Quick question, does anyone else put a small mf at the bottom of each page when writing short stories?

It's something I've always done - except on the last page obviously - but I wondered if it was still the done thing.

I'm aware that writing styles and presentation changes all the ruddy time, and I still write how I always have done - how do we find out if what we're doing is now old hat?

Kat

mf?


- NaomiM

I've always done it, too, because I've read advice that says you're supposed to. Mind you, the same advice also said to use Courier font, which is apparently not the correct thing to do.

I'd be interested in hearing an answer to this, too.

Alex

Oh, sorry, having a senior moment. mf = more follows.
Can't see that it's necessary if you number the pages.

I was always told to write - in large letters - THE END, when the MSS was complete as a way to state that there was nothing else to follow.
Mary

No, I don't, Katerina. I always put a header and footer with name, contact details, name of story and number of words, though, after once having had a front cover and first page of a story lost by a reader and no way of knowing it was mine. It was only me querying it months later when I'd neither sold it or had it returned, that the ed could finally give it an owner.

No, I agree, number and name the pages, and leave it at that.

I do write THE END too.

Looks like I've been reading some pretty ropey advice about how a manuscript should be written

Alex

I put the copyright on each page too (right hand footer), draft 1st, 2nd or maybe even 50th with the date (left hand footer)and the page number right hand header - here I make sure I put 1 of 200, 50 of 200 etc - that is also another way of letting them know whether any pages have gone missing.
Mary

Page numbers and header or footer with title and contact details unless it's anon for a comp.

Personal taste but I don't like The End at the end. It has a suggestion (on my own work - doesn't bother me at all on other people's) that I haven't written an ending sufficiently resounding for it to be obvious that it is the end. Instead I play with white space. I think white space is enormously important in how readers absorb a story. I always try to ensure that a story ends one third to half way down the last page, and adjust the amount of text on the opening page to achieve this. May be mere superstition but visually I think a story that ends right at the bottom of a page suggests subliminally to the reader that more should follow and they feel short changed. Text that ends in an orphaned line or two at the top of a final page comes over as underbaked.

Does anyone else react this way?

<Added>

Should add that mf on fiction has the same effect on me as The End. It may be very useful in business or non-fiction texts but in a well-written story, a reader can intuit that more is to follow, and will want more and seek the next page. If they don't, mf won't help the story's case.

Interesting, Cherys. I too have always hated when stories naturally end at the bottom of the page or one line into a new one but have never worked out how to "play about with white space."

I would have thought that mf is unnecessary since presumably the number of pages you hold in your hand will tell you this.

I'd never heard of 'mf' until now. I like The End...especially writing it! For some reason, with journalism, you write 'ends' instead...not sure why.

My understanding was that 'mf' was there to help the typesetter, rather than an editor, so that he/she knew that this wasn't the last page. The typesetter isn't doing a job which involves literary criticism, so the quality of the prose is irrelevant to him/her.

I also read that you are supposed to put 'ends', rather than 'The End', at the bottom of the last page. (And that it is supposed to be 2 lines down from the last line, and aligned so that it is immediately under the very last word of the last paragraph.)

Alex

Alex, I wouldn't worry too much, it can't be a problem because I'm still selling stories - I sold one two weeks ago and that had mf on each page!

We are all individuals, and do things differently.

To be honest, I think that as long as the ms is well presented, it doesn't matter if you have mf, or ends or The End or anything else.

Kat