EDITING HARD RETURNS

 FORMATTING YOUR MANUSCRIPT IN MS WORD

Over the next few posts, I’ll be focusing on how to fix formatting errors that can accidentally enter your Microsoft Word document and get your manuscript ready for publishing on Amazon KDP.

One of the easiest ways to avoid a lot of these issues is to download KDP’s MS Word templates and write your story directly in it. Before you start typing, though, make sure to use “Save As” and rename the file with your work-in-progress title. This will save you some time-consuming formatting later on.

TEMPLATE LINK

HARD RETURNS

Hard returns (pressing Enter) are often the culprit when chapters set at the wrong page or won't stay aligned. In Microsoft Word, these are invisible by default, but you can easily reveal them to clean up your formatting.

1. Show Hidden Formatting Marks

The easiest way to find where your hard returns are located:

·       On the Home tab, in the Paragraph group, click the icon that looks like this: ¶.

·       Once enabled, every hard return will appear as a ¶ symbol. Highlight them where they’re not needed and hit delete.  Or, Use "Find and Replace"

If you have dozens of extra returns, deleting them manually is tedious. You can use the Find and Replace tool to remove them all at once.

·       Press Ctrl + H or Click on to Home tab, Editing and Replace.

·       In the Find what box, type: ^p^p (this represents two consecutive hard returns).

·       In the Replace box, type: ^p (this replacing the two hard returns with a single return).

·       Click Replace All until Word says it has made zero replacements.

    NOTE: When you are in process of editing your manuscript, keep the ¶ symbol ON to be able to quickly notice if any extra Hard Returns re-entered your document.