There are many things you can do to help your editor/formatter return a clean manuscript to you. Here is one of them. This has a bit more to do with formatting, but, trust me, the better job you do, the better job they can do for you.
Maybe you are saying, "I don't need to do any of that. It's what I'm paying them for."
I respond, "Yes, but unless you are prepared to pay by the hour, giving an editor/formatter a sloppy manuscript is inviting disaster."
No human being can catch all the mistakes on one pass if the errors are numerous. I charge depending on how many times I have to go through a work to make it clean. My rates are reasonable (I want Indie Authors to succeed), but if I have to go through twice, it's going to cost more. And if the formatting is a mess, the formatting will cost correspondingly more.
Here is my number one tip. DON'T USE THE TAB KEY to start a new paragraph.
Using the computer is not the same as a typewriter. Sure, the tab key was what we did "back then," but I'll bet you were drilled to use the tab key rather than to hit the space bar 5 times. This is the same kind of thing. What I'm going to show you is way better, and more powerful for those people who will come after you to work on the manuscript.
Probably the most popular word processing program is Word. Instead of indenting paragraphs with the tab, do this. (different versions may have a slightly different interface)
Begin by setting the first line indent of every paragraph this way. Under Layout, click on expanded Paragraph options (arrow points to the icon). The window you see in this graphic will open. In the upper circle, choose Special/First Line, and then whatever indent you want. The default is 0.5 inch, which I usually think is too much. I like 0.3. In the lower circle, choose Set as Default. Then you will have an option for all documents or just this one. Whichever you like is fine.
In the above graphic you can see that all the text is aligned to the left. But after you choose OK in the window, Every first line of a paragraph in the text will indent by that magic amount. The result, below, is the half inch indent. You may agree that it's too much. So cut it back to something a little less. You can change the entire document in ONE flash!
Other word processors will have some similar option. I'll show you how in Google Docs another day.
I will stop for now with just this one tiny lesson.
