Bedford Writers Guild

GENERIC SUBMISSION GUIDELINES v1.0

Individual publishers and editors have their own unique guidelines for submissions. Whenever available, read and conform to their guidelines. The following are only general guidelines. Unfortunately, I am still using Word 2003, so some of the short cuts and menu options that I outline here may not be applicable in more recent editions of Word. I will update future versions of this document to account for any changes. MARGINS Set your margins to 1 all around by pressing CTRL-A to select your entire document then go to File in the menu, and select Page Setup. Under Margins, set Top, Right, Left, and Bottom to 1. Dont worry about the settings for Gutter. This is a publishing feature. While there, select the Layout tab and check the box for Different First Page under the Header and Footers header, which leads us to . . . FIRST PAGE AND RUNNING HEADERS Select View from the menu, and then Head and Footer. Your first page header will include the following information: YOUR NAME PHYSICAL MAILING ADDRESS EMAIL ADDRESS TELEPHONE NUMBER WORD COUNT (i.e. 600 WORDS)

Use your real name, as it would appear on a banking statement. You can discuss pseudonyms after the story has been accepted. Many writers will round up the word count to the nearest 100, but it is just fine to use the amount given by the Word Count utility in your Tool menu. It is easy for manuscript pages to be misplaced or for the pages to end up out of order. Therefore, each successive page will include the following text ALIGNED TO THE RIGHT: YOUR NAME / TITLE / PAGE NUMBER For longer titles, use only two or three distinctive words in the header. For example, I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream would just be MUST SCREAM. The page number is inserted using the Insert Page Number option in the Header and Footer pop-up menu, or by selecting Insert from the menu and then Page Number. TITLE

Your title is in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, and is followed by your name on the next line. For a novel, this is its own page, and the title is aligned to the center. For a short story, this is part of the first page of the manuscript, and the title is aligned to the center or left. Put your title between 3.5 to halfway down on the page. FONT Use 12 Point COURIER NEW for your document (including your headers). This is a default font that closely resembles a typewriter font, which was considered by many editors to be easy to read and easy to eyeball when determining formatting and manuscript length. Individual publications will have their own preferences, and an increasing number prefer other fonts like Arial or Times New Roman, but Courier New is the safest choice. Never use WACKY, ZANY FONTS. UNDERLINE in place of ITALICS. Do not use BOLD unless you REALLY, REALLY must. Generally, CAPITAL LETTERS express emphatic sentiments. HOT KEYS IN WORD CTRL-B for Bold CTRL-I for Italics CTRL-U to Underline SENTENCES Your first sentence begins two lines down from your byline. You only need to put a single space between sentences. This is also standard for journalism. Do not Justify the margins for your text. Write hyphens with a double dash -- and do not let your computer autoformat this. PARAGRAPH New paragraphs are indicated by an indent. Using the tab key is fine. Do not put a space between paragraphs. Double space your document by going to Format in the menu and selecting Paragraph. Under Line Spacing, select Double. This formatting will yield pages with a 250 to 300 word count each. SCENE BREAKS Indicate breaks between scenes or chapters like this: ### The new scene begins. Word will sometimes try to autoformat this into a long line. You can undo this with Ctrl-Z HOT KEYS IN WORD CTRL-Z to Undo

 After the last line of the story, center the word: END SPELLCHECK

CTRL-Y to Redo (perform last function again) CTRL-C to Copy CTRL- X to Cut CTRL-V to Paste

Word features an excellent spellchecker, which can be accessed by pressing F7 or by selecting it from the Tool menu. This will catch many of your mistakes as you make them by underlining them in red for spelling error or green for grammatical. However, do not be wholly dependant on the software. Carefully check your work for spelling errors and grammar yourself. In particular, look for instances where the misspelling is still a real word or where the misspelling has been substituted with the wrong word. For example, if you typed She grabbed the gnu from his hands, Word assumes that your heroine is now holding a large antelope and will not correct it. Like the Commodores song, check your spelling once, twice, three times the lady. PRINTING Print single-sided using only black ink on white paper. When printing, my personal preference is to go into the Properties menu, select Color, and set my printer to print grayscale with black ink only. This is only important in that it saves you a little money, as most printers use some color ink when printing black & white. Not important at all if you arent a cheapskate like me. Do not staple your manuscript. Use a plain paperclip to hold the pages together.

For another good resource consult: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html Prior to the last buyout, Weird Tales posted the following submission guidelines, which numerous other publications linked to. They were perhaps the most thorough and insightful guidelines ever posted for aspiring authors, covering both style and formatting: http://www.internet-resources.com/stash/weirdtales-1.html