I think it was actually something on one of OSC's writing tips where he said it was somemtimes better to underline in a MS that will eventually go off to publishers instead of italicizing. Although, I was wondering if you really had to because I just really don't like the way it looks.
His arguement was because sometiems italics are hard to see, but I'm using Times New Roman 12pt font and I think it shows up fine. Would I be safe using italics instead of underline? I would much rather make the switch now at 71 pages instead of having to go through the whole thing later at 200+ or something.
Thanks
Posted by TaleSpinner (Member # 5638) on :
Most markets prefer what's called "standard manuscript format."
And, most markets will tell you what they want in terms of format in their submission guidelines.
A search on manuscript format will turn up previous discussions on why courier, why underline, etc.
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
In the olden days, most typewriters did not have the ability to change from ordinary letters to italics...you underlined to indicate what was supposed to be italicized when your words were set in type.
Now typewriters and typesetting are one with Ninevah and Tyre, and its really up to you and the editor you're electronically sending it to, just how and what kind of lettering you want to put into your electro-MS.
Me? I still submit the old-fashioned way, on paper, through the mail, so I still underline.
Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :
If you write in Microsoft Word, there is an easy way to change from italics to underline.
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
How?
Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :
Edit Menu, Replace; shortcut CTRL + H also works
You get two text bars. You usually input words that you want to find and replace there but you can leave them empty and use the 'More' button below.
By pressing 'More' a new part of the menu appears. Three new buttons below: the leftmost is 'Format'. Clicking it opens a whole list of choices. The first one - 'Font' opens a menu identical to the one usually used for setting the font of your text (Format Menu, Font).
Pick the font style you wish to find; make sure your cursor is beeping in the empty 'Find' textbar before you use this. Then repeat this for the 'Replace'.
When you're done the preferences you chose should be written below the empty textbars. Again: don't write anything into those textbars. Then just hit 'Replace All'.
Try if a few times - you can always undo it. You'll get the hang of it soon enough. There are a lot of useful tools in those menus. For instance: 'Special' gives you a way to find the ends of paragraphs (where you've pressed 'Enter'). With this you can replace a single 'Enter' with two, giving you an empty line between two paragraphs.
[This message has been edited by MartinV (edited March 14, 2009).]
Posted by skadder (Member # 6757) on :
Thanks for that. I don't know how many times I have trawled through 'scripts making changes like that. Obviously I have used 'find and replace' for name changes, or to find adverbs etc. but I didn't know it worked for italics and underlines.
Posted by TLBailey (Member # 8499) on :
In MS Word you can search and replace content or sytle or formatting, including spaces, paragraph breaks, tabs or any other hidden character, or any combination of the above. I've been using this since Word for Dos version 4.0.
TL
Posted by Starweaver (Member # 8490) on :
There doesn't seem to be much of a consensus on this any longer. However, you should definitely be using a monospaced font such as Courier.
Posted by steffenwolf (Member # 8250) on :
Wow, Thanks MartinV! I didn't know you could use find-and-replace for formatting, I thought it was just for literal strings.
Another random usage of find-and-replace: On my own computer I have "smart quotes" turned off in Word, but sometimes I bring a file to someone else's computer and it uses smart quotes. To get rid of them all I have to do is bring it back to my computer do a find-and-replace from " to " and this corrects them all back to the straight quotes.
Posted by MartinV (Member # 5512) on :
I'm doing that too, Omega. Posted by JamieFord (Member # 3112) on :
Honestly, I don't think it matters anymore. Underlining for italics is definitely old-school. Nothing wrong with that, but I think it's far less common. I went to a writers workshop with a story that had underlines as itals and nobody knew what it meant, including the workshop leader who was a published author.
I queried, submitted, and sold my first novel with the manuscript in Times Roman and all my italics...in italics.
Posted by steffenwolf (Member # 8250) on :
I doubt it's that uncommon, at least in the speculative fiction field. SFWA has a link to McIntyre's standard format, which asks for underlines for italics. Quite a few speculative fiction magazines have links directly to it.
