Before you split or divide the sheet, press the paper-knife all along the fold, so as to flatten the crease, and make it cut evenly and easily. Having split your whole sheets into leaves or half-sheets, take each half-sheet separately, and fold over an inch or more all along the left-hand edge; so as to leave a margin or space for sewing the manuscript when finished. Do this with the paper-knife. Lay a pile of these half-sheets beside you when you sit down to write, and take them as you want them.
Write only on one side of the paper. If written on both sides, it will cause trouble and inconvenience to the printers, by obliging them to turn over at the end of every page. This rule, however, may be dispensed with, when a manuscript is so short that it may be comprised in one sheet, and is to be transmitted by mail. This may be the more easily managed, by drawing with a pencil or pen a straight perpendicular line down the middle of each page, so as to divide it into columns. When it is finished, enclose it in an envelope, direct, and seal it, and put on a post-office stamp. If the manuscript occupies two or three sheets, put two or three stamps side by side. There are large envelopes that will hold foolscap paper, properly folded.
Do not use blue ink; for if any part of your manuscript should chance to get wet, there is a risk of the blue ink being effaced or obliterated by the damp, so as to render the writing illegible; and this has frequently happened.
Let your writing be large enough, and plain enough to be read with ease, and the compositor will be less likely to make mistakes. Printers, though accustomed to read all sorts of writing, are sometimes completely at a loss in deciphering a very bad hand. There is no excuse for a person in respectable life persisting in writing illegibly, as it is never too late to improve. You have only to take lessons of a good instructor, and apply yourself sedulously to acquiring a new hand, and you will succeed in doing so.
Do not, in writing for the press, affect the crowquill calligraphy that is fashionable for album verses and complimentary billets. When your manuscript is finished, sew the leaves evenly together, with nothing more than a strong thread; or, if it is very thick, it may be sewed with a fine twine put into a large needle. A handsome cover, daintily fastened with a pretty ribbon, is of no account in a printing-office, where the first thing that is done with a manuscript is to remove the cover, and cut the leaves loose from the fastening. The printers will gladly dispense with covers, ribbons, and fairy-like penmanship, in favour of a plain legible hand, pages regularly numbered, and leaves written on one side only.
In commencing a manuscript, write the title or caption in large letters, at some distance from the top of the first page; and if you are not anonymous, put your name a little below the title. Then begin the first line of the first paragraph, several inches distant from the left-hand side, or margin. In this manner commence every paragraph. The length of the paragraphs may be regulated by the time when you think a pause longer than that of a period or full stop may be effective; or to give the reader an opportunity of resting for a minute; or to denote the commencement of another subject.
In writing a dialogue, begin every separate speech with a capital, and commence each speech on a new line, and at some distance from the left-hand margin. Also mark the beginning and end of every speech with double commas. If the names of the speakers are given at the commencement of every speech, write those names in large letters, putting a dot and a dash after them. All these arrangements are the same in writing as in printing.
If you are, unfortunately, not familiar with the rules of punctuation, refresh your memory by referring to them in a grammar-book. They must be strictly observed; otherwise your meaning will be unintelligible. Always remember that every period or full stop, and every note of interrogation, or of admiration, must be followed by a capital letter, beginning the next word. Dashes, particularly in a dialogue, add much to the effect, if not used too lavishly.
Errors of orthography are rarely committed by any one who presumes to write for the press. It is scarcely possible for a person who reads much to spell incorrectly, as the appearance of the printed words becomes insensibly and indelibly fixed in the mind. Still it may be well to write with a dictionary on your table, in case you should have any doubt as to the proper spelling and meaning of a word with which you may not be very familiar.
Keep also a grammar on your table. Grammatical errors are annoying to the reader, and disgraceful to the writer, unless it is well known that she has not had the advantage of an education, even at a common school. Then she is to be pitied. But it is never too late to study grammar, and she had best do so before she ventures to write for the public. If she writes ungrammatically, how must she talk! In a work of fiction it is shocking to have lords and ladies, or the noble and dignified hero, and the elegant and refined heroine, conversing in “bad grammar,” because the author knew no better. Yet such books we have seen. There are, luckily, not many of them. But there should be none.