I participated in the Fabulous QueryDay today on Twitter (well, ok, lurked), and wanted to say that IT ROCKED!Strangely enough I wished there was a wee bit less asking of questions and little bit more query rejecting. Weird, right? However, even though I missed a little bit of the old "fail," I did have a great time reading the questions other writers had and the answers from the agents.
One thing that absolutely blew my mind was this: Agents prefer only one space after a period!
Holy Uncomfortable Wrongness, Batman!
My whole life I've been living a lie. Everyone told me this was correct from birth until now, and I just learned today that the publishing world prefers the one-space rule. Agent Colleen Lindsay said it looked funny on her e-reader when there were two spaces, creating vast deserts of whiteness that was hard to look at.
Who the heck knew?
While I was crying over the thought that I'd now have to go through my manuscript sentence by sentence and remove the offending extra-spaces, I had an epiphany I would like to share. You can do a Search & Replace in Word by typing in Search For *space space*, Replace With *space.*
Magnifico! Technology to the rescue :). Needless to say, I love Bill Gates right now, and am grateful that Microsoft Word is so awesome.
I hope this helps any of you just now learning this same fact and thinking "blimey, so many spaces...so maaaaaany!"
Tell me: am I truly the last person on earth to discover this rule?
Happy Friday, Everyone!
1 comment:
I had to do this too, and I repeat the process every time I make major changes. Old habits die hard. I have to concentrate to put only one space. I love find and replace!
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