when pasting into body of email...

elinor · Jul 21, 2014

Should the submitted sample pages/chapters be the same font as the query letter itself? (ATM Helvetica) or the standard Times New Roman? (Obviously still 12pt/double spaced). I'm having some hesitancy because I know I have heard time and again that I should avoid multiple fonts in an email. So would that mean I need to change my standard font for emails as a whole to be Times New Roman? Maybe overthinking this. Not sure.

Maryn · Jul 21, 2014

What many of us do for pasting into email is a format change.

I make mine single spaced with blank lines between paragraphs. I use the email's default font, or whatever I've set it to. I make sure my apostrophes and quotation marks are straight up and down, not curly. (Those often "translate" poorly in email.) I remove italics and underlines.

I test mail it to myself at different email services, like gmail, yahoo, and earthlink. If I have a buddy I trust, I also send it to him or her to make sure it comes through clean.

Then I send it out.

Maryn, not worrying so much about this aspect

elinor · Jul 21, 2014

Maryn said:
What many of us do for pasting into email is a format change.

I make mine single spaced with blank lines between paragraphs. I use the email's default font, or whatever I've set it to. I make sure my apostrophes and quotation marks are straight up and down, not curly. (Those often "translate" poorly in email.) I remove italics and underlines.

I test mail it to myself at different email services, like gmail, yahoo, and earthlink. If I have a buddy I trust, I also send it to him or her to make sure it comes through clean.

Then I send it out.

Maryn, not worrying so much about this aspect

I feel sort of like I've got the actual query format down pretty good, I'm just worrying a lot over how to format the synopsis/sample stuff - whether those should be default font as query, or whether I should change them to be exact same format as query - including no indentations. I've read a lot where they're like "just copy/past" like Nathan Bransford, but I'm still worrying. So far my synopsis matches format of query - helvetica, single space, single space between paragraphs, no indentations. But sample pages make me nervous.

Corinne Duyvis · Jul 21, 2014

Pasted-in sample pages should be the same as query/synopsis, for sure. The less mark-up, the better.

Jennifer_Laughran · Jul 21, 2014

I'm looking at the words, not the font. Simple and unobtrusive - preferably either the default email font or another normal font - default "normal" size - black - the end. Don't overthink this.

when pasting into body of email...

elinor

Maryn

At Sea

elinor

Corinne Duyvis

My New Cat Is Too Big for Shoulders

Jennifer_Laughran

knows what she's looking for when she finds it!