Submission Formatting Questions [Moved from Submitting and Selling Flash Fiction]

I really hope that this is the right place to post this. AW is so huge; I spent the last 30 minutes trying to find a place to ask my question (and I figured here was better than asking about submissions formats in QLH.)

I am currently working on the submission format for F&SF magazine. I am writing in Courier 12, double spacing, no italics, 1" margins with headers, etc... but I've hit a bit of a problem.

The formatting for my short story is not a "traditional" format; that is, the story is written like a news article. So I've got a bit of a problem.

1) The title of the article is not the title of the story-- is it okay to bold this? Or should it just be underlined? The sub-title of the article is already underlined.

True format:

Creators of Life Saver May be Forced to Cut the Line
Zagam Entertainment falls under fire as users of time management app drop dead.

2) Since it is written like a news article, there are no indents to the paragraphs. What should I do? Formatting guidelines say not to put a space between paragraphs, or to use a '#' for scene breaks, but if I don't put the space, it just looks like one huge block of text; if I put '#', it looks odd since it's not scene breaks. No idea what to do there.

Example (but double spaced on my processor):

SILICON VALLEY- Federal agents involved in an ongoing case regarding the deaths of 132 people released a statement on Friday linking Roger Astaroth and Jim Melchom, creators of the popular time management app Life Saver, as suspects. Rachel Carlyle, a spokeswoman for the F.B.I., said that evidence had emerged which directly linked the strange deaths to their use of the app.

“There is one thing in common with all of the victims,” Carlyle said during a press conference yesterday morning, “All of the victims, across the board, had been frequent users of Mr. Astaroth and Mr. Melchom’s app, Life Saver.” Carlyle dismissed all further questions.

What would be a good way to format this, in your opinion?

(For additional info: I'm trying to submit to Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, using their guidelines: http://www.sfwa.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/Mssprep.pdf)

zanzjan said:

Hmmm, that's a tough one. By no means is this necessarily the right answer, but I guess what I'd do is format it like a standard manuscript, and then either include in the cover letter or as a note at the top of the MS itself: [formatting to reflect newspaper-article style piece]

or some such.

You don't want them to bounce off it because of formatting before they've read it. If they want to buy it, then you can bring up again the intent for it to look like a newspaper article -- let them make the final call on that, though.

Click to expand...

That's a good idea, actually. Thank you very much! I guess I could also email them ahead of time and see what they would accept. They have the option to email about submissions. Thank you!