Editing Guidelines #
I put these rules together as a sort of checklist for writers to go through before submitting a story to me—as well as for me to go through on my end to make sure everything is formatted right for the publisher.
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One-inch margins on all sides. If you’re using a header and/or footer, those should be a half-inch from the edge.
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Use Times New Roman size 12 throughout the document.
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Line spacing should be double, with no extra spacing added before or after paragraphs.
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Use regular left alignment, not justified.
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Each paragraph should start with a half-inch indentation on the first line. Make this happen through your paragraph settings, not with actual tab characters or spaces.
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The first paragraph after a heading or section break should have no indentation. Also make sure your headings, section breaks, etc. don’t include any indentation.
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A section break should be a single centered hash mark with a blank line (unindented) before and after. Also include one of these at the end of the document (without a final blank line).
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Just include a single space between sentences, not two.
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No trailing spaces at the end of lines please.
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For ellipses, the sequence “. . .” is preferred over the triple-dot character or three periods in sequence. Include spaces before and after the ellipsis as needed (i.e., in most cases, but not at the start or end of a paragraph or quote). (Before publication, the spaces should become non-breaking to keep these sequences from breaking across multiple lines, but the publisher can handle that.)
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For dashes, use an actual em-dash character (not a hyphen, double-hyphen, or en-dash) with no spaces around it.
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Use curly quotes and apostrophes. Base-level quotations should use double-quotes, and embedded quotations should use single-quotes.
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I hate to say it because I personally prefer the “logical quote style,” but keep final commas and periods inside the quote even if they don’t logically belong there. It’s just convention.
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Bold should be reserved for headings and rare occasions when special formatting is needed. Avoid it in regular paragraph text if possible.
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Don’t use caps or underlining for emphasis, just italics.
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If you have a word in a sentence that’s italicized, don’t also italicize the adjoining punctuation. However, if the entire sentence is italicized (as for a thought), then the punctuation should be included.
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Use the “Oxford comma” for sequences of three or more.
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Spell out the word “okay” instead of using the “OK” form. Both are in common use, but the former spelling is more convenient when the word is used as a verb, so it’s my preference.
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As a general rule, spell out all numbers up to a hundred, as well as any conveniently round numbers. However, consistency is key, so avoid mixing spelled-out numbers with numerals when you have two or more numbers in a list or parallel structure. Numerals can be used for both in this case. There are lots of rules on this topic, but this is the broad sweep.
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For initials in a name like “C. S. Lewis,” use periods and spaces between the initials. (This should really be a non-breaking thin space, but we can probably leave that up to the publisher.)
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Don’t forget to run a simple spelling/grammar check in your editor. Never follow the suggestions blindly, but they’re usually helpful. Try to stick to American spelling conventions.
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For anything not covered here, refer to William Shunn’s Modern Manuscript Format.