Choosing a Manuscript Font

Mary posted a comment asking about creating a memoir in a font resembling that of her grandmother's typewriter.

It's a good question, because many of us choose a particular font for equally personal reasons. (I still fondly recall my mother's Royal portable, on which I banged out my first stories at age 11 or so.)

In the typewriter age, you had the font your typewriter came with. It started to get exciting with the IBM Selectric, when you could actually change the font by changing the typeball. Those were the glory days. Then computers gave us more font and format choices than we could handle.

If you're creating your own book with InDesign or some other desktop publishing program, you can use any font you choose. As a self-publisher, you're entitled to present your work in the font and format you choose.

But if you're submitting your manuscript to a publisher, that's a different story.

To an editor, your manuscript is just another chunk of work. She's got to put it into shape according to her publisher's requirements, and the font you love is irrelevant. Your editor just hopes it's easily readable: a fairly common serif font is usually best.

Of course, most publishers now require you to submit an electronic copy of your book as well as a paper manuscript. So the electronic version's font can be changed very easily. But it's far easier to read (and copy-edit) on paper than on screen, so your hard copy should be readable.

That also means it's double-spaced, so the editor can make corrections and comments. Isaac Asimov, in the typewriter age, used no margins and single-spaced everything, just so he wouldn't waste time putting new sheets of paper in his machine. He published hundreds of books this way, leaving it to his editors to put his manuscripts into publishable shape.

But you're not Isaac Asimov. So I suggest you visit the website of the publisher you think is most likely to accept your manuscript. See what the authors' guidelines say about fonts and formats.

Follow those guidelines no matter what. Their purpose is to make the editing of your manuscript as fast and efficient as possible. If your personal taste makes your manuscript hard to edit, the editor will just reject you, unread. And it will be your fault, not hers.

Comments

[James]

I am continuously amazed at how many would be authors fail to follow the guidelines. I don't get it. Most agents and publishers that I've encountered spell it out pretty well. Even if your dream publisher doesn't indicate the guidelines, common sense should dictate. I agree that if a proposal, query letter, manuscript, whatever, showed up on my desk (if I was an agent) hard to read because a 16th century script font was used, it would be gone.

On the other hand, I've followed all the rules and have yet to be traditionally published. Think maybe it's my writing?

[Anthony James Barnett - author]

Good post.

I find Times New Roman okay, but maybe that's because most books used it when I was a youngster.

[Dai Alanye]

The most amazing thing about guidelines is how petty some of the requirements are, a possible indication of excessive potty training inflicted upon some of the MS readers/guideline specifiers.

The second most amazing thing is how many demand a specific typeface and format, even on electronic submissions. Are these people unaware of the editing capabilities inherent in the programs they use to read the MSS?

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