How Fantasy Does Formatting

A week ago we looked at formatting for general fiction. Now we're going to look specifically at fantasy. We followed the same methodology and used the same questions. These were:
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• Did the books have headers?
• Were the headers in the same font and style as the text?
• Did they indent the first line after spaces?
• Were the chapters titled (as well as or in place of a number)?
• Was there artwork with chapter headings? 

Once again we also looked at line spacing, at least to the naked eye, and found all books were essentially single space.

Did the books have headers?

This was basically the same as last week's study. 52% of fantasy books in the sample did not have a header at the top of the page. 48% did. It seems to be a fairly even split down the middle. There was no great difference between the formats either. 

Were the headers in the same style as the text?

When books had headers, were they the same font and style as the rest of the text? Last week we found 94.5% of books sampled had headers with a distinct font and/or style. This weak it was a bit less with only 68%. But still, this seems to be a general preference. 

Did they indent the first line after spaces?

In general fiction we found no books indented after a space. We said at the time to watch out for this week. There is no obvious reason for it, but in the fantasy section 16% of books indented after a space, though somewhat haphazardly. The example above is taken from Raymond E. Feist. There was a bit of a mix in the one book. It seems there is a bit more artistic leeway when formatting fantasy.

Were the chapters titled?

No surprises here, at least for us. Whereas 95.5% of general fiction sampled last week just numbered their chapters (ie. Chapter 31, 31, #31, Chapter Thirty-One etc…), 53% of fantasy used titles as well (ie. “Deception”, “Turning Point” etc…).

Was there artwork with chapter headings?

Another one that is perhaps not a surprise - fantasy books were more likely than general fiction to have art work with their chapter headings. 31% of books sampled had artwork, compared to 3% of last weeks sample.

So what can authors take from this?
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• Headers are optional.
• When you use them, make them distinct from the text.
• If you break up your text with spaces, don't indent after the space.
• Fantasy books have more leeway with chapters and artwork.

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