5 Mandates for Preparing a Manuscript

Got yourself a book deal, eh? Excellent! Here are a few tips you'll need to keep in mind as you prepare your work for an editor. Well, I call them tips, but really, they're mandates.

Do 'em.

Mandate #1 No underlining!

You know that little underline icon  on your toolbar? (Alternately, you know that Control/Command-U keystroke?)

Ignore it. Don't click it. Don't touch it. Make like it never even existed.

That's right, the underline doesn't exist. If you want to underline a heading, book title, or pretty much anything else in your manuscript, use that little italics icon  instead. (Alternately, that Control/Command-I keystroke.)

The underline was used a long time ago, back in ye olde typewriter days, to indicate italics. Nowadays we've actually GOT italics, so use them.

Mandate #2 Stop making things look pretty on the page!

Your job as author is to present clinical content. Our job is to make that content look pretty on the page.

So don't be mucking things up with tabs in the middle of sentences and multiple spaces after a bullet so the text lines up on your screen. The reader won't be seeing your screen, number one, and number two, your editor will have to strip all of that extraneous garbage out of the manuscript. So don't put it in to begin with.

Mandate #3 No All-Cap Headings!

Please don't make your chapter title or any headings all capital letters. I know that all-cap headings are common but they're not universal.

Far better to use title case, which we can always and easily make into all caps if needed. But it's a huge pain to go the other way, from all caps, typed in on a keyboard, to title case.

So do everyone a favor: Use title case for all headings.

Mandate #4 Pay attention to heading levels!

If all of your headings are Times New Roman 12pt Bold, how will your editor be able to tell which headings are main headings and which are lower level headings?

There are several different ways of formatting head levels but I recommend the following:

Bold and Centered for the Chapter Title

Bold and flush-left for first-level headings

Italics and flush-left for second-level headings

Roman (not bold, not italics) for third-level headings

NOTE: Always check your publisher's author guidelines, though, for specific instructions.

Mandate #5 No more double spaces after a sentence!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Stop using two spaces between sentences.

Doing so is a leftover of the typewriter. It's archaic and insanely annoying. Plus, someone later has to delete them all anyway, so why put them in?

I'll bet you've got some mandates of your own. Let's hear 'em!

Let Designers Design

I try very hard to let authors author and designers design.

Seems rather simple, doesn't it?

But you would be surprised how many times in textbook publishing authors or even editors try to become designers, and it just doesn't work.

Years ago editors at my company actually designed the interior of books, and I must tell you, those designs were almost universally horrendous. Editors and the vast majority of authors are word people. They're linear, they think in words, phrases, and sentences. They tend to be not very good at colors, shapes, white space, and the like. Those elements belong more rightly with designers, those glorious, right-brained picture people.

I believe publishers like me should let authors and designers do what they do best.

For instance, I never tell an author what the dosage of a particular drug should be or which ICD-9-CM code should be used for a particular disease. They're the authors, they're supposed to know that clinical stuff. The only time I step in is when I know a piece of information is wrong, and even then I typically ask the author to check it and make sure I'm correct in a suggested edit.

I never tell a designer which colors to use for a cover or an interior design unless I want to make sure we don't select a color palette that's too close to the palette of a competing text.

I never tell designers what font to use for a heading or how big to make it unless the color or size impinges on the reader's ability to discern content hierarchy. Subheads should look subservient to main heads, and if they don't, there's a problem. Even then I don't specify what to do, I just tell them that, say, head 2s need to be more pronounced visually than head 3s.

I steer the overall vision for the book and the basic design to make sure they're meeting market needs but I try never to get into things so deeply that I become an author or a designer. Believe me, no one wants that.