwieldy because the pages don’t stack neatly.
6. Print out the first five pages as a test to check things like page numbering, and other header/footer information, which can vary on even and odd pages. Confirm that your pages conform to the recommended format from your reliable source in #1.
This is not a quick process, or one that should be rushed. If you have done all of these, hit print. Then review the printed manuscript page by page to ensure it is correct. Then, and only then, send it out.
May 10th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
I’m working on my grad school admissions essay now; it’s the one that books and Web forums make out to be a life-defining piece of writing, and it may actually be so. The best advice I’ve seen is to print it out, and then read the individual words from end to beginning, rather than reading the sentences.
The human brain has a wonderful capacity for forgiveness, and if it sees “your” where there should be “you” (as in the application service’s instructions for the very same essay!), it may very well glide ahead without registering the mistake. And I’m sure you know that familiarity with the work only compounds this effect.