NEW! Watch Heather von Doehren's video on how to format your manuscripts!

Alternatively, you can also view it here: http://blip.tv/file/759429  

Up until this point, we have not posted any formatting requirements for submissions.  We didn’t worry about it because when we put together the final product, every manuscript has to be reformatted anyway to meet our style guide and be placed into our layout application.  What we’ve learned, however, is that certain formatting choices make life a bit easier for our editors.  So here they are:

Relief’s Formatting Requirements:

• Use a basic 12pt font like Times, Ariel, Helvetica, etc.

• Double space your fiction and creative nonfiction manuscripts (poetry can be spaced as appropriate for the poem.)

• In the document’s header, please include your name, the name of the work you are submitting, and the page number (if the document is only one page, this may not be necessary).

• Make sure the title, your name, and your contact information, especially your email address, are on the first page of the document, along with a word count for fiction and creative nonfiction or line count for poetry.

• Though you may submit up to 5 poems, Poems should be submitted separately so that they can be reviewed separately.

• Poems that continue onto a second page should include a note of either “continued with stanza break” or “continued without stanza break."

If you have already submitted your work, we will not reject anything solely based on its formatting; however, if you would like to make some quick formatting changes, you can edit your document.  Click on “Edit Details” next to the appropriate submission, then click on “browse” to submit your revision, then “update” to make the change.

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