Formatting issues when submitting to agents?

playground

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 31, 2011
Messages
1,404
Reaction score
138
I feel like I can't be the only one that has had this issue and was hoping to bend everyone's ear to get some feedback. When submitting to agents, does anyone's sample pages' (when pasted into the body of the email) format get wonky? It doesn't stay double-spaced so I go into manually hitting the "enter" button for each line for space and then sometimes the indenting gets funky and just automatically indents.

To be frank, it is frustrating. For those that have encountered this problem how do you go around it without going crazy? I've tried it with both yahoo mail and gmail and the same issues arise.

Thanks!
 

writeonleanne

señora vaca
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 2, 2016
Messages
188
Reaction score
27
Location
Bay Area
I think most agents are okay with your sample being single spaced with breaks between each paragraph when it's pasted into the body of an email. That's how I've sent out my samples.
 

Maryn

Sees All
Staff member
Super Moderator
Moderator
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
55,446
Reaction score
25,466
Location
Snow Cave
Yeah, word processing format and email are not friendly. Since your sample will not be edited, no need for double spacing. Since tabs are not supported in email, replace them with a blank line.

And the question you are about to ask? They want the stated number of pages before you changed everything. Copy it into a new document, make the changes, and paste that copy into the email.

Maryn, who does this
 

Theodore Koukouvitis

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 29, 2017
Messages
54
Reaction score
6
Which email client are you using? Thunderbird allows some of the formatting to be preserved, and you can also first convert your document into html and paste that in the body of your email if you truly wish all formatting preserved.

I think agents who ask for samples in the body of the email know what they're in for, and there's no reason for you to spend time manually inserting spaces to make it more readable. Heck, they can copy it from your email into their own word processors and fiddle with it themselves!
 

Debbie V

Mentoring Myself and Others
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
3,138
Reaction score
290
Location
New York
In general, they recommend copying the document into WordPad or NotePad and making it plain text before copying it into e-mail. Then fix any of the Smart Characters from Word that may have stayed and add line spacing manually.

Yes, editors and agents expect some issues, but I want them to look on me as favorably as possible, so I do what I can to make my work readable.