It’s hard to believe, but a simple header can make your submission stand out from the crowd. Headers can make your submission not only professional, but memorable. I receive many submissions each week, some of which are simply labelled, “Faraway Submission.” The body of the submission then does not include the author’s name, and there is no header. To figure out who the work belongs to now, I have to go back through my emails, searching for the person who sent me the vague “Faraway Submission.” In my own situation, this is not too terrible. But for other editors who deal with hundreds of submissions and work on a tight deadline, not including a header can predispose them to reject your work. Reader below to find out what you should include in your header, and how to use it.
What is a header?
A header is a simple headline that runs across the top of each page which lists basic information about the submission, such as the author’s last name and the title of the submission.
Why should I use a header?
A header will put your name and the title of the story easily at the editor’s disposal. As an editor, I can’t tell you how much this simplifies my work. Scrolling to the top of the story is not really a hassle, but oftentimes an author will not include their name in the file name or at the top of the file. Using a header makes this information easily-available, and it makes your document look professional.
What should a header include?
There’s no one correct answer here. At the bare minimum, a header should include your last name and the name of your story. I often see them formatted: “Sawyer/Quid Pro Quo.” You can also have “Sawyer” written in the upper left corner, and the title, in this example, “Quid Pro Quo,” in the right corner. Some authors also include the word count, as this is important for many publishers. In this case, you could put “Sawyer/Quid Pro Quo” in the left corner, and “2,000 words” in the right. There are a lot of different possibilities, but you should be all right as long as your name and the title of your story are included in the header of each page.
How do you make a header?
There are right ways and wrong ways to do headers. The simplest way is just to type in the information yourself across the top of each page. But this is the wrong way to do it. What happens after you’ve done that is that the person putting the magazine together now has to go back through and delete your manually-input headers because they throw off the formatting. The right way to do it is to use the header feature in your word processor. In Microsoft Word, there is very easy.
In Microsoft Word, go to “View” then “Headers and Footers.” This will open a small frame at the top of the page, in which you can type your header. The toolbox window that appears will also allow you to insert preset options. To get out of the header, double-click on the main body of the page. To edit the header, you can just double-click in the header frame.
Extra Reminder: Be sure to make the name of your file distinctive. If I look in my submissions folder and see five files titled “Faraway Submission” or “Poetry Submission”, it makes it a hassle to find exactly what I’m looking for. You should title your file something along these lines, using the example of my story above: “Quid Pro Quo by Daniel Sawyer.wpd.” This will allow editors to quickly find your story, and your file will stand out from the crowd that just used some mundane file name.