Formatting Your Manuscript For Word
Writers
Jenna Petersen
Many authors, especially new authors, get caught up in
the logistics of writing… no, not craft, but the physical elements like word
count, margins, etc. You can beat
yourself over the head for months trying to make these things work out.
So I put together a little format sheet that may help:
First
off, know that your computer word count is MEANINGLESS.
An editor looks at how many pages you’ve written, multiplies that by
250 and that is the number of words they assume your book has.
This means that a page with long paragraphs of description will be
counted as having 250 words, but so will a page with short dialogue and no
tags.
So,
what you want to do is set-up your work so that you have approximately 250 words
in a page. That way you, too, can
multiply the number of pages you have times the 250 and come up with a proper
word count. This template is for
writers using Word. You will have
to check out your own system if you are using something else.
Set
Your Margins.
Your margins should be 1” all around.
To set this, look to the menu system where it says File, Edit, View, etc.
Click on File. In the File
section there should be an option called Page Setup.
Click that. A window will
open with four tabs: Margins, Paper
Size, Paper Source and Layout. Click
Margins and make all of them 1”.
Set
Your Spacing.
Most computers start you off writing as I’m writing this article…
single spaced. Now most of us are
trained to write papers or books in double spaced.
This is fine, but you can also set your spacing to do EXACTLY 25 lines
per pages. There are an average of
10 words per line, so if you do the math this will assure you have as close to
250 words per page as you can get. To
do this click on the Format option in the menu above.
Once there choose Paragraph. In
the Paragraph Section there are two tabs. Indents
and Spacing and Line and Page Breaks. Click
on Indents and Spacing.
Look
at the Spacing subsection in the window you’ve opened.
There are a couple of options there, Before, After and Line Spacing with
a little window below it. In the Line Spacing section choose EXACTLY in the choice box.
Next to that box enter 25. Now
it will set your processor to write at 25 lines per page.
Turn
off the Widows and Orphans. This is a step many people
forget. To truly get 25 lines per
page you MUST turn off the Widow and Orphans default. You’ll find the Widows and Orphans in the same section as
Line Spacing. Click on Format,
choose Paragraph. Now click on the Line and Page Breaks option in the box that
has opened up. In this section just
unmark ALL the boxes.
Use Courier/Courier New or Courier Dark, 12 pt. -- Actually, you can use any proportional font but Courier is the easiest and most widely used. A non-proportional font like Times New Roman means that each letter does not take up the same amount of space. But in a proportional font, each letter is the same size, which means it takes up the same amount of space. Though it may take some getting used to at first, after a while Courier will stop looking strange to you.
Now
you are ready to write a 250 word per page novel that will have you submitting
like a pro. So stop worrying about
this kind of stuff and get back to creating!
Good luck!