Scribe Publishing: Formatting Tips for Authors

Get your manuscript copy-edited and proofread

It doesn’t matter how good of a writer you are, you will miss things along the way. Those little errors add up and can really undermine the final quality of the book.

Before working with us, ensure you have a final, locked manuscript you can be proud of.

If you need an introduction to a copyeditor, ask us and we can provide one. If you need proofreading, we offer it as a separate add-on.

Headings

Use Microsoft Word’s style ribbon (or equivalent feature if you’re starting with a different app) and make sure you at least tag headings appropriately (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc).

If you want a section to be treated as a new chapter, please indicate this with “Chapter” before that section.

This way the designer will know the hierarchy of your content without having to make assumptions.

(Note: Most books don’t require more than one or two levels of headings—consider restructuring your content if you find yourself getting to Heading 3+.)

Formatting Text

Avoid underlining text. It looks amateurish in print, and these days tends to mean a clickable link anyway.

If you need to show emphasis in text, italicize it instead. You can use bold if you have to, but avoid bold-italic.

Lists and Notes

If you’re using a bulleted or numbered list, make sure to use the appropriate formatting buttons in Word (as opposed to manually typing out the numbers).

If you’re using footnotes, make sure you’re using Word’s actual footnotes feature.

Images

If you have any images, use the highest-quality versions you have. Print requires much higher resolution than screens, and so this is required to avoid having them look blurry in print.

Do not embed images directly in the document, as this will also downgrade the quality. Instead, use a tag like {INSERT FILENAME-1} on its own line to signify a graphic placement.

Refrain from using specifics to describe the position of images throughout the text. For example, “in the photograph below.” This is because the final layout position may be different than that in the manuscript (e.g. on the next page, above, to the right etc).

Book Description and About the Author

Keep your book description around 200 words total, and your About the Author copy around 100 words total.

Our copy editing and proofreading teams will work their magic on these, but these word totals are where we need them to be in order to fit on the back of your cover.