Navigation:  Formatting & Style > Guidelines for Computer Use

Basic Format

 

1. If your book is in one file, insert section breaks between chapters.

 

2. Number pages consecutively throughout the entire book. Rather than assigning a "start as" number to the beginning of each section, et your computer "continue [pagination] from previous section."

 

3. Do not "justify" paragraphs.

 

4. Keep the format of your book simple. We just need to be able to distinguish elements in your text, such as extracts and levels of headings.

 

5. Indent block quotations as whole paragraphs. Do not indent each line by means of the tab key.

 

6. If you need to center material manually, use the "centered" command for your word processing program.

 

7. To create footnotes or endnotes, see the "Notes" section, above.

 

Spacing and Breaks

 

1. Use the space bar only for spaces between words, not to indent or center material or to line up lists or charts. Always begin each new line with no spaces.

 

2. Use one space following a period, not two.

 

3. Do not press "Enter" (or "Return") at the end of each line of text within a paragraph. Let your word processor automatically wrap the lines for you. But in numbered lists or in poetry, press "Enter" to start a new line.

 

4. If you do not use a text style that automatically includes paragraph indentation, use one tab at the beginning of each new paragraph. Avoid using multiple tabs.

 

5. Within a chapter, do not insert page breaks that force the word processor to begin on a new page. The page breaks in your manuscript will not correspond to the ones in the final version.

 

Subheadings

 

1. When you use subheads to break up chapters and reflect their organization, do not type them in "all caps." Avoid "all caps" for chapter titles as well.

 

2. To distinguish different levels of subheads, you may use the default heading styles in your word processing software. Or you may center the first level of heads (with a space above and below), type the second level flush left (also with space above and below), and type the third level in italics, followed by a period, at the beginning of a paragraph. Larger point sizes for the first two levels also help to set them off visually.

 

 

 

 

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