leave a responseInevitably, unpublished writers obsess about page counts, word counts, and format. It’s hard to understand how your masterpiece in progress stands up, length-wise, to your favorite stories if you don’t know how format is done. I think this post by Jessica Faust over at Bookends will help.
Basically, don’t obsess. 
I write in TNR 12, though I’ve tried 14 and I’ve tried Courier 12. When I want to know how many words I have page-count-wise, I put the whole thing in Courier 12 and do the 250 words per page thing for an estimate. Inevitably, this differs from the actual computer count.
For an explanation why, go see the blog post. It might help. Or it might simply confuse the issue further. Just make it readable, and understand whether the publisher you are targeting wants computer count or page count. But don’t sweat the small stuff, really. Story is key. Not margins, and not font.
So have you encountered the format nazi? The one who tells you your pages MUST be in Courier 12, or else? I think I was that person once. *sigh* It’s what I was told. But, OTOH, I did encounter people writing in TNR 12 and estimating total word count by 250 words per page. Obviously, their count would have been quite a bit short….
I'm a USA Today bestselling author who writes sexy, sensational contemporary romance.
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LOL
I put it in Courier 12 because I like that font. So clear, so clean… and it brings back memories of typing on a typewriter.
Cyn
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I’ve gotten to where I like the look of TNR. But I always figure a Courier word count. And I remember telling you to write your college papers in Courier because you’d get the page count in fewer words. LOL! I think I was right about that one, though I did write my master’s thesis in TNR — there was no required page count though. Unlike some of those classes we took together that required a 10 page paper. Heck, I did Courier every time. *G*
Why work harder when you didn’t have to, especially when we had so many classes at once? Or I did anyway. Like the semester I took 16 credit hours. OMG, what was I thinking?! I know I was a bit dazed during it. That was the semester of Dr. Atkins’s critical thinking and writing up at Landstuhl…..
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LOL.. Yea, you were overambitious… for sure.
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TNR 12 makes my head hurt–my poor eyes! LOL
I usually do Arial 12 then switch to courier 12 before I send it to my editor LOL It’s kinda cheating because it bumps the page count up.
I do remember doing emails in my first manuscript and having contest judges ding me on format (when there really IS no format for doing emails in a manuscript LOL)