Every editor has opened a file and winced. Not because the writing was bad — usually it isn't — but because the manuscript arrived wearing the wrong clothes. Formatting is the handshake before the conversation, and in UK publishing it follows a handful of quiet conventions that nobody teaches you directly. None of the ten mistakes below will sink a good book on its own. Together, though, they make an editor's job harder, and that is never the first impression you want to make. Here is what to look for, and how to put it right.
Most UK publishers and literary agencies expect a plain, readable typeface at 12 point, with 1.5 or double line spacing and margins of roughly 2.5cm. The trouble starts when a writer decides to be expressive.
Mistake one: choosing a display font. Garamond at 11 point, Calibri at 10, or something downloaded for a book cover all make a manuscript harder to read on screen. A book is read in print; a manuscript is read in a word processor, often late at night, often on a laptop. Give the reader's eyes an easy time.
Mistake two: single spacing. Editors annotate as they read, and cramped lines leave nowhere to write. Double spacing is the norm in the UK; 1.5 is usually acceptable. If in doubt, ask.
Safe choices for a submission copy:
Also leave the right margin ragged rather than fully justified. Justified text opens ugly rivers of white space when lines are short, and it hides the double spaces you have accidentally typed.
Mistake three: indenting with the tab key. Pressing Tab at the start of every paragraph feels harmless until the file is converted, sent between programs, or pasted into a typesetting template. The tabs collapse, the indents vanish, and the whole manuscript loses its shape. Use the paragraph settings instead: select the text, then set Special > First line at 1.27cm. It takes two minutes and survives everything.
Mistake four: doing both. Indenting the first line and leaving a blank line between paragraphs is a common belt-and-braces habit. Pick one. Standard UK manuscript style is an indent on every paragraph except the first of a chapter and the first after a scene break, with no blank lines between paragraphs at all. It looks dense at first. It is also what editors expect.
Mistake five: inconsistency. Chapter One in bold capitals, centred; Chapter Two underlined and left aligned; Chapter Three in a larger size because you were tired. Choose a pattern and repeat it exactly — for example, "Chapter One" on its own line, bold, left aligned — and start each chapter on a fresh page using an insert page break, not a run of carriage returns.
Mistake six: amateur scene breaks. A single blank line is not a scene break. It reads as a formatting accident, and it may not survive conversion. Use a centred hash symbol (#) or three asterisks on their own line, and use the same marker throughout. While you are there, check that you are not nudging text around the page with empty paragraphs. Word processors have page breaks, section breaks and spacing controls for exactly that reason.
Mistake seven: mixed quotation marks. Copy a passage from an email or a notes app and you can end up with straight apostrophes in one paragraph and curly ones in the next. Run a find-and-replace to make them uniform. Most UK publishers use single quotation marks for dialogue, with double marks for quotes within quotes, but always check the submission guidelines first — they override everything here.
Mistake eight: dialogue punctuation. The comma or full stop belongs inside the closing quotation mark. So: 'I'll come with you,' she said. And: 'I'll come with you.' A new speaker takes a new paragraph, even if the speech is a single word.
Mistake nine: dashes and ellipses. Use a proper em dash (—) rather than a hyphen with spaces around it, or two hyphens in a row. For ellipses, three dots is standard; some house styles add a space either side. Whichever you choose, apply it consistently and set it up as an autocorrect rule so you cannot drift.
Mistake ten: sending the wrong file. Unless guidelines say otherwise, send a .docx rather than a PDF, because editors need to comment and track changes. Name the file clearly — Surname_Title_Genre_WordCount.docx is a reliable formula — and put your word count on the title page or in your covering email. Number your pages, and make sure your name and the book title appear in the header of the document.
Before sending, switch off track changes, remove any comments, and check that the file is not locked or password protected. A manuscript that cannot be opened is a manuscript that will not be read.
Formatting is not about obedience for its own sake. A clean manuscript signals that you have read the guidelines, that you respect the reader's time, and that you can be worked with. That matters more than most writers realise.
Run through this list once, slowly, with the document open beside it:
If you are working with an editor already, ask which style they prefer before you spend an evening changing indents. Most will tell you in one sentence, and it will save you both a round of tidying. If you have followed the submission guidelines, fixed these ten things, and read the opening chapter aloud once, you are ready to send the work out. Good formatting does not get a manuscript accepted. It does, however, stop it being put aside for the wrong reasons — and that is worth the effort.
Photo: Ghinzo / Pixabay
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