Formatting Problems

[TamiMason]

Hi all, I'm new here and having a bit of a problem! I spent a long time checking the guidelines before I submitted my first article, but didn't realise I had Word set to the wrong space in between lines, so the article was rejected. I went back to the article, and changed the line spacing so it said 1.0. However, I have had the article rejected again - comments say:

The formatting in the content details is hard to read. Please correct. //

Please format the article single-spaced with a space between each paragraph. //

Now I'm totally confused! I don't understand what the first comment means, and the second comment was the issue I thought I had sorted by changing line spacing to 1.0.
Can someone please advise me how to format the article because I'm obviously doing it wrong but don't understand why!
Thanks in advance for you help

[mnicol22]

Hello and welcome!

I use Word too to write my articles. I have set the Line Spacing option at 1.15 (or it was originally set at that, I don't really remember!) and have never had an article come back with spacing issues. However, there is a problem when you transfer your text to the CC form. If you leave one line between paragraphs on Word, you will notice that the space on the CC form disappears. In other words, you need to double-space between paragraphs in Word in order to have one line appear on the form.

I've heard that people using .rtf format have no such issues. However, I can't be of much help on that since I've been using Word my entire life!

[maryaz]

To make sure that I'm double-spacing between paragraphs in a way that will transfer to the CC form when I copy and paste for a text sample, I hit shift+enter twice when I'm going to start a new paragraph. That way there is a single-spaced line between the paragraphs, regardless of how Word is set up to format between paragraphs when you hit enter/return. I hope that makes sense!

[jellygator]

As mnicol says, using .rtf fixed the problem for me. I just type it into Word like always, then when I save it, I save it as .rtf (rich text format). Apparently this disables the .html markups that Word inserts.

I found that solution elsewhere in these forums, and since using .rtf I haven't had anything rejected over formatting.

[TamiMason]

Thank you all for the advice! I'm just so worried because if it gets rejected again, that'll be the 3rd time...