Presenting your Manuscript

By Gwyneth Box

Your manuscript and covering letter are usually the first contact that you have with an editor. Remember all that you’ve ever heard about first impressions, and you’ll see just how important it is to get them right.

Put yourself in the position of the editor who may have dozens of submissions arriving each day. What do you think she wants to see? A dog-eared manuscript that looks as if it has already been rejected several times? A hand-written letter which she has to take time to decipher? A full-length biography of the sender with copies of his school report where the English teacher said what promise he showed?

No. What the editor is interested in is a manuscript which is clean, clear, concise, correct and appropriate.

Although there are no hard and fast rules for manuscript presentation, a little common sense and consideration of these points will help. Let’s start with appropriateness, as, if it isn’t appropriate, the best manuscript in the world won’t be accepted, whereas you may get away with minor failings in the other aspects.

An Appropriate Manuscript

What do we mean by a manuscript being appropriate? Well, it must be the right type of text, the right length, the right register of language and arrive at the right time; that is, appropriate in content, style and timing.

This is easiest to illustrate by considering poetry. Does the publication to which you are submitting actually print poetry? If, not don’t bother sending yours, however good.

If they do print poems, do these usually consist of three or four nostalgic rhyming quatrains about places and people? If so, don’t send in your 200 line unrhymed surrealist work, whatever the subject, nor your politically incorrect limericks.

If the readership is mostly middle-aged housewives, your academically brilliant verse full of Greek and Latin references won’t be appropriate. And if yours is a Christmas poem, don’t send it in on December the 22nd. The Christmas issues are prepared well in advance and the editor is more likely to be thinking of Valentine’s Day or Easter.

All of these points apply to article writing and fiction, too. Remember: content, style and timing.

There is also another aspect of timing to bear in mind: has a similar article been published recently? Unless it is a specialist publication and your article can be considered a follow-up - perhaps an in-depth treatment of a particular aspect previously only touched on - it won’t be accepted.

Unfortunately you can’t tell what other submissions have been made, so your piece may be rejected on the grounds that they already have a similar one in stock. Particularly in these days of standard rejection slips, if the editor makes the effort to give this as a reason, you should take it as encouragement: you are on the right track, just a step behind.

A Clean Manuscript

Since most of us are now using computers or word processors to do our writing, there is no excuse for submitting a dog-eared copy of a manuscript - you can always produce a new printout.

If you have submitted the same copy elsewhere and had it rejected, the very least you should do is check the condition of the pages and re-print those which look grubby or well thumbed. The covering letter must obviously be re-written with the details of the new publisher or magazine editor, and a pristine copy of the cover sheet (see below) is a good idea, too.

Incidentally, if your work has been rejected, you should perhaps be wondering why, and not simply sending the same manuscript straight out again. If it’s been a while since you sent it off, you have probably been working on other projects and it won’t be so fresh in your mind. This, then, is an excellent moment to re-read your work and cut or correct anything that doesn’t sound so good now you can be a little more objective.

One comment about paper: although using recycled paper is laudable, the fact is that a good quality white bond is still the best choice for submissions and query letters. If you print out one good copy, you can make photocopies and there will be little difference in quality. But remember always to check the manuscript before sending - photocopiers - and printers - occasionally feed two sheets at a time and it’s your own responsibility to check this hasn’t happened.

When you send the manuscript, do use a big enough envelope. By the time you’ve included a query letter, a cover sheet and two or more pages of manuscript you should be using at least an A5 (so you only need to fold the page once). If it is a long manuscript it is better unfolded and presented in a card wallet folder. Don’t staple the pages - someone will want to unstaple them and break their nails - and don’t use a plastic folder as papers are always piled up on the editor’s desk and plastic tends to slip.

A Clear Manuscript

This is connected to the idea of a clean manuscript: cleanliness and clarity make it easier to read. In the category of clarity we include things like typeface, interline spacing, margins, colour and style, as well as the use of a cover or summary sheet.

The typeface (font and size) that you choose for your manuscript is important. In general it is easier to read a sans serif font (such as Geneva or Arial) on the screen and a serif font (such as Times) on the printed page. The text should be neither too small nor too big; a Times 12 point is fairly standard.

It is often a temptation to use all the fancy facilities of your printer - bold, italics, colour etc - to add variety to your work. Although it’s true that these techniques can help the reader, they should be used with discretion. And don’t forget that if the manuscript is photocopied, much of this detail will be lost.

Whether you choose to right justify the text is really a matter of personal preference, but it is certainly not necessary, and may make the text less easy to read. You should, of course, only use one side of the page.

For non-fiction articles you should use double spacing. If you are working with word processing or desktop publishing software which allows you to select an interline value in terms of points, that would be 24 pt for a 12 pt text.

There is no need to indent your paragraphs, but they should be separated by a blank line or a double space (around 8mm for a 24 pt interline value.)

You should also leave a reasonable margin all around the text. About an inch and a half (3.5cm) is sufficient. At the top of each page it’s a good idea to print your surname, the title of the article, and the page number. It helps to end each sheet except the last with the abbreviation mf... which indicates that more follows.

Although I wouldn’t worry too much about splitting a long paragraph between two pages, you should try and avoid starting a paragraph on the last line of the page, or finishing it with a single line at the top of the next page.

Using a cover or summary sheet creates a professional impression as it allows the editor to see at a glance what is being offered. This sheet simply includes a little basic information about the article and the author. You need to give your contact details (name, address, phone number and e-mail address if you have one), but there’s no need to give any biographical details. The title of the article should be clearly shown, as well as the type (fiction or non-fiction), word count and rights being offered.

If your software has a word count option you can obviously use that, but check that you don’t include all the headers and trailers and the cover sheet details. If you haven’t got this facility, or are using a typewriter, you will have to count the words by hand. The only way to do this accurately is by actually counting every word in the article, but you can calculate an approximate value as follows:

Count the words in the first twenty full lines of the text. Divide this number by twenty. This gives you the average number of words per line. Now count the number of lines (including the half lines at ends of paragraphs). Multiply the number of lines by the average number of words per line and you have an approximate figure for the word count of the whole article.

Note that an exact word count is impossible unless done by hand. Most word processing software will count a hyphen between two spaces as a word in its own right, so that the list: “One - two - three - four.” is counted as seven words.

The word count can be rounded to the nearest ten in a short article, or fifty in longer piece.

You also need to state what rights are being offered. These will usually be First British Serial Rights (FBSR) or First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) etc. The fact that they are called ‘serial rights’ has nothing to do with the serialisation of your work; These rights are for a one-time usage of a piece, whether it is to be published in its entirety in one issue or over a series of issues.

This is the basic information which should be included on the cover sheet. Different editors prefer different layouts, but the main thing is to provide the information at a glance, without unnecessary clutter. If you include a summary of the article, or a biographical note, it’s best to make it really concise - no more than one or two sentences.

If you’ve kept a master copy of the manuscript - which of course you will have done! - you might like to put the phrase “non-returnable manuscript” under the title, to save on return postage.

At the end of the last page of your manuscript you may choose to put the copyright symbol © with your name and the year in which you first produced the work. It’s also a good idea to include brief contact details (at least a phone number and e-mail address if possible) in case the covering letter and cover sheet get separated from the manuscript.

A Concise Manuscript

For some of us, paring our work to a reasonable length is one of the most difficult aspects of writing. It should, however, be done, and done seriously.

Some writers like to write down everything they might possibly want to include, or everything they know about a subject in a ‘master’ document and then work from this, selecting only the most relevant parts. The problem here is that once you have written something down, especially if you have found a particularly elegant phrase to express an idea, it is very hard to cut. You must realise, however, that the reader won’t miss something he has never seen, so you can ruthlessly remove whole sections and he will be none the wiser. Don’t forget, too, that most good writers recycle their work, re-writing articles, or writing new ones about the same subject. That special phrase may well be used later on to better advantage.

Look carefully at the adjectives and adverbs in your writing. Are they pulling their weight? What about those little filler phrases that make the prose more tentative? Compare:
“It’s a good idea to do this.”
“You should do this.”
“Do this.”
Obviously there is a big difference in the way the reader will react to each of these phrases, and you must decide which reaction you want to provoke. But essentially the information in all three phrases is the same and the word count is very different.

If you have written substantially more words than you intended you may find that it’s impossible to rectify things by snipping a few words here and a sentence there. The only remedy then is to cut a whole section of the text.

One way to avoid reaching this situation is to start with a plan of your article. If you are clear about what you want to include you will also be able to plan from the start the weight you give to each section. If you have ten sections in your plan and the article is only to be 1000 words long, you know in advance that if one section runs to 300 words you have already upset the balance.

If you have to cut large sections of the text to keep within the word limit, consider the possibility of concentrating on a part of the original and then maybe offering a follow up article dealing with the rest. By reorganising your approach to the subject, you may sell two articles instead of one.

A Correct Manuscript

There are two aspects of correctness: typographical and factual. Both are important.

Most of us use computer or word processing software with spell check facilities. If you do, make use of it! But don’t rely on a machine to identify all your mistakes. There are some which it is impossible to find only by spelling - like hoard for horde, or spell for spill. If a sentence is a little complicated, the computer itself may suggest a wrong option where the original is perfectly correct. It’s your writing, and it’s up to you to get it right.

One way I find which helps me to identify problems is to leave the text for a day or two and then read it out loud. This forces me to go more slowly and actually see what I’ve written. I also find that it’s much easier to see mistakes on paper than on the screen.

But it isn’t just a question of writing correct English, you must also make sure your facts are correct. If a mistake slips through, there are plenty of readers with nothing better to do than write to the editor and complain, and she is unlikely to want to accept work from you again if this happens.

If, on the other hand, you build up a reputation for correctness, the editor may begin to rely on you. When another writer lets her down at the last minute and she sees one of your articles recently arrived, she can use it with confidence, knowing it won’t need meticulous checking as you are to be trusted.

Guidelines

As I said at the beginning, there are no hard and fast presentation standards which will be accepted worldwide for all types of manuscript, and each editor has preferences. It is therefore always a good idea to ask for the contributors’ guidelines for each publication.

However, if there are no guidelines available, fall back on common sense and keep it clean, clear, concise, correct and appropriate.

And one last thought: don’t forget to include an SAE (stamped self-addressed envelope) for return of your manuscript. Remember that if you are sending your work abroad, your own country’s stamps can’t be used, so you need to send IRCs (International Reply Coupons) which you can buy at your Post Office. To be valid they need to be stamped when you purchase them. And even if your manuscript is non-returnable, you still need an SAE if you want the editor to reply.