Nathan Bransford - The Forums

i need to know the rules for formatting my manuscript. like: is times new roman acceptable? what should be on the title page? if you end a chapter do you go to a new page for another one and, if so, how far down a page do you start? any help would be greatly appreciated.

i also posted my first blog about my writing and it can be found at http://anewwriterhere.blogspot.com

Vonda N. McIntyre offers a crash course in Standard Manuscript Format at http://vondanmcintyre.com/Mssprep.pdf

If a house, agent, or publisher accepts paper submissions or preformatted digital submissions, it's a best practice to check their submission guidelines for what typeface they prefer, and what other deviations from SMF they require. A main variant is some proportional publication type typeface, like Times New Roman, instead of a monospaced typeface like New Courier.

Editing on paper in preparation for publication is tedious and eyestraining in Times New Roman. The Times Roman type families were designed for newspaper publication, where space is at a premium. Time Roman glyphs pinch into less overall space than a more luxuriously spaced Old Style publication format typeface family like Goudy or Caslon. The Courier family for its wide open monospace kerning and spacing is least eyestraining for editing and proofreading, digital or paper. And Courier allows for more markup space interlinearly than any proportional typeface family. Pain in my backside to accurately mark an apostrophe insertion above a word missing the possessive or contraction punctuation mark. But fashions will change. Times New Roman is gaining preference ground over other typefaces, if it's not already in the vanguard already.