My punctuation is breeding

Question for any Mac user who would like to enlighten me.

My manuscript has been through at least a dozen format changes. It was originally written as a .doc, then saved as an .rtf when I bought my Mac. Then edited and saved again as a .docx and as an .rtf

Here's the issue. I sent my full ms to an agent as a .doc file (because I've heard this is the most acceptable format). I opened my .docx, made a .doc copy and sent it on its way. This morning I was looking through the .doc version and noticed that many of my periods had multiplied in the format changes, making a large number of my sentences end like this..

I'm editing the .doc version now to fix the things that cropped up in the format change, but I'm irked because right now someone is probably reading my ms and wondering why I can't count to one.

Has anyone else had this problem? How do I avoid it? Would it be obvious to an agent that this is a formatting fubar and not a trigger-happy ring finger?

Medievalist said:

That's an odd one; I'm not sure what caused it--ordinarily I'd think it was search-and-replace, rather than formatting changes which shouldn't affect a period at all.

I wouldn't worry about it--the agent will think it's a wonky file.

The files that come across the transom often are wonky.

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I'm really hoping he realizes the file is just wonky. I feel a little sick.

Said The Sun said:

Oh no. Is it too late to shoot out an I'm-sorry-the-other-copy-looked-like-crap-here's-the-good-one email? I'm sure if it's a continuous error they'll realize it was a formatting glitch and not necessarily a trippy statement from the author. But I'd try to resend it just so they don't get skeeved out with the punctuation and god forbid put it aside because of it..

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I considered this, but I thought I might come across as a pest. I don't want to press my luck!

Medievalist said:

I"ve gotten mss. where the entire text was in small caps.

Patterned formatting errors are not the end of the world.

It's another reason to always send yourself a test mail with the attachment to see how it works.

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I do this when I send things in the body of an e-mail, but I never considered checking the attachment. My e-mail screws stuff up at an alarming rate, but since this is just a file conversion that I saved, it wasn't the e-mail's fault this time.

I think I'll just sit here and slam my head into my desk for a couple of hours. That usually fixes things.

Okay, putting it out of my mind. I'll just fix the converted file and hope for the best.

My desk and my head thank you.

Medievalist said:

Did I tell you about the submission for an article for a scholarly journal with digital images of artwork?

The author sent digital images.

Of him and ah, other people, and they weren't engaging in art.

I emailed and asked him to re-send. To this day, I don't know if he realizes what he did, and I do think it was an accident.

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Okay, double punctuation officially trumped. If I'd done that I think I'd want to hide under my bed for the rest of my life.

Bartholomew said:

RTF files are larger and can't handle certain types of formatting, but they're amazingly compatible, and in my experience, stable. You might consider using that format for your master file.

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I checked out the .rtf and it's just fine. I'll be using that in the future.

Thanks!