Tag: Blog

By Gabrielle Aleman

Have you ever written something amazing, only for it to be ignored? It might not be your
writing—it might be your formatting. Proper formatting can elevate your work in different ways-
organization, readability, presentation, and more. You could have the best story ever written for a
magazine, but if it isn’t properly formatted it might as well have been written by the average high
schooler.

A common misconception about formatting is that it’s “simple” or “easy”, when in fact
there is a multitude of ways to format text and a multitude of ways to mess them up. When
editors are receiving countless submissions, the easiest way to become favorable is by submitting
a well-formatted document. By meeting industry standards, it shows professionalism and
attention to detail, prevents your work from being dismissed, and creates less work for the editor.
This discussion will focus on several key formatting elements to guide writers through the
submission-ready process.

Standard Formatting Guidelines

Most editors and publishers follow standard industry guidelines when reviewing submissions. Author Brian Klems discusses some of the guidelines followed when editing work. He pinpoints those rules from “Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript” by Chuck Sambuchino.
Here are some essential formatting elements to keep in mind:

Font style, size, and color

Try to stay with readable and professional font style. The font should stay one size throughout the work (unless necessary for headings) and should only be black. It’s best to keep the font uniform and simple to avoid any distractions, making it difficult to read. According to Klems, it’s most appropriate to use “a standard font, 12-point type. Times New Roman, Arial, or Courier is fine”.

Spacing and margins

To make passages easier to read it’s essential to avoid a condensed word and line spacing and instead use a more relaxed spacing. Double-spacing is most preferred, as this best allows a more
comfortable read and creates annotations within phrases. To add, Klems states the correct way to separate paragraphs is to “Indent five spaces”. The one-inch margin is also typical as it looks most professional and gives even more space for editors to jot down notes.

Body structure

Klem’s analysis of Chuck Sambuchino’s “Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript” mainly discusses the structure and how to organize paragraphs and chapters for submissions. Assuming the work being submitted is physical and not digitized, it’s emphasized that new chapters should begin on their own page, and the chapter number and title should be capitalized. The title should be 4-6 lines ahead of the beginning of the new chapter, which should start further down the page, typically one-third of the way down. This is to ensure organization and clarify the chapter’s beginning and place in the story.

Final Product

To keep the work looking as official and professional as possible, you should follow guidelines to format the page as well as the body. Keeping headers and page numbers on each page will add to the look and professionalism of the document. Page numbers should begin on page 2, and headers should have the title in all caps and the name of the author.

Time to Submit

Following the submission guidelines of whichever publisher you’re submitting work to and ensuring formatting is correct is going to improve the chances of your work being chosen for editing and publishing. Author and editor Brian Klems provides great information on keeping a clean, organized, well formatted submission – especially since he speaks from experience.

Work Cited : What Are the Guidelines for Formatting a Manuscript? – Writer’s Digest

By Kaitlyn Lange

Imagine you’re 6 years old, and this world is yours.  Pieces of chalk litter the sidewalk, and your friend’s laugh echoes across the neighborhood.  Everything is perfect. You’re chasing your dog down the street when your foot suddenly catches, and you end up sprawled out in the gravel.  You’re in pain, so you begin to cry. Emotions flow freely and nothing has made you question the connection between your feelings and reactions; if you feel something, you feel it with no remorse.  Now, you’re in middle school submitting your first ever 5 paragraph essay.  Your topic is picked by the teacher, and there’s a strict set of guidelines that follow. Your class pumps out 15 essays written by 15 different individuals that all sound a bit too similar.  Cramming for the word count, you pick and choose what adjectives make the cut.  Suddenly, your paper lacks your “style” and simply follows the teacher’s criteria, as it will for the next 6 years of your life. 

As adults with more creative freedom, this is our chance to take back our writing.  However, this is also when it becomes scary.  When is too much, too much? And when is too little, too little? 

In a 2006 TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson said, “We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather we get educated out of it”, and Peter Smagorinsky, from the University of Georgia, submitted to Writers Who Care, “…emotions are foundational to writing, and I’d add, to living life. You’d never know it, however, from the ways in which schools view writing as a form of “cold cognition”: purely analytic reasoning, unadulterated by underlying feelings, which are believed in the context of school to be illogical and inappropriate. The analysis of the most moving of literature must itself be dry as a bone, with students often forbidden from using “I” to express their interpretations, as if their papers are written by an “objective” observer….who doesn’t care at all.”

Following the thoughts of these two men, write what you feel needs to be said, and make it yours.  Submit that poem you have been worried about others seeing, and include your frivolous adjectives.  If it feels like too much, step back and review it, and if it feels like too little, then add to it.  Just write for yourself, and if it does not make the cut, at least you can be content knowing you stayed true to yourself instead of spitting out a piece that one universal system has tried to convince you feels like you. 

Jonathan Lallement

A lesson is something learned, it is what we take away from an experience, sometimes you have to live it, sometimes you have to see it and sometimes you can just read it. 

The beauty of reading is you gain experience in a way that describes even the smallest detail whereas modern day technology such as Television, movies and, audio versions don’t explain every detail the way words can. Reading shows a lesson in this way, when you read a story that has been turned into a show or a movie you often feel that it has lost a lot of substance and you are getting the summary that’s on the back of the book. The substance of a story in comparison to a Hollywood version can sometimes feel draining but the knowledge held between pages is much more “appetizing” than held between film. This knowledge adds to an experience that you do not have to live or even see, just imagine. The imagination of someone is so powerful that reading can create more of a level of sympathy, empathy and, understanding of the concepts of a story. We as readers get to go inside someone’s brain and see events; fictional or otherwise, as our own. 

This isn’t only for fiction stories though, when you read the news you get to see every detail of a story and every piece of bias shown. In an article writers often use certain words to show their bias and that creates a unity of sympathy between the reader and writer that should be embraced and not discarded. Nonfiction, which should not be biased, shows us events how they happened and why they happened which is like time traveling. Nonfiction and the lesson you learn should be linked with the quote  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. Stories always have a lesson to learn and with fiction it is about building a concept of the world happening between the lines and taking what happens to the characters and applying it to a life that is felt and not read because even in a Sci-Fi novel we have emotional and logical connections that we can learn and apply. In a news article we can build a connection with the Journalist writing and be sympathetic of what is happening right now but we need the understanding of the past in nonfiction to correctly understand what is going on. These are broad lessons of reading but with these lessons a reader can search for the knowledge to carry onward into their life.