Formatting Query Letter Snafu--Tech Help please?

Cochinay · Apr 3, 2014

Shucks and jeepers. I tried so carefully to send out some really well formatted query letters with the text pasted into the emails as so often requested. In a very nice rejection I received (they're all so nice) I noticed that my email to the agent looked awful. The margins were crazy, the centered headings were off to the side, and other nutty things. My copy to myself looks fine.

So, OK, some help please. What did I do wrong? I format an email in Word, then paste into the email to the agent.

Do I need some other convention. Like selecting special options for HTML, Rich Text, etc.? Needless to say, I'm feeling like a bit of a dolt. Whatever advice would be appreciated. thx

Calla Lily · Apr 3, 2014

Hang on. I'm going to port this to Tech Help, since it's a formatting question rather than a content-of-query question.

Maryn · Apr 3, 2014

My understanding is that the sender cannot assume anything but text and blank spaces will come through to the recipient exactly as it appears in the outgoing email.

No centering. No italics. No "curly" apostrophes or quotation marks. No tabs or other indentations. No underlines. No bold. No indented blocks of text. No characters which don't appear on a typewriter keyboard.

While some of these things may arrive fully intact in some emails, you don't know for sure, so it's better to strip you excerpt down to the basics: straight up-and-down apostrophes and quotation marks, blank lines between paragraphs, and text, no special characters, not even properly accented foreign words.

This will always appear as it did when you sent it.

Maryn, who's seen some unreadable doozies in her inbox

Little Ming · Apr 3, 2014

Cochinay said:
Shucks and jeepers. I tried so carefully to send out some really well formatted query letters with the text pasted into the emails as so often requested. In a very nice rejection I received (they're all so nice) I noticed that my email to the agent looked awful. The margins were crazy, the centered headings were off to the side, and other nutty things. My copy to myself looks fine.

So, OK, some help please. What did I do wrong? I format an email in Word, then paste into the email to the agent.

Do I need some other convention. Like selecting special options for HTML, Rich Text, etc.? Needless to say, I'm feeling like a bit of a dolt. Whatever advice would be appreciated. thx

I don't know kind of formatting you did, but my general rule is DON'T. Query letter: two or three paragraphs, singled spaced, one space between each, no indent, no special font or formatting. To be extra careful, drop it into Notepad first to get rid of any special/weird/unnecessary formatting you might have missed.

Formatting Query Letter Snafu--Tech Help please?

Cochinay

Calla Lily

On hiatus

Maryn

Baaa!

Little Ming