Hello all, I'm not sure if this even goes in the Word Mechanics forum but I didn't see a great place to ask. When I write, I always stick to the same format: single space, blank line in between paragraphs, no indentation for new paragraphs. I'm going to enter some of my writing in a contest, and the directions say to submit it double spaced. The work I'm submitting is action-orientated, so there are quite a few short paragraphs as well as single lines of dialogue between the characters. What I'm struggling with is what is the proper way to double space writing? If I use my editor and just change it to double-space, then I end up with double-spaced lines between each paragraph and that doesn't seem right. However, if I take them out then it's impossible to tell where one paragraph ends and another begins, and indenting it doesn't seem to be the answer due to multiple short dialogue parts. What is the proper way to format a double-spaced submission?
One of our forum contests? If so, the way you just formatted your post is perfect. If you mean a double spaced format for an industry submission, you just set your word processor's functions to double-space. We always had to do that in school so the teacher had room to edit/comment between the lines as she graded.
The generally accepted format for manuscripts is double spaced, with the first line of new paragraphs indented. No double-double spaces between paragraphs.
Indenting short lines of dialogue is totally fine. They're paragraphs like any other, even if they are dinky.
You should not have a blank line after a paragraph, unless you are changing POV, time or location. Then insert a blank line, with a POV marker such as "***(" if you like)
And all paragraphs should be indented 0.5 in on the first line. Standard formatting. Set up your Normal style, or whatever your default style is, in Word to match the standard. And rather than rework all your paragraphs, put your cursor on it and see what style it is. Then right click that style, select Modify, and format paragraph for first line indent 0.5 in, line spacing double, no preceding or following points. Then Select ALL, point to the text style you just modified, and bingo, job done, no matter how long the text was. Then select Replace, ^p^p with ^p, replace all, and all your double paragraph lines will go away.
I never indent paragraphs. I always use an extra space in between them instead of indenting. As a working professional, I can say this is more than fine in terms of formatting submissions. I do double space the whole document which is easy enough to do. If your document is single spaced, you can just select all and then reformat it to double spaced. But as for indenting paragraphs it's totally up to you. I do know from working in publishing that some of the programs used will automatically change the extra space in between paragraphs to indenting the first line. If you submit something with indentations rather than skipped lines, the editor will have to go through and change it as to not have double indentations for each paragraph.
