Hi, Bad new I'm afraid. Undo all the paragraphs you've indented by hitting the space bar five times. Many programs will not accept this. Kindle and CreateSpace for a start. They'll simply remove the extra spaces and you'll end up with a wall of text. Use the first line indent in the paragraph format as the others have said. As to which form of paragraph separation you use, it's a choice - but not necessarily yours. Your readers to an extent and those you submit your work to will probably have their own ideas of what they want to see. Personally coming from a science background I like block text - the spare line between paragraphs. It feels natural to me, but would look extreme in a double spaced document. However most fictional works prefer no line between paragraphs and a first line indent instead. Currently I'm using both - a line and a small indent, and it looks extremely good even if it uses a bit of extra paper and I've had no complaints so far. Aunti Amy picked it up and thought it was a mistake. But I e-mailed back saying that I thought it looked really good and asking if they really wanted me to change it. That was three weeks ago and have heard nothing back so far. Smashwords' conversion program simply won't accept it though. They say one or the other. Cheers, Greg.
I think almost anywhere will ask for one or the other. Generally printed matter has indents and online matter has line breaks - as this is what people are used to seeing in each case, and therefore makes it easier to read. I'd find a book with both really distracting and difficult to read, even if it did look aesthetically quite good. My brain's just not used to seeing it.
for mss to be submitted to print publishers, the mandated format is with indents and no space between paragraphs unless a line break is needed... when you need to have a line break, place a single # in the center of the line and leave none blank other than between chapters... for mss you will submit for online publication, no indents and line breaks between all paragraphs is the norm... it's not a matter of personal choice, but of what publishers require... not following standard format will only result in you being perceived to be a clueless amateur...
Well, I am glad I asked this now, rather than later. Fixing the five spaces is without a doubt a chore. But the good news is, I tried selecting the entire manuscript to change the indents all at once and it worked wonderfully. All I have to do now is get rid of these pesky five spaces. Oh and 1 inch margins is the desired format correct? Which I am pretty sure is the default anyways?
Refer to William Shunn's page. He answers all questions, and provides examples of formatting for short stories and novels. I've checked some publisher's guidelines online, and even they just refer to Shunn's page.
TLK here, hijacking the thread. In a polite manner, of course. On the subject of indentation, what's wrong with simply hitting "Tab" once, every time you want to start a new paragraph? Is it too much of an indentation?
it's not always too little... depends on what font you're using... but for submitting your ms electronically, it's best to use the formatted indent, as that will be retained as is, while indents 'by hand' may be a problem... or so i've been told...
Yeah, my manual indents always turned out wonky when I put my work on my Kindle to read it. Now with it being formatted and automated it looks perfect.
The tab rulers are adjustable, and can be local to a section. Once you start getting multiple tab rulers scattered through your document, your formatting problems turn into a living nightmare. I've even gone to the extreme of converting a document to text and re-entering it into a new document to get around tab ruler problems )generally from a document I've inherited from someone else and have had to maintain).
Once I'd learnt how to use styles in Word, I've never gone back. Styles allow me to control aspects of paragraphs (such as indents), fonts, tabs, etc, all from within each individual style. Word does styles automatically to some degree but I've never been happy with the jumble it comes up with so I always set up the styles manually. Once the styles are set up, it's possible to create a template file with them (as Cogito mentioned) and then re-use it as required.
Everyone, sorry for being redundant--but seriously, thank you for the tips in this thread. My life is so much easier for it.
