latex or word? (i.e. LaTeX typesetting system or MS Word)

[starscape]

I wonder how many here write with latex, because word always messes up my MS, and latex is much easier.

But, do agents or publishers prefer MS formatted by word? for example, latex always justfied and break word with hyphen. so after submitting for some time, I wonder if these could appear amatuerish ......

don't really get this though. the published novels are all typeset with latex right? wouldn't it be good if the MS looked as neat as a published?

thanks :D

[alleycat]

You can have it not do right justification in latex. Other than that, I don't think there would be a problem submitting a ms that was done in latex. I'm not sure though; I don't believe this question has come up before.

As to your second question, publishing has its own foibles of one sort or the other. People are used to one thing and it's probably best to keep everything as close to the written, or unwritten, standard as much as possible. Just "go with the flow".

I'm not sure why Word always messes up your ms. I don't have a problem with it generally (although I prefer Word 2003 rather than 2007).

[Mad Queen]

It doesn't matter what you use, as long as it conforms to the rules -- left-justified text, no hyphenation. You can do that with latex as well as with MS Word.
the published novels are all typeset with latex.
No, they aren't. My friend, who worked for a publishing house a long time ago, used Corel Ventura. A lot of computer books are formatted with latex. Novels, I don't think so.

[RJK]

If you're turning in sheets of printed paper, as long as you meet the format standards, it surely won't matter. When they ask for an electronic copy you may run into a problem if you're using a file format they don't have, or one that won't convert to the software they're using.

[Namatu]

I received a file in LATEX and couldn't use it, possibly because the author had also included tags. Tags are useless to me at the submission point. The copy editor won't work with them, and it makes reading the ms a mess. Come to think of it, he never did resubmit in Word. Darn it!

[Michael J. Hoag]

Latex!?
Word!?
I thought publishers these days required all manuscripts to be submitted using these (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Blood_Quill):


http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/harrypotter/images/9/99/Blood_Quill.jpg

[NeuroFizz]

Okay, so I slipped on a pair of bend-over gloves and no matter how hard I press, I can't get them to leave any marks whatsoever on my paper.

[Namatu]

That joke was only a matter of time... :ROFL:

[dpaterso]

I'd never even heard of LaTeX (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=Latex+publishing) before reading this thread.

Since the majority of writers use a word processor and not a specialized typesetting system, I don't think this question has any relevance.

As well as native .doc files, MS Word can also export Rich Text Format files. So there's never going to be a problem with providing a publisher with useable electronic copy.

-Derek

[Namatu]

More memory is coming back to me. The author submitted in LaTeX, I couldn't open it, resubmitted as .RTF with all the tags still in place. I still can't use it because of the tags. Don't annoy your editor! Use a word processing program.

[cool_st_elizabeth]

Hmmm ... I own an extremely small publishing company, which has published two printed books and three ebooks so far. I wrote all of them in plain text, then put them in LaTeX, eventually producing .pdf files. For me, I think it would be too distracting to write directly in LaTeX. I always do my writing in plain text, unless I'm intending to submit the piece to a market which I know needs Word or .rtf files ... I don't even have Word nowadays, I use OpenOffice.org.

[starscape]

Thank you for all your feedbacks.

Okay, so I just made latex stop justifying my MS and breaking words.

FYI, I write in plain text, and usually submit PDF if possible. Besides, I got lots of footnotes. Word messes up line-spacing etc. Latex instructions are much easier for me and I can focus on the story. just a \footnote{bla bla} in plain text.

I'm not sure why Word always messes up your ms. I don't have a problem with it generally (although I prefer Word 2003 rather than 2007).

I don't know why word messes up my MS. when I wrote my thesis in word, typeset in 12pt, and some sentences and paras were still default 10 pt. I was so embarrassed before my professor.


Latex!?
Word!?
I thought publishers these days required all manuscripts to be submitted using these:




Nice joke BTW. And it's true. We write with our blood. ^^

I wish I have Rita Skeeter's quill. XD

[terry]

LaTeX is wonderful, but it has a steep learning curve for the unintiated. The classic line is that it's easy to do things that should be ridiculously complicated (like including matrices of math formulae with lots of greek letters and recursive subscripts and superscripts) but hard to do things that should be ridiculously easy (like changing the margins.)

For anyone pondering, I'd say go with what you know. If an editor really wants it in word format down the road, it probably wouldn't take more than a few hours to convert it, anyway.

One thing that does take a while in LaTeX is figuring out all of the spacing when you're ready to produce the final printable book--you have to get all the overfull and underfull vboxes and hboxes right. But it's manageable.

(I write in TeX because it's what I'm used to, and because I find emacs keystrokes more familiar than Word keystrokes. Also because it feels like I'm able to focus more on the content if I'm not worrying about the formatting while I'm writing it. Even a page break is a little skip from the story.)

[Sophia]

This takes me back. :) I used LaTeX for academic papers and for my thesis, as it was what the journal publisher used. There was a template that we had to write the papers to. It wasn't as intuitive as something like MS Word to get started with, but it was good once you got going, it didn't do unexpected formatting things and the final printed result was definitely very polished looking. I never considered that novel publishers used it, too.

As long as you produce a printed version in the format the agent / editor is asking for, it doesn't matter how you do it. It might be a problem if they request an electronic file in a format that they can work with. I have a vague memory of using a LaTeX to Word converter, but I can't remember which one; a Google search suggests several options (http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=latex+to+word+conversion&ie=UTF-8).