Though it might look cool and impressive to you, most publishers don’t like fancy fonts, spaces between paragraphs, extra wide margins or fancy header/footer or chapter sections.
If you cannot find specific instructions from the publisher, best to go with the general industry standard:
Double spaced
One inch margins
Times New Roman 12 font
Paragraphs beginning .5 indent in
Each chapter beginning on a new page
Most important: Use your computer program to format!
When you use the Tab key to indent every single paragraph or space down to a new page after the end of each chapter, it can be a nightmare to fix everything for publication formatting purposes. Most programs have a Help section, or simply Google instructions to format per your specific program.
One more good tip...make sure the partial and or full manuscript is all in one file. The only thing worse than getting a partial submission with each of the three chapters (and sometimes prologue) in three or four different files attached to an email, is fifteen or more chapters of a full manuscript in fifteen or more individual files attached to an email.
So once again, I repeat one of my favorite writing tips: Do your homework...both in learning your program's formatting features AND publisher requirements.
©bystacydawn 2018
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