Notes on Preparing a Manuscript for Publication' JOHN SASS0 Product Engineering, New Y o r k City
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HERE is a saying that difference of opinion makes horse races, but anyone even remotely concerned with the publishing business will admit that difference of opinion makes dogfights over manuscripts. Seriously, though, there are certain standardized procedures for preparing manuscripts-procedures that help make the job of book publication a lot easier. There are certain approved methods of preparing manuscripts, which if followed, simplify editing, typesetting, and proofreading; reduce the number of author's correctionsan appreciable cost item (to the author) ; keep production costs down; speed publication; improve standards of %e book. It is important to remember the steps that a manuscript passes through after acceptance for publication. These are: sample pages (for type style), galley proofs and illustration proofs (for correction), and page proofs (for final reading and indexing). Anything you can do to improve the ori~inal manuscript will help all along the iine. Since the first requisite of any manuscript is legibilitv. it should he tvned on one side of white DaDer. uniform in size, prhi&ably S1/%by 11 inches. The typed matter should be double spaced, and one-inch margins allowed on top, bottom, and right hand side. A wider margin a t the left will permit easy binding. A carbon copy should be kept by the author. Sheets are usually numbered in the upper right hand comer. Interpolated pages should be numbered a, b, or c. If any pages are removed, the preceding pages should be Footdouble numbered, as "40 and 41" or "36-40." notes should be put in the body of the manuscript immediately following the reference, separated from the text by double lines above and below. Drawings and photographs should not be inserted in the manuscript, because illustrations are sent to the engraver a t the same time that the manuscript is sent to the printer. If the drawings are on the same sheet as the text, it is necessary either to cut the drawings and text apart, or to have the printer and engraver work from the same sheet. Both practices are undesirable. The latter is especially bad, since the copy, if first sent to the printer, may become damaged and soiled, making it impossible for the engraver to produce satisfactory cuts. Small drawings can be pasted to separate sheets of paper. Unmounted photographs should not be pasted or mounted except by experts. It is a good plan to number each drawing and reference it as to location in the text. Illustrations are usually a highly important part of
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Presented before the Division of Chemical Education of the American Chemical Society, 1U6th meeting, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. S e ~ t e m b e r7. 1943.
any well-prepared technical book. They may be used to present a better visual picture than can be h n e with words, to further the concept of quantitative relationship (as through the employment of graphs), or to create an easier understanding of the relationships of various parts. All illustrations, whether photographs or line drawings, should be clear, clean cut, and to the point. The intended information should be designated easily and clearly, and any extraneous material should be eliminated. In photographic illustrations, particular atteution should be given to the background, which may show material in which the author is not particularly interested. It is advisable to provide sufficiently wide margins in all cases. In preparing a photo for reproduction, the editor can always cut down or crop an illustration if it shows unnecessary extraneous matter, but he is not in a position to supply additional information which the author does not provide for him. Use a grease pencil to mark and reference photographs. Re careful not to spoil the glossy surface of the print. A good halftone reproduction can be obtained only from a good photoengraving, and this in turn can be made only if the original photograph is a good one. Glossy 8 X 10-inch photographic prints which are clear and sharp are by far the most suitable for publication. The "soot and whitewash" type of contrasty print is undesirable. The photographic print should show all tonal ranges from clear white to black, with good gradation in varying shades of gray. Cuts from which printed reproductions are made employ a metal plate whose surface has been finely screened. Appreciable detail may be lost in the screening process. Consequently, the printed reproduction will always showless detail than the photograph from which it is made. Do not use orange or green cross-section paper for preparing graphs for reproduction. The coordinates invariably show up and produce an undesirable crosshatch backing. If the divisions in the graph are close. these lines run together and blot the drawing, prodncing a dirty and untidy appearance. Since blue does not photograph on emulsions used by photoengravers, blue graph paper can be used and the blue coordinates will be eliminated when the engravings are made. All important coordinates should he properly drawn with India ink. The coordmates should be spaced at least inch for an 8 X 10-inch graphical illustration. Most engineering graphs or curves are simply used to indicate a variation of functional relationships. They are seldom intended for the reader to obtain exact values from the curves. However, if this is the purpose, then the graphs should be as large as possible and should be accurately drawn.
Captions should be complete and informative enough to stand on their own. The reader should not have to refer to the text in order to understand the photograph, drawing, or graph. Some readers object to figure references in the text, on the basis that i t disturbs their train of thought, and they often must stop to look up the figure, then return to the text a t the place they leftif they can find it! An author can do much to simplify the mathematical form and complexity with which his manuscript appears. This is especially true if he deals with relatively simple fractions. In such cases it is highly desirable, from a typographical point of view, to write such equations with the free use of parentheses, brackets, and fraction bars, rather than to use a long dividing line with numerator above and denominator below. This latter practice requires a t least two or three lines of type and must be set by hand, whereas the recommended practice frequently makes it possible to set a relatively complicated equation of the fraction type on a typesetting machme. Typesetters are not mathematicians and the simpler the author can make the physical form of his mathematics, the more nearly certain he can be that his text will come through in the required manner on the proof. In modern textbooks and scientific volumes, there is a tendency to use ciearly marked text subdivisions. Center headings, side headings, and subheadings serve this purpose. Weights of each head should be uniform throughout the text. The author should set a definite pattern. Text divisions should be of reasonable length. Teachers usually prefer divisions of approximately equal size and not over a page in length. Footnotes, in books that are designed for ease of reading, are often objectionable. One writer compares footnotes to little dogs which run along barking to annoy the reader. Tables and illustrations, in addition to drawings and photographs, should be numbered consecutively for each chapter, using the decimal system. This permits easy revision. Tables should be appropriately captioned and should be planned for printing vertically across the page. Equations and formulas, if they are a t all numerous, should also be numbered consecutively for each chapter. Excerpts, problems, examples are generally set in smaller type than the body of the text. Most books give bibliographic references in the form of footnotes. Where these are numerous, it is better practice to arrange them alphabetically a t the end of each chapter. Of course, the extent of bibliography varies with the subject and the author, but excessively long references are not usually justifiable. Bibliographies should be confined to more or less easily accessible sources. Often the prospective reader uses the table of contents as a guide to determine whether the book will serve his purpose. Thus a good contents page is important. There are three ways of handling a contents page. First, it can be simply a list of chapter beadings. That
is the easiest. Or it can be a list of chapter headings with all subheadings in each chapter listed beneath. This makes a long involved page which might duplicate the index to a great extent. The method most preferred is to use chapter headings followed by certain important subheads arranged in paragraph form. This type of contents page gives the reader a quick comprehensive picture of the subjects covered in the book. I know of one very recent instance where an .author couldn't make up his mind about the contents page. He put in two, one of each type! Then he needed a third page to explain which contents page should be used. Obviously, any good technical work must have a complete subject index. This is of utmost importance if the book is to be of any use to the student or researcher. The aim of a good index should be workability. It should not be overloaded. Generally, if the author, instead of a professional indexer, does the indexing, overloading will be avoided, as the author will know the important points in his subject. An important rule to remember in indexing is "use concise qualifications of main titles to reduce to a minimum the number of page references opposite each heading." Indexes can be prepared by the use of 3 X 5-inch cards, arranged alphabetically, or by use of an alphabetically indexed loose leaf binder. On these pages or cards, the author can make all necessary markings for the printer, such as indents and the like. The trend today is to combine index and glossary, setting the page number that refers to the definition in bold type. You will earn the gratitude of the reader and the publisher if you follow one of the recognized standard dictionaries consistently throughout the text for spelling and abbreviations. For technical terms and abbreviations, many professional societies have set up standards. Some societies have prepared style sheets. American Standards Association has prepared such a sheet Consistency in spelling and hyphenating is important. It often pays to reread the text before submission, to ferret out misspellings, involved sentence constructions, and excess words. A manuscript which has been accepted for publication is marked for style and size of type, and is then set in type by the printer. The type is held in troughs or trays, called galleys, about 20 inches long. "Galley proofs" are printed and returned for checking against the original manuscript. No new material should be added, nor should extensive changes be made in these proofs. Such changes are always expensive and wasteful and should be avoided, particularly in technical books. The purpose of a technical book is to disseminate helpful and valuable information, and to contribute to the advancement of scientific progress in a particular field. A well-prepared and well-edited manuscript will make a more effective and useful book. Successful publishing can be achieved only when both author and publisher work together toward that end.
