In a previous post, I showed you how to Remove The Extra Sections, Breaks, and Spaces Before Submitting or Formatting Your Book. This is not the only messy situation you might encounter in your manuscript. Your punctuation can be just as inconsistent, which causes major issues when formatting your book. Plus, your book looks sloppy, and sloppy books get bad reviews. Below is an example of inconsistent punctuation.
Forgive my pathetic use of ellipsis and em dashes while you take a look at the punctuation in red. See the em dash after “mood?” Now look at the em dash between “him” and “as.” I’ve seen many manuscripts with this inconsistency throughout, or there’s a mix of en dashes (shorter) with em dashes (longer). The best and proper punctuation format is the longer em dash that is after “mood.” Now look at the quotation marks and notice they are not the same type. We all know you should always use the pretty slanted symbol before “Mitchel,” but the straight quotation marks somehow seem to sneak their way in. The final example is the ellipsis. For formatting purposes, always use the one that displays as one punctuation mark and not 3 periods. The reason for this is that 3 periods in an eBook will separate, so you could have one period on one line and start the next line with the remaining periods. An ellipsis will stay with the preceding text.
Once again, you can simply use Find/Replace to fix these issues in a blink of an eye. Here’s how.
1. Open your manuscript in MS Word.
2. Open Find and Replace with CTRL+H. Or locate the Editing section on the Home tab and hit the down arrow on the Find option on the upper-right side, and choose the Advanced Find… option.
NOTE: In some cases you can copy a symbol from your manuscript such as straight quotes, or you can use a carat code (^), or use the Special pull down at the bottom of the Find and Replace dialog box. Note that not all punctuation has a caret code, so the process below is a bit inconsistent.
3. Find straight double quotes ( “ ) using ^034 and Replace by typing in the fancy double quotation mark ( “ ). The correct left or right will insert where needed. Rarely, a quotation mark inserts backward, but the only way to find it is by reading through the text.
4. Find straight single quotes ( ‘ ) using ^039 and Replace with fancy single quotation mark ( ‘ ). Again, the correct left or right style will insert, but they too can insert backward on rare occasions.
5. Find em dashes with 2 dashes ( — ) and Replace with actual em dashes (—) or ^+ or select it from the Special characters pulldown at the bottom of the Find window.
6. Find ellipses with three separate periods ( … ) and Replace with the ellipsis character (…) or ^0133. Note there is no ellipsis option under Special Characters.
7. And don’t forget to save your changes.
More About Caret Codes
At this point you might be wondering how to find other caret codes for other forms of punctuation. Here’s the easiest way to find them in MS Word. This is so much easier than doing a Google search, which I did countless times to no avail. Please let me know if you find a decent list of them. I couldn’t even find these instructions anywhere, so I had to figure it out myself.
1. Click on the Insert tab, then go to the far right, to the Symbols section.
2. Click on Symbol, then More Symbols. A box of symbols will pop up.
3. In the top box, find the punctuation or symbol you need and click on it.
4. At the bottom right, find the Character Code and From fields. Click on the from option and choose ASCII (decimal).
5. Make note of the character code for use in Find/Replace. Enter it there with a preceding caret (^) and a zero (0). For example, if you looked up the ellipsis in the symbols, you’ll find the character code 133, so you’d enter ^0133 in the Find field.
Now go spit shine that manuscript and impress agents. If you’re self publishing, you’ll save yourself A LOT of time.
If you come across something you don’t know how to fix, go to Services > Ask a Book Formatting Question in the menu and let me know how I can help.
I am the founder of ArmLin House, as well as the Chief Editor and Creative Director. For over thirty-five year, I’ve worked in technology, business development, marketing, writing, and publishing jobs. In the last 5 years I’ve returned to school and have become a graphic designer and social media video editor. In general, I have A LOT of experience in A LOT of industries and I love to help people, which is one of our main missions as a company. Learn more about me on my LinkedIn page.