Help w/ emailing queries

It's hard to answer this without knowing what word processor and what email program. Each one has it's own loverly quirks.

I'm having this exact same problem. I need to send my first 10 ms pages and synopsis to an agent who will ONLY take submissions in the body of an email; attachments will be deleted unread. I am using Word 2004 on a Mac, and the Mac email program. I have saved the word document as Word rtf, and my email is set to rtf, but when I copy and paste the text, I get weird line spacing...When I used "select all", then copy and paste, it came out single spaced in the email, double spaced between paragraphs. When I manually selected the text, then copy and paste, it came out better--double spaced, but still with extra (2.5?) lines between paragraphs; plus page breaks, headers, and page numbers are gone... I can't find any way to select the headers for copying. It drives me crazy that I can't be sure it's going out in the right format... Are agents who take email submissions just used to this, and less picky about format details, or is there a better way??

When it comes to queries, honestly, I think agents are bit understanding that it's not always possible to send the materials in the right format. I could be way off on this, but not all email programs accept rich text anyway.

At least make sure it's a readable and that your paragraph breaks are in place.

This is just a query. My (limited) experience is that if you get a request for a partial, then you'll be attaching your document, with all it's formatting glory in place.

Have you tried saving your document in Rich text and then copy/pasting it that way into email? I've *heard* that sometimes that works. Or you could lose all your formatting. I've had this very problem and it's frustrating, but I agree with Clair. Besides, if an agent has a hissy fit over how something is pasted into an email, I would not want to work that person.

But I know you want it to look nice. So frustrating.
This wasn't helpful at all.

In my case, it is a partial, and it can't be attached, so yeah, I'll have to assume the agent can tolerate slight format quirkiness. I was just hoping there was some magic paste trick I was missing out on!

There are two ways to go. The safest is to reformat your chapter in Word by double spacing between paragraphs. (If you're using tab indents for paragraphs, use the replace all function to replace ^t with ^p. Alternatively, you can replace ^p with ^p^p.) Then copy and paste into your email. The single spaced format with double spacing between paragraphs is perfectly acceptable.

If you insist on double spacing with normal paragraph indents, email your query and appended chapter directly from Word. It may look horrible on the other end, however, depending on the software the agent is using.

Julie, thanks, that really helps...it hadn't occurred to me to manually double space instead of using the alignment button; seems obvious now! It also made me realize I could even do a hard return after each line to get double-spaced lines throughout, typewriter style... but if it's okay in this context to have single-spaced manuscript paragraphs, I guess I won't go that far.

However, I'm not sure what you mean by "email directly from Word"?

esoterika said:

Julie, thanks, that really helps...it hadn't occurred to me to manually double space..."?

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I hope you're not doing this manually! Find and replace will do it in seconds.

esoterika said:

However, I'm not sure what you mean by "email directly from Word"?

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In Word, select FILE/SEND TO/MAIL RECIPIENT. That will bring up the email toolbar. The emailed material should look similiar to your MS, except without page divisions or headers. (If the agent wanted those, she would've asked for the material separately.)

Mail yourself a copy to make sure the headers didn't get bumped into an attachment. You don't want that little paperclip symbol next to the email, because some agents might just delete it. (If you copy/paste the MS after your query or cover letter, that should eliminate the headers.)

Again, the danger in doing this is you don't know what the agent is using as an email program. Your formating may look fine when you email it to yourself, but horrible on her computer. Also, make sure you're not using some odd font, because the reciepent's computer will make some random substitution if it doesn't have it (even in an attachment). Everyone has TNR, so best use that.

Julie Worth said:

In Word, select FILE/SEND TO/MAIL RECIPIENT. That will bring up the email toolbar. The emailed material should look similiar to your MS, except without page divisions or headers. (If the agent wanted those, she would've asked for the material separately.)

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I just tested your suggestion and Outlook Attached the document to the email. It didn't insert it into the body.

RJK said:

I just tested your suggestion and Outlook Attached the document to the email. It didn't insert it into the body.

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Try clicking the dropdown menu under "mail recipient," and then click on mail recipient again. Also, look under TOOLS/OPTIONS/GENERAL, and uncheck the box labeled "mail as attachment."

This article may be helpful: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA012340561033.aspx?pid=CL100636481033

esoterika said:

It also made me realize I could even do a hard return after each line to get double-spaced lines throughout, typewriter style...

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No, no, don't do that!

Most email software wraps text according to window width and font size, and the recipient's settings may be different from yours. (Some older software has a maximum number of characters per line.) If you put in hard returns at the end of each line to force double-spacing, the text doesn't wrap properly. It may be received as a long line, then a short line, then a blank line, then a long line again, then a short line again, then a blank line again. That's very annoying to read. It's also a real pain if the recipient is planning to copy and paste your text into Word or something else that's more convenient for them to read than plain email.