Is CTRL-J necessary for a finished manuscript?

The Second Moon

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I've finished with my WIP and am going to publish it on Ingramspark and KDP. This isn't my first time doing this, but the first time was a formatting disaster. There were areas in my book that were seriously messed up. I blame this formatting issue on CTRL-J in MS Word. You see, I pushed CTRL-J on my last project and tabbed everything that needed to be tabbed afterwards. I read through it like my life depended on it. Then, when I uploaded it, there were tons of areas that hadn't been tabbed after CTRL-J. I'm not sure if it was my fault but I honestly don't think I would have missed that many formatting issues. (not trying to sound arrogant, but the formatting mistakes were most likely Ingramspark's problem)

Now I'm terrified of CTRL-J. I'm stalling publishing this second book because I don't want more formatting issues. What I want to know is if I absolutely have to press CTRL J and "justify" the text. I don't want my second book to be a disaster, too. Someone told me I have to, but I'm scared.

Please help. Thank you.
 

cmhbob

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If you're going to use MS Word to format your manuscript, it's generally not a good idea to use tabs to offset that first line in each paragraph. Instead, use indentation. Select the paragraph, then right-click and select Paragraph. THen look at Special, and set that to about .5 inches (that's what I've used).

I generally don't indent the first graph on each page. That seems to be an industry standard.

I have my final formatting saved as Styles to make my life a little easier, too. I can select a paragraph, clik "First Paragraph" in my Styles bar, and boom. My styles look like this:

Body Text:
Font: (Default) Palatino Linotype 11 pt, (Asian) Chinese (PRC), Kern at 1.5 pt, Indent:
First line: 0.2", Justified
Line spacing: single, Space
After: 6 pt, No widow/orphan control, Don't hyphenate, Font Alignment: Baseline, Don't adjust space between Asian text and numbers, Style: Linked, Quick Style
Based on: Normal

First Paragraph
Font: (Default) Palatino Linotype 11 pt, (Asian) Chinese (PRC), Kern at 1.5 pt, Indent:
Left: -0.06", Justified
Line spacing: single, Space
After: 6 pt, No widow/orphan control, Don't hyphenate, Font Alignment: Baseline, Don't adjust space between Asian text and numbers, Style: Linked, Quick Style
Based on: Normal
Following style: KDPP Body Text

(Just noticed the "(Asian) Chinese (PRC)" bits in there, and don't know how they got there. I'll have to work on that.
 

starrystorm

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If you mean pressing tab at the end of every line after you hit Ctrl-J, then yes. Every last book (except maybe one in verse) is justified. Pick up any book and it will be justified. It makes the book look normal. If not, it might come off as unprofessional and half-done, and we don't want that.

I suggest you go through every page when KDP gives you the option to look through it and not just checking on Word. Same with Ingram Spark. I know it's slow, but it's important. Secondly, if you move your words/novel onto a different sized paper, that can mess with it. So check at the very end to make sure everything is right.