How destructive are formatting problems in the query email?

Derimed

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Hi there,

I am sending out query letters, and there are some formatting issues that I don't seem to have too much control over. For example, the text seems a bit larger than 12 point, though in the Word document where I made the query it's fine. More unfortunately, somehow my copy-paste of the query axed the line between the two main query letter paragraphs, and I sent it to a good agent not having caught this.

Are agents usually forgiving of such problems in creating query emails, or will they trash the query for something like this? I worked on my query, manuscript and synopsis for a very long time, but I don't know if something like a missed line separating paragraphs will be excused regardless of my general preparations.

Many thanks in advance for your help.
 
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Old Hack

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If your work is stellar then an agent won't reject you for bad formatting; but if it's so bad it makes your work impossible to read, then yes, it's going to cause problems.

Next time, sort out the formatting before you send it.
 

Bufty

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Does first e-mailing it to yourself show you whether or not the formatting is OK?

If your work is stellar then an agent won't reject you for bad formatting; but if it's so bad it makes your work impossible to read, then yes, it's going to cause problems.

Next time, sort out the formatting before you send it.
 

TSJohnson

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I'm a bit confused, do agents actually pay attention to the font size in query letters? It's four lines of text and only a few hundred words, don't you just send it as what ever default comes out of your email program (in my case, gmail)?
 

owlion

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I'm not sure if you're already doing this, but often you can Ctrl+A to highlight all the text in the email, then click a 'remove formatting' button (it looks like an underlined capital T with a cross next to it). It does remove centering, intentional italicisation etc. but gets rid of anything else you might not want, then you can easily proofread it.