I'm busy banging in the last twenty pages of my manuscript and I got to thinking about formatting. I tend to work in Garamond, a nice, under-stated font, that is pretty small, and won't eat up a lot of paper. And with maybe twenty pages of hand-written text still to type in, I'll end up with around three hundred pages of manuscript with Garamond.
Looking around, though, I see that most people suggest that a manuscript be in a non-proportional font like Courier, at 12-point. 12-point? Really. So I go back and reformat what I have in the system and it adds nearly a hundred pages to my text. And it looks hideous. It looks like I'm some neanderthal working a century or so in the past. Even my old Brother electric typewriter didn't use a 12-point font. With this format there are only ten to twelve words a line. It makes every sentence look extremely declarative.
I'm reluctant to do it, though it looks like I'm going to end up with a whopper of a stack of paper when I print this thing out.
I'm just one editor, but I did spend twenty years acquiring books for literary presses. I have trouble reading courier. I preferred to receive submissions in a legible proportional typeface (as long as the paragraphs aren't justified). In my own writing I usually use Bembo at 11 points.
ReplyDeleteIt might not be a bad idea to inquire with the publisher (or agent) first.