Question about online submitting

[blackbird]

Since more and more journals are accepting online submissions (and many are now asking for them exclusively) I have a question in regard to formatting.

Unfortunately, many journals that ask for online submissions refuse to accept attachments, and will ask that your story be pasted or typed into the body of your email. The problem with this is that it tends to mess up your manuscript's formatting. I have sent out at least three submissions, not to mention an article for an online writing zine, this way. Each time, the same thing has happened: The copy will look fine, until I hit the "Send" button. Then, when I go back and look at the "Sent" copy (which my program enables me to do) the story will be absolutely crazy looking, with all kinds of weird line breaks, wrapped lines, etc. Although it doesn't make the stories unreadable, it makes it more difficult, for example, to tell where paragraph breaks are supposed to be, and is just plain harder to read because it looks strange.

In every case, it has been a frustrating situation because, as I've said, the copy looked fine when I sent it. There was nothing I could have done manually to prevent this from happening. I recently read the guidelines submission for one online journal that specifically asked for attachments because, as the editor acknowledged, pasting in the email body causes format problems.

I have since come across a few guidelines that will say something like "Don't worry about the formatting" or "Format will be verified upon acceptance."

So it seems to me that editors are aware of this problem. However, I have to ask, why would they intentionally make their job harder by asking writers to submit via a format that they know is going to cause problems?
Granted, I know they are taking a risk by opening attachments, but if they are going to tell us not to submit attachments, and not to submit a hardcopy, and then our stories come to them in such a weird looking format, how do they get around this situation? Do they have some method for being able to "fix" this? Do they just get used to reading manuscripts this way?

The editor of the newsletter I submitted to was certainly quite grateful when I offered to re-send my article via attachment (which she said was fine). But this isn't an option for journals that do not accept them.

My main concern is that a weirdly formatted manuscript will prejudice editors against it. They may look at it and automatically reject it because their reaction will be "I can't read this." But if they give us no other option for submitting, and there is nothing that can be done to "correct" the problem, what are we to do? Just assume they know how to correct it, or that they are willing to read it anyway?

I'm concerned because I recently sent a story to "The New Yorker" this way (again, they accept online submissions but not attachments). This is a difficult and prestigious market, anyway, and I want to have all the odds in my favor. They may or may not like the story, but I would hate to know it was rejected just because of the format. I am thinking of resubmitting a hardcopy, with a note explaining about what happened with the online submission, but I don't know if this would be acceptable. Or, again, if it even matters.

And unfortunately many journals are no longer making hardcopy an option at all. Fortunately, most of the pieces I have sent out via this method have been short, but "The New Yorker" submission was a 30+ page story.

In the future I am seriously considering limiting my submissions only to journals that accept hardcopy or attachments--unless these editors demanding cut and paste submissions are willing to do the work. Anyone have any insight into this? How do these editors deal with these cut and paste submissions when the format is screwed, or do they bother at all?
And is there anything I could do on my end to prevent this from happening?

[pdr]

I've had this happen a couple of times too. Mortifying and frustrating isn't i?

I went and hollered for help down in the Tech section of this board and Fahim, bless him, came to the rescue along with James Ritchie.

The trick is to save a final draft of your story as a Text copy as well as your WP or W copy. This txt copy wipes all your fancy codes and instructions so that when you open it to copy and paste it it will go perfectly in the body of the e-mail. You might have to tweak the paragraphs but it will not contain gobbledegook.

I always send myself a copy at the same time as I submit to the editor so that I can see if there are any hiccoughs and get back asap to correct things before the editor gets upset!

[MidnightMuse]

Yes, you can save yourself a huge headache by saving your work, or a copy of it, as a simple .txt file, and then cut and paste that version into the body of your email. It removes fancy formats that we don't even see, all the codes and commands that Word and Word Perfect slip in there.

I also do what pdr suggests, and email myself a copy first. Actually I do that with the (very few) emailed queries I've sent, just to make sure they come over as visually OK. Granted, we don't all use the same email programs, and that can cause some differences, but it helps you weed out big glaring booboos.

[blackbird]

Can you save something as a text file even if it has been previously saved as a Word or Word Perfect file? And can you revert your file back to Word once the document has been sent? Or is it better to just keep it on file permanently as a text copy?

[veinglory]

When you save as text you will have a separate file. document.doc still exhists but also document.txt. Reopen the txt in notepad or a similar program and you will see it without formatting. When I do this I delete any onsolte txt files, making any new changes to the .doc and regenerate the txt as and when required. I also disable any Word features that cause problems in transaltion like auto-paragraphing.

[MidnightMuse]

Can you save something as a text file even if it has been previously saved as a Word or Word Perfect file? And can you revert your file back to Word once the document has been sent? Or is it better to just keep it on file permanently as a text copy?

Personally, I like to keep a copy in both formats, I just change the name. That way you have the best of both worlds, for any reason that might come up.

[DanWeasley]

I have found extraordinary pain when posting to an email after using MS Word. Even saving to a TXT file sometimes won't remove strange characters. This is what I do:

I go to File -> Save As

In the File Type Drop Down box, I choose plain text. On the screen that pops up, I choose the "MS-DOS" radio button, and then I place a check in "Allow Character Substitution".

This will format the resulting file in plain text format, no strange line breaks, no strange characters. Everything will appear as it should be. There will be no Italics or bolds, but that's the price we pay :(

[CaroGirl]

Tip: Send the copy to yourself FIRST and you can see and fix anomalies.

I usually cut and paste to notepad. Notepad doesn't hold the imbedded formatting codes so when I edit the notepad copy for appearance and cut and paste to email the codes are long gone. No need to even save the text version - unless you'll need it later.


Using notepad as a codes filter works for these forums also.

I agree with this advice. This is what I do to strip formatting codes from my ms.

[jchines]

I've also found that in Outlook Express (and probably Outlook, too) if you save the e-mail as a draft, then reopen the message from the drafts folder, any weird formatting changes will show up and can be corrected at that point.

Failing that, I'd second the suggestion to send it to yourself first, then fix whatever you need and make sure it's correct before sending it to the editor.

[Bibsy]

If you use Outlook (and other programs may have this option too), you can send the email as plain text rather than rich text or HTML, which will solve a lot of the funky formatting problems. So usually I just copy from my word processing program into the email, select plain text, and do a search and replace to change all the smart quotes and apostrophes to the plain text ones.

[PeeDee]

This thread puzzles me. I've done a lot of online submissions in the past month or two (because it saves on postage, which is bliss) and everyone I've submitted to has explicitly said not to paste in the e-mail or it would be deleted unread, and to attach it as an RTF file.

If you don't mind me asking, are there any particular journals asking for it posted into the body of the e-mail? I'd be interested in poking around.

[Kate Thornton]

Yes, Breath & Shadow asked for an in-email, as did Great Mystery & Suspense.

I give 'em all whatever they ask for...!

[Inspiewriter]

Thanks for the great tips!

[scottVee]

A lot of little zines are run by people so inexperienced they've never considered there might be a "standard manuscript format". It's annoying to be expected to reformat stories to meet bizarre requirements like "double line breaks between paragraphs, asterisks for italics and no indenting." In essence, you're being asked to do work before your work is even approved. It's baloney.

Fact is, you don't have to send anything to markets that have amateur requirements.

For the ones with their act together, as long as you save an RTF copy and a TXT copy, you should be fine. Word format is problematic since you can get in a tussle over which version of Word was used. RTF & TXT. If they want it in the body of the email, cut & paste the TXT version, otherwise, attaching the RTF or TXT file will meet all ordinary requirments.

Some zines with Yahoo mail accounts (REAL professional) may see your text get all scrambled up. It's just not worth the trouble to try and fix their problems for them. There are plenty of other markets that do know what they're doing.

[Mike Coombes]

At GUD we take all formats (although PDF is frowned on). Some 'zines don't like attachments because they're scared of viruses.

[pdr]

Send your story out, make sure you've logged it in your marketing spread sheet for the month and get on with writing the next story and marketing the another story.

Next month, if you must, you can politely e-mail those editors you haven't heard from, providing your submission was sent three months ago. Generally, editors hate being chased up. Leave it. Get on with writing.

Every six months you can check your submissions' spread sheet and politely nag the editors who haven't replied providing you have checked their guidelines first and are really sure they said Response time 8 weeks!

[PeeDee]

I love the online submission things. It's saving me postage, it's saving me envelopes, and I'm more likely to do it than I am to physically mail things out. Not lazy, just extremely difficult to motivate me into doing things which are in the realm of "Not Writing."

[Southern_girl29]

I also like the online submission form, but I don't like the ones who don't send a response e-mail saying they received it. I just did one about a week ago, and I have no idea if they received it or not.

[Stijn Hommes]

I just submitted a story with one of those online submission thingies, and it's terribly nerve-wracking. This particular one required a .rtf file, and it didn't let you view your submission, either before or after it was sent. So, it could be a jumbled bunch of text, for all I know. I'm doubly scared because it had some rather vital italics, and it will be much more difficult to make sense of it without the italics.

Sigh. If they require RTF, chances are they will be able to read them. If you can read the RTF on your own machine, they will be able to too.

[Stijn Hommes]

At GUD we take all formats (although PDF is frowned on). Some 'zines don't like attachments because they're scared of viruses. And a big virus hit can easily bring a mag down if it's unprepared. Do you want response time to be longer because your submission got lost in a virus attack?

[Jamesaritchie]

For those not using a professional e-mail program that can compose, end, and receive RTF file, standard format for stories enclosed within the e-mail is the same as the format here on the forum. Do not indent the first line of the paragraph, and put an extra space between paragraphs. There's nothing amateurish about this. To the contrary, it's been the professional approach for a lot of years.

A magazine that doesn't asks you to do this is being amateurish, and is making an editor work a heck of a lot harder than an editor should have to work.

This is the standard because many writers do not have professional level e-mail software, or don't know how to use it properly if they do have it.

When a magazine says cut and paste in RTF, as with an online submission form, they mean it, and they know what they're doing. MS Outlook, and a couple of other e-mail programs, can open RTF files, can compose RTF files, and can send or open RTF files, and without having the format messed up in any way.

If you have MS Outlook, you can use it to open an RTF or Word DOC file, send it in RTF format, and the editor can open it with no loss of format.

It doesn't matter how a file looks when you open it. If you do open it, and see all sorts of strange gobbledygook, it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the file, it means you're using an e-mail program that can't handle RTF or Word DOC, or you don't have the program set properly.

Here's the thing. With MS Outlook, you set it to use Word as your default e-mail editor. If you have MS Office, you don't even have to open an e-mail program to send a story in the body of an e-mail, and to do so without loss of format.

Open the story in Word, type whatever you want the e-mail portion to say right above the story, then click "file," "send to," and "mail recipient." The story sends, and arrives, in perfect format.

Sending a file as plain text can work well, or can screw up everything. If this is the way an editor requests it, then send it as plain text. But if an editor asks for RTF, or asks that there be no indent and an extra space between paragraphs, then send it this way. If you don't, you're being stupid. Editors have reasons for the way they want something sent, so not following the advice to the letter is just dumb.

[Jamesaritchie]

A lot of little zines are run by people so inexperienced they've never considered there might be a "standard manuscript format". It's annoying to be expected to reformat stories to meet bizarre requirements like "double line breaks between paragraphs, asterisks for italics and no indenting." In essence, you're being asked to do work before your work is even approved. It's baloney.

Fact is, you don't have to send anything to markets that have amateur requirements.



There's noting bizarre about double line breaks between paragraphs, or no indents. It's the norm for unformatted submissions. It's the professional approach, and always has been. It's even the way you write here. It is, by far, the easiest and best format for many types of e-zines, or for editors who want to be able to open a file with any program.

Those who request such files are not inexperienced. Those who don't know that this is the standard are inexperienced.

And being asked to format before your story is accepted? Oh, God, the horror! I'm sure glad print submissions don't have to be formatted according to editor specifications before they're accepted.