Science Fiction Fantasy Chronicles: forums - View Single Post - Hi Another Introduction and a Formating Question?

Havlen · 19th August 2007, 04:14 PM

It is easier to spot grammatical and spelling errors in a monospaced font. Plus, it is supposed to be easier on the eyes. It is similar to double-spacing your manuscript which is done for the same reasons.

As for an accurate word count... well, they really don't care about that, do they? That's why word count is done by using the average number of words in a full line times number lines on a page times number of pages. If they wanted an accurate word count it'd be done by going to tools and word count. They want to count whitespace too.

And yes, I'd imagine it would help estimating the published page count much more than having people send manuscripts in various non-monospaced fonts. I'm sure most editors can take a double-spaced courier manuscript with one inch margins all around and not only have a reasonably accurate page count estimation on a novel in a non-monspaced font with justification, but also what font sizes will lead to how many pages (since different books have different font sizes as well).

At least, those editors that make those type of decisions would be able to do that. After all, 100k words using that method for a word count is probably going to end up within +/- 10 pages of the same number of pages in a times new roman 12 pt justified text novel.

19th August 2007, 04:14 PM	#14 (permalink)
Havlen Unregistered User Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 141	Re: Hi Another Introduction and a Formating Question? It is easier to spot grammatical and spelling errors in a monospaced font. Plus, it is supposed to be easier on the eyes. It is similar to double-spacing your manuscript which is done for the same reasons. As for an accurate word count... well, they really don't care about that, do they? That's why word count is done by using the average number of words in a full line times number lines on a page times number of pages. If they wanted an accurate word count it'd be done by going to tools and word count. They want to count whitespace too. And yes, I'd imagine it would help estimating the published page count much more than having people send manuscripts in various non-monospaced fonts. I'm sure most editors can take a double-spaced courier manuscript with one inch margins all around and not only have a reasonably accurate page count estimation on a novel in a non-monspaced font with justification, but also what font sizes will lead to how many pages (since different books have different font sizes as well). At least, those editors that make those type of decisions would be able to do that. After all, 100k words using that method for a word count is probably going to end up within +/- 10 pages of the same number of pages in a times new roman 12 pt justified text novel.