When your book is going to be printed, you should go over an additional editing checklist to catch spacing and formatting slipups specific to print layouts. This step ensures the text looks its best on the formatted page.
Protip: Layout the book for print formats and edit it before formatting it for an ebook. This allows you to make word changes to control text layout without needing to add them to the ebook file, too.
The following is a formatting editing checklist you can use to ensure your manuscript file is ready for printing. Each part of the checklist has its own guide (or will have one as part of BDR’s current formatting blog series) for additional information and explanations.
The guides are being continually added. Check back for updated guides or sign up for email updates.
Things to look for as part of editing for print formats
Consistency Issues
Punctuation
- Apostrophes
- Ellipses
- Hyphens
- Quote Marks
Spacing
- Double Spaces-do this before addressing other spacing problems and widows & orphans!
- Gaps
- Indentation
- Justification Spacing
- Line Spacing (Leading)
- Rivers
Spell Check
Widows & Orphans
