When it comes to writing and formatting your manuscript ready for submission, please follow the style sheet described below. Submissions that do not follow these rules will be returned for correction. Individual projects may follow a different style sheet if this is agreed in advance with the publishers.
If you are in doubt about how to format or present some part of your manuscript, please do not hesitate to contact the publishers for advice.
Document format
Manuscripts should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents, in .doc or .docx formats.
Styling the document
It is imperative that you use as few styles as possible in your document, and that styles are applied consistently throughout. Documents submitted with inconsistent styling will be returned for correction.
Book titles
Please do not apply any styles other than Normal to your book title if you have a separate page for this. We will handle this during layout at the end of the process.
Front matter
Please do not apply any styles other than Normal to your front matter if you have any. We will handle this during layout at the end of the process.
Table of contents
Please do not apply any special or fancy styles to your table of contents if you have one. A simple, basic, standard table of contents such as that which Word generates for you will be perfectly fine for submission. We can make the table of contents prettier during layout at the end of the process.
Chapter headings
Please apply the Heading 1 style to each chapter heading. Do not attempt to make it look pretty; we will handle this during layout at the end of the process. Please do not try to number the chapters.
Section headings
Please apply the Heading 2 style to each section heading within a chapter.
Please apply the Heading 3 style to each subsection heading within a section.
If you have subsubsections and so on, please apply the appropriate heading level style to each heading in the chapter.
Do not attempt to make the headings look pretty; we will handle this during layout at the end of the process. Please do not try to number the sections. If it is important for the headings to be numbered, then please discuss this with your editor.
Paragraphs
Please apply the Normal style to everything in your document. Everything should be styled as Normal by default, so please do not change this.
Please do not indent paragraphs, or leave blank lines between them, or change any font or colour or anything to do with how paragraphs might look. Leave them in the standard Normal style. We will deal with the aesthetics of the text during layout at the end of the process, not before.
Quotes
If you present a very short quote, taking no more than half a line, then you may include it within a paragraph of prose, “within double quote marks”, without applying any different styling.
If you present a quote that is longer than half a line, then please make it a new paragraph in its own right, and apply the Quote style to it.
Whenever you use a quote, conclude with a footnote to show your source.
Footnotes and endnotes
At Fallen Rook Publishing, we prefer footnotes instead of endnotes. However, if your project does work better with endnotes, or if you are particularly keen on them, please speak with us and we can come to an arrangement after discussing the matter.
Please do not apply any special styling or formatting to your footnotes or reference characters.
All footnotes reference characters should come after punctuation. Please see our Guide to Referencing for more information.
Tables
If you are presenting data or information in tables, then please do not apply any special styling or formatting to the table. Keep it simple and easy to edit. We will make it look pretty during layout at the end of the process.
Bibliographies
Please do not apply any special styling or formatting to your bibliography. Let it remain in the Normal style, and only apply italics to things like book titles where appropriate (as per the whatever referencing system you intend to use).
Page breaks, section breaks, and new lines
Please do not apply any page breaks or section breaks or line breaks in your manuscript. Just write the draft, line following line, and do not pay any attention to how it looks on the page. We will deal with the aesthetics during layout at the end of the process, after all editing has been complete. There is no point in trying to deal with how it looks before we start editing and end up changing significant amounts of text anyway.
Page numbers, headers, and footers
If you want to add page numbers, please just insert a page number (using Word’s in-built function) that looks simple and that starts on the first page – do not try to be clever about this, because it will make editing more difficult. We can make page numbers look prettier when we reach the layout stage.
Please leave the headers and footers empty of any other details. We can make them more useful and/or prettier during the layout stage.
Language
We would prefer publications to be written in British English. If you would prefer the project to be in a different language then you must discuss it with us first.
Please proofread (or arrange proofreading for) your work before sending it to us, so that simple errors in the language are found and corrected.
Images and illustrations
If you would like to include any images or illustrations in your work, then please send them to us as .jpg, .gif, or .png files, in a separate folder (not just embedded in the Word document).
You may embed the illustrations in the Word document as well, so that we can see where they should go in the text. However, if you embed them in the Word document, please do not apply any styling to the images, because that makes it harder for us to edit the whole document.
If you do not embed the illustrations in the Word document as well, then please place the following placeholder (emboldened) in the document where an image should be set, including any caption that should accompany the image:
IMAGE [number], caption: “lorem ipsum dolor est.”
Please number all of your images, starting at 000, and increment by 1 for each subsequent image. This will let us find any specific image more easily and more quickly while editing and for layout purposes.