(…or anyone who might know). When typing a manuscript how is the page formatted? That is, things like - margin sizes - font and font size - line spacing - spacing between paragraphs and do you indent them? - headers and footers: yes/no and what do you put on them? - page numbers etc - any legal stuff you have to include? Also related, how many ‘published’ pages does each page of manuscript equate to? Thankee.
Re: Questions for the professional writers… - margin sizes: 1" all around - font and font size: Courier 11* used to be the standard, but a lot of editors accept or even prefer Times New Roman 12 - line spacing: double-spaced - spacing between paragraphs and do you indent them? No spacing, except when you're switching scenes** - headers and footers: yes/no and what do you put on them?No footer; header is flush left: LAST NAME IN CAPS/Book Title in Italics - page numbers etc.: Flush right, on the same line as the header - any legal stuff you have to include? ***See below *Back in the day, editors' font preference was based on the IBM Selectric typewriter, which had Courier as its default font. It's still the easiest to read, but younger editors prefer TNR because it's the default in MS Word. **"Switching scenes" as in "Meanwhile, back at the ranch..." There you'd put an extra space. Used to be editors wanted a "#" centered in that space so as not to confuse the typesetter, but nowadays most mss. are delivered "camera ready," so just a blank space is acceptable. The proofreader (if there is one) will query you later if there's any confusion. ***If by "legal stuff," do you mean should you copyright the ms. first - absolutely not. Nothing screams "amateur" more than that little copyright sign on the title page. Used to be a ratio of 3:2, which is to say three ms. pages = two book pages, at least in hardcover. But that was if you used a Courier font, which averaged 250 words per page; TNR is a smaller font, so there are more words per page. Also, nowadays publishers use so many different fonts, and softcovers especially are using smaller and smaller fonts and ever-narrower margins to save $, so it's hard to say. One way to test it out is to type out a page of your favorite novel in the format above and see how many ms. pages you get. Hope that helps.
