The Cover Letter

Your cover letter should be in block format like this one. What is block format? It's similar to what you usually see on Internet web sites where a line separation is used instead of an indentation at the start of new paragraphs. Notice that everything is left-aligned and that the right margin is left ragged rather than using "paragraph justification". Use single-line spaced paragraphs rather than the double-line spacing you'll use in your manuscript. You can use any font for your cover letter that has serifs. I'm real partial to Georgia. Many people use Times New Roman. Some people may place their name/address info on the right side, but the overwhelming majority of cover letters are formatted exactly like mine is here. Use 1" margins all around. It's okay to use italics and bold type in the cover letter. You can use a dash too instead of two hyphens. I usually stick to two hyphens since I've noticed that most editors use them in their own correspondences. I'm not going to tell you what to say in your cover letter; there are several web sites out there that already do that pretty well. I'm just going to show you the formatting involved; that is, what it should look like. The formatting for cover letters is the same whether submitting a proposal for a book or for a magazine.