I spoke before about some formatting pet peeves of mine. These aren't pet peeves so much as they are just tips that are important that I see a lot of people (especially newbies) overlooking. It's eleven o'clock at night after a very full day, irritating stuff is on my twitter, my classmates, God love them, don't understand standardized writing structures, and I have a headache, so prepare for callous, good-natured aggression. Enjoy.
1. Indentations
When you start a new paragraph, indent that bitch.
Yeah, yeah, common sense, right? Only it's not. I see a lot of people overlooking this crucial step, or doing it wrong--my mother once told me that an indentation is five spaces on the space bar. It's not; a proper indentation is one slap on the TAB button.
But if you're on a website *coughcoughBlogspotcoughcough* that doesn't allow for tabing, five spaces will work fine. In fact, online, indentation may not be necessary at all! But it can help set each paragraph apart from the last. However, if you're working on any MS you plan to submit to anyone, slap the tab button. It'll save you a lot of reformatting later on.
2. Apostrophes
Apostrophes are used to denote possession (Mindy's cat) and missing characters ('ey kid!/you can't do this to me), and that's about it. Often they're used to make a number or a shortening plural (ABC's/That 70's Show), which is a peeve of mine that I try not to let in the house--it's technically correct, at least in the sense that it's been used that way for decades if not centuries, and as a descriptivist it's my duty to bend with the tide of linguistic change. Still, I try to show that such things are plural just by make the letters big and the "S" small (80s. ABCs). I'll never change the world's mind, though, so if you do it the other way just keep doing what you're doing.
Anyway, other than in these rare cases, an apostrophe is never, never to be used on a plural.
If you're ever wondering whether an apostrophe fits or not, ask yourself if the sentence can be restructured to exclude the "S". For example, "This house's the best!" can be restructured to, "This house is the best!" so the apostrophe fits. "The house's door," can be restructured to "The door belonging to the house," so it fits. But "The houses stood in a row" can't be restructured in any simple way that eliminates the "s" without eliminating the plural. You'd have to change it to something silly, like, "The house and its compatriots stood in a row." (and then you haven't eliminated the S, you've just moved it to the word "compatriots," though if there were only two you COULD say "the house and its compatriot stood in a row," but a row is usually more than two and now I'm just overthinking it oops)
And speaking of "its," a pronoun--she, he, it, they--is the one exception to the "possession=apostrophe" rule. The only time that a pronoun has an apostrophe is when it's part of a compound word--see the previous example, "it's," which can be broken into "it" and "is."
4. Double space your shit
Double-spacing is important, okay. If you don't select "double" on your line spacing (or 1.5 at the BAREST minimum), it's going to be too cramped, your understanding of how long your work actually is will be thrown off, and your editor won't be happy.
If you want to write it all in single-space and double-space after the fact, that's fine! That's your prerogative! But double-spacing needs to be done before you send it off for work--double-spacing helps you avoid massive text walls, makes people less likely to just skim your work, and allows anyone trying to edit or analyze the piece to make notes and corrections between lines, which is super important.
Just ... double space, okay? It's the standard submission convention, and single-spacing makes it difficult for others to take your work seriously, because it's one of the first things they teach (or should teach) in a high school English class.
5. Twelve point TNR font
Again, if you're looking to submit your work, you need to adhere to standard convention, and standard convention is twelve point Times New Roman font. Create it in any font you want, but know that before you submit, 99% of the places you things off to are going to ask for 12pt TNR.
Of course, some companies might prefer Arial or Verdana, or Courier New, or something else that's a little off-the-wall, so make sure you check the preferences of every agent/publishing company you submit to BEFORE you submit, and make any necessary revisions to format.
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