Sample pages in e-mail query

I always double-spaced, but e-mail is a fickle beast and can end up screwing up your format no matter what you do

When I was pasting pages into the body I always manually formatted anything that looked wonky and then e-mailed it to myself first to make sure it came through all right. Even so, on some replies from agents I would find that half of my pages were double-spaced and half had mysteriously gone to single.

It's hard to predict how it's going to come out on the other end, but I'd say double-space since it's easier to read.

douglass said:

Hi all,

I've heard conflicting advice on the following:

Should sample pages pasted on an e-mail query be single or double-spaced (with paragraph indentation)?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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I send it single-spaced, but it really doesn't matter that much. Sample pages are just that -- sample. The agent is likely only going to read a little of it before issuing a rejection or requesting the full manuscript, and if they do want an easier read, they can always copy and paste it into a word document.

I format my queries as plain text as well, which destroys things like bold or italics but also ensures there's no wonky font messes going on.

Anyway, to make a long story short, don't worry too much about it. As long as it's somewhat presentable, it's fine. Whether or not your sample pages are single- or double-spaced is not going to make or break your representation.

I always tried to make it as plain text as possible. That is, single-spaced, extra line between paragraphs, no indents, no smart quotes, etc. You want to make it as easy as possible to read even if they're on a smartphone or whatever and this is the safest way how.

That said, I ditto zegota in that agents probably won't mind too much as long as it looks presentable. If agents do have very strict preferences they'll mention it in their guidelines.