I'm not on Twitter, so rely on their website for submission requirements. The 'latest guidelines' there are dated September last year. They don't match what has been seen, by some, on Twitter, and apparently the tweets didn't have the tone of a joke, so I'm not sure.
When I know more, I'll post an update.
And here's the update, from Alan at TPF.
Hello! Everyone on the "Friend" is very busy, as you know, so from today onwards we won't be accepting submissions that have double line spacing or have formatting.
We also need double quotes for direct speech.
Please DO NOT have headers, footers or page numbers on your document. You must adhere to our word counts. 10% UNDER is OK, but not over.
It's taking up more and more time to get documents ready for our publishing system and that's why we're asking! Thank you!
10 comments:
It is confusing. In some respects, they reflect what I thought we were already supposed to do (no formatting) but if we're not supposed to use double spacing, what do we use??? That's if it's not an April Fool of course!
Well, I just use 1.5 or or single line spacing. It's never been a problem for me with the mags. I wouldn't say that the fiction guidelines have changed -it's just the formatting guidelines. All they're asking you to do is drop the double line spacing, that's all.
Just on Twitter
The People's Friend
@TheFriendMag
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4m
Good morning! Just to clarify what we're asking for when it comes to submitting a story...
It must be on a Word document. Use single line spacing and no formatting. That's it!
Thank for clarifying. I'm afraid I've never used indents either. I was told by other womag writers that I should use them but the mags don't seem to have a problem with it.
I use single spacing, no indents, but I do separate between paragraphs to show a difference in time and use ** as well - does this mean I shouldn’t? Still confused!
I also use 3 asterisks and a space break to indicate a passing of time. I'm still going to use them. It should be ok, because they haven't told us to take these out. They said 'that's it ' so I'd go by their guidance.
I've just updated my post with the information Alan sent in response to my request for information.
I think this means they want single spacing, no indents, no lines between paragraphs, nothing on the story document except the actual story (no headers, footers etc) no bold, italics, etc no extra spaces anywhere or different fonts – but then I thought I'd got it right when they first said no formatting and it now seems I wasn't.
I think they also want your details on the story itself, a brief synopsis and whether it's a seasonal story or not. That's how I understand it, anyway but I'm not a TPF story writer and I haven't got an editor.
Does breaking it up into paragraphs count as formatting?
It would probably help if they presented an example of exactly what they want.
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