Manuscript Format Manuscript Format Here are some basic rules for formatting manuscripts and how to avoid the most common mistakes.
Competition is one reason, and wanting to be published is another.
There are enough people submitting novels that provide both an interesting story and a professional manuscript that there's not much incentive for publishers to look to writers who haven't yet worked hard enough to provide both components. Seeing small errors in early pages of a manuscript makes it easy to put down the manuscript and see if the next one in the stack is ready for prime time. The most basic homework includes knowing fundamental formatting and avoiding the most frequent wordsmithing errors. In other words, if you were learning writing from a book ordered from easy to hard, grammar and spelling would be in chapter one, while plot, character, and setting would be somewhere later on in the book. Don't give an editor the first impression that you're still working on the chapter-one fundamentals.