Twilight Times Books

Additional Guidelines for Submissions

 

When we are open to submissions, you may submit your manuscript in the formatting style with which you are most comfortable. However, if your book is accepted for publication, then we will need for you to re-format your book to the following specifications.

 

House Style

  Formatting requirements for Authors

Title should be in 24-point type and centered.

Author's name should be ten lines below the title 18-point type and centered.

Chapter Headings should be in 14-point type, bold and centered.

Body text should be Times New 12-point type and single-spaced. Only one space between sentences, not two spaces.

Do not create a table of contents.

Set margins to 1.25 inches - top, bottom, left and right.

Do not use five spaces for indentation - this causes uneven lines when the text is formatted to full justification. If you use tabs in some chapters and five spaces in others, then this also causes uneven lines when the text is formatted to full justification.

Tabs should be set at .3 and not .5. Please ensure that your tabs are consistent throughout.

Do not use indent. The indent option will throw the asterisks separating scenes and the chapter headings off center.

Paragraph format - select first line indention, single spacing, left justification.

No line breaks between paragraphs. No blank lines between paragraphs.

Insert a hard page break at the end of the text on the last page of each chapter, before the beginning of the next chapter.

No headers/footers, no page numbers and no hidden values.

Denote scene breaks with a triple asterisk, centered on page.

In general, a double-dash is preferred to an em-dash (required for Fictionwise).

Some of our books have spaces around the double-dashes so feel free to keep the spaces around the double-dash for now.

Instead of an ellipsis (or em-dash) at the end of a sentence in quotes, I prefer ellipsis followed by a period, even if it is not a complete sentence. No spaces within the ellipsis marks. More tips on the use of an ellipsis.
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/perEllip.html

Use plain text for thoughts when a tag is used.
Example: I am working on a million-dollar best seller, he thought.

Do not place quotation marks around thoughts. For direct thoughts without a tag, use Italic type, not underlines.
Example: I wonder who will buy the movie rights to my new book.

Use hyphenation sparingly. Better yet, try to avoid using it at all.

 


More tips on the use of an ellipsis:

At the end of the sentence, use an ellipsis with no space before the period.
Example: "See you..." should be: "See you...." or even better "See you."

But no period after an ellipsis that delineates an interrupted thought:
"But surely not! It couldn't be possible... And yet, as he"

"Well, I'd better be getting back I suppose. Um ... " should be:
"Well, I'd better be getting back I suppose. Um..."

Do not put an extra space before a closed quote. Most pre-press layout software programs will insert an open quote instead of a close quote.
"Well, I'd better be getting back I suppose. Um... "

As to an ellipsis mid-sentence, use one space after the ellipsis only.
Example: "He'd been expecting ...well, he didn't know what"

should be:
"He'd been expecting... well, he didn't know what"

"But I got sort of... diverted."

"It was as if... he'd been taken away." would also be correct usage.

 

Short article on the use of the ellipsis, including the differences between MLA, Chicago Manual of Style, and the APA Publication Manual.
http://ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/ellipsis.htm

 

Additional References:

SF writer Robert Sawyer shares his thoughts about copy edits.
http://www.sfwriter.com/copyedit.htm

Definitions of the different editors.
http://www.fonerbooks.com/editor.htm

Guide to grammar and style - house style
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/h.html

Interesting author complaint. "There were numerous copy edits that subtly changed both meaning and intent."
http://www.humanscapeindia.net/humanscape/hs0201/hs020112.html

 


 

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This page last updated 01-03-09.

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