WandaCKeesey

Formatting for E-Publishers
By Wanda C. Keesey

You've written a story/novel. You've followed all the conventional formatting instructions while you put your words in print.

The manuscript is ready for most conventional print markets: Double spaced, one sided page, headers with numbered pages, three asterisk centered to mark a white space, word(s) to be bolded marked with an underline before and one after the selected word(s), word(s) to be italicized are underlined, you've dutifully tabbed in three to five spaces at the beginning of each paragraph (or set the auto tab on forced return at the end of a paragraph), and you've carefully left two spaces at the end of all sentences.

But what's this? This e-zine wants single spacing, no header or page numbers, no tabs, one space between sentences, double space between paragraphs, no underlining for italics and no bold notations, white spaces at the left margin (sometimes this isn't mentioned and not necessary to change). No publisher asks that you print on two sides a sheet of paper, so that one remains.

First, I've never seen a publisher who WANTS bolded text in a manuscript. As a matter of fact, many say "no bolding". Therefore, I would suggest that you use all caps to stress a word, rather than bolding it. This also solves a problem because I haven't yet found an easy way to change form the mark to the bold text. All you can do is remove the underline all together and that will happen when you change your italicized words.

As to the rest: Its merely a matter of using the Replace option in Edit, or removing formatting.

I suggest that you first eliminate the header/page number; double click on any page header and highlight, then delete the information and close the toolbar. All pages will be clear of the information. Next, highlight your document (CTRL A) and select FORMAT from the menu bar, and go to PARAGRAPH settings. Under "spacing" you will see a drop down menu for the number of lines between lines (Note that I have seen a publisher who wants 1.5 lines spacing, this too is available at this point).

Now your document is all jammed together with tabs. If you've used the auto tab at the end of the paragraphs, it is a simple matter of removing that setting on the FORMAT/PARAGRAPH page under indentation/special before removing the highlight of the overall document.

Now you need to separate those paragraphs. Open the REPLACE box under EDIT on the menu bar. Select the "more" button, and select Special after setting your cursor in the "find what:" box. What you want to find is the Paragraph Mark (first on the list), select this. Now move to the "Replace with:" and select the Paragraph Mark twice. Now select "replace All". You will receive a report that on how many paragraphs have been realigned. BUT you will have to scan your document to make sure that you don't have any stray tabs. Just highlight the document and select FORMAT/TABS and clear all tabs. (Note: that if you've put a manual tabulation in after each hard return, you can add this to the Paragraph Mark, "Tab Character" and it too will be eliminated.)

Two more problems to go. First the underlined words. These are usually internal thought and need to be italicized. To accomplish this we need to again refer to EDIT/REPLACE. If you still have something in the boxes, delete this information. In the top box (find what:) simple select CTRL U, a notation will appear under the box: Format: Underline. Now go to the next box (Replace with:) and select CTRL I the Format note will be Font: Italic. Select "replace all". You will see that you now have underlined, BUT italicized words and phrases. Again highlight your entire document, CTRL A, and now select the underling option on the toolbar, or CTRL U, you will see that all is underlined, now repeat this and you will remove all the underlines.

Nearly done, now remove that extra space after your sentences. All you need to do is use that handy EDIT/REPLACE (remove the formatting change by selecting each box in turn, and click on "no Formating") In the "find what:" box, hit the space bar twice. In the "replace with:" box hit the space bar once. Now "replace all". Done.

If you want to eliminate the centering, or extra tabs that put the white space asterisks at or near the center of the page, simply eliminate the "Tab Character" (using the REPLACE option) and don't replace it with anything (make sure that you delete the space you put in) or if they are centered, highlight the document and select the left justified icon on the toolbar.

Now save your document as a Rich Text Format. I find this to be the safer option though many will accept Micro Soft Word's document (.doc) formatting; some will also accept "Plain Text" (.txt).

Please let me know if you have any questions.