Here's an interesting tidbit many of you may not know: every publisher has a slightly different "style manual" that is intended to guide a writer. Now, for the most part, a style manual is a style manual is a style manual. But there are interesting differences that often drive me nuts!
For example, the latest book that I finished writing (to be entitled $5 Youth Ministry) involved reformatting the entire manuscript. Not a large job, really, just a tedious one. I had to change my indentions for each paragraph (that's each paragraph in the entire book, folks!) and recreate the manuscript in a block-style presentation. I also had to remove italics, bold, asterisks, etc. throughout.
Other publishers want certain idiosyncrasies such as margins, headers, footers, and page numbering to correspond to their respective style manuals. As you might imagine, it can all be very dizzying and confusing. Do I space one (1) space after a period or (2) two? Do I have to go back through the entire manuscript and put an extra space after each line or paragraph? Can I do this without going stark-raving mad?
Heck, folks, I just want to write (and write the way that Mrs. Pohlman taught me to type in 10th grade, when I was the only boy in an ocean of girls and got a D- in the art of hunt-and-peck). Heck, I just want to produce a manuscript without having to stop after every period, comma, asterisk, footnote and letter to ask: "Which style manual am I supposed to be following?"
2 comments:
Just hire a copy editor for the formating. They are usually retired schoolteachers and such that do the formatting, syntax editing, spell correction, and other such stuff for relatively inexpensive rates.
When I wrote my book, I made the mistake of doing all the hard work. I needed to do it three times because the publisher changed the rules several times at different stages in its production
I feel your pain, brother! Great idea!
Post a Comment