Re: Re Ellipsis Points, Part II

["George Scithers" owlswickpress@xxxxxxxx]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Patricia M. Godfrey" 
To: 
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 6:15 PM
Subject: Re Ellipsis Points, Part II [now Part III]
I should agree with everything George says, with one possible
exception. The rule about double-spacing everything comes from
the days when copy was edited and copy edited on a paper
printout. You need the extra space between lines there to put in
your corrections. If this is going to be edited electronically
(or even, quelle horreur, not edited at all), there's no need to
kill all those trees and print it double-spaced.
A second reason for double-line-spacing (I stick in "-line-"
because otherwise, some novices put two spaces between words) is
that a 6.5-inch line (8.5 inches less two margins) is too long
for comfortable reading. Ideally, a line should be no longer than
around 50 to 55 characters-and-spaces long.
A future standard COULD be 12-point type, double-column, with
14-point line spacing, and of course ragged right margin on both
columns. The shorter lines would make up for the closer line
spacing, and the text would actually be easier to read than the
current standard. However, for all its virtues, this is NOT the
current standard.
When it comes to selling manuscripts to publishers, ya gotta
remember you are selling something, and what the buyer wants and
expects in the matter of format is what you have to send in. Just
as at McDonald's -- if the customer wants cheeseburger with no
onions, that's what he gets; and no end of arguing how good
onions taste will make him happy. Similarly, an editor with far
too many manuscripts coming in every day will reject without
reading any and all material that's too far from the current
standard format. So: 12-point monospaced type,
double-line-spacing (24-point line-spacing), 5-space paragraph
indents, ragged right margins, no end-of-line hyphenation (except
for words with a hard hyphen, like mother-in-law), usual margins,
page number and manuscript ident in top right corner of every
page. Name and address in upper left corner of first page (do
make it easy for the publisher to send money!); "THE END"
centered at the end of text on the last page, and do NOT put
"(more}" or "(continued)" on intermediate pages unless you are
working for a newspaper that wants such notations.

George H Scithers
editor, lit'ry agent, publisher, & typesetter