A subtle way to polish up your finished manuscript before
sending it to a publisher is to do a few quick “find and replace” runs. There are a lot of little formatting errors
that crop up in a manuscript while you’re working—some are simple mis-types, some
are the result of editing, and others can be the consequence of opening a
document in multiple programs (Microsoft Word and Google Docs, for instance).
Most of them can be easily fixed en masse.
Open the “Find and Replace” window by hitting Ctrl+H in Microsoft Word or Google Docs
(command+shift+f and command+shift+h in their respective Mac
versions). If you’ve never used “find and replace” before, it’s simple—whatever
combination of characters you type in the first text box will be replaced by
the combination of characters you put in the second text box. You can change
each instance one at a time or all of them en masse.
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A note of caution: it is very easy to create new errors with
the mass “Replace All” option. For instance, say you’ve written a scene where
one of the characters is using a pen. You decide afterward that you want them
to be writing with a pencil instead, so you do a “Replace All” to replace the
word pen with pencil. Unfortunately, the “Replace All” option has now substituted
pencil for every instance of the letters pen.
Open had now become opencil, pensive is now pencilsive,
and so forth. So use this carefully.
Here are a few easy clean-ups that you can use to make your
manuscript more presentable:
Find: Replace
with:
Repeated spaces ([space][space]) Single space
If you need an indent, use paragraph formatting or tabs. Repeat
this replacement until you get 0 results.
Find: Replace with:
Repeated paragraph
breaks (^p^p) Single paragraph break (^p)
Most “Find and Replace” features recognize a “carat p” (^p)
as a formula representing a paragraph break. If you need space between
paragraphs use the “add space after” feature in paragraph formatting. Repeat
this replacement until you get 0 results.
Find:
Replace
with:
Space at beginning of paragraph (^p[space]) Paragraph break (^p)
Or if you used tabs for the indents at the beginning of your
paragraph:
Find: Replace with:
(^p^t[space]) (^p^t)
The ^t indicates a “tab” in most programs. This replace
ensures that your paragraphs will all be aligned properly. If you’ve already
replaced all of the repeated spaces, you shouldn’t have to run this replacement
more than once.
Find: Replace with:
Space at the end
of a paragraph ([space]^p) Paragraph break (^p)
This is very minor clutter, but there’s no reason to leave
it.
Find: Replace with:
Repeated periods
(..) Single period (.)
Note: if you format your ellipses as three periods (…), this
will cause trouble. That’s one of the reasons I format my ellipses with spaces
(. . .) instead. If you don’t have spaces in your ellipses, you’ll want to
replace repeated periods one at a time (using “replace” and “find next” instead
of “replace all”).
Find: Replace with:
Comma and period
(,.) and (.,) Comma (,) or
period (.)
This is another that you’ll have to replace one at a time,
since it’s the only way to ensure that you’re putting in the correct punctuation.
Fortunately, there probably won’t be many of these in your manuscript. They
usually crop up were a large section of a sentence was deleted but the old
punctuation was missed.
Find: Replace with:
Apostrophes ( ′ ) Apostrophes ( ‘ )
Note the difference between those two apostrophes—one is
straight, and one is curved. The straight apostrophe is an artifact of older
typing programs or some non-text-focused programs that appears from time to
time. If you’re using Word or Google Docs, however, the program will automatically
replace each old-fashioned straight apostrophe with a curved one that faces the
correct direction. (Note that you don’t have to hunt for an old straight
apostrophe to put into your “find” box. Just put an apostrophe, and the program
will figure it out.)
Find: Replace with:
Quotation marks (
″ ) Quotation marks ( “ )
Same thing—old-fashioned “double-prime” straight quotation
marks should be replaced with curved ones.
Find: Replace with:
Double hyphens
(--) Em dash (—) or (^+)
Double hyphens aren’t actually proper punctuation—you’ll
want an actual em dash in there instead.
Find: Replace with:
Repeated tabs
(^t^t) Single tab (^t)
Note: if you have used tabs as indentation, and you have
any sections that indented further than the rest of the document (quoted
passages, for instance), this could mess them up. It might be wise to replace
these one at a time.
Now, I’m not saying any of these tips will get you
published. They will, however, help you polish out a few common errors from your
manuscript. This will result in a more professional-looking submission, which
is an important step toward getting published. Good luck!
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