"Please use standard margins"?

[sandradalton]

My article "DUI Implied Consent Law: Can I Refuse a DUI Breathalyzer or Blood Test?" was rejected with the following comment:

Please use standard margins when you submit articles to Constant Content.

I don't know what I need to do diferent. I did not change the margins from the default set in Word. I can't find any information on margins in the guidelines. What do I need to do?

Thanks,
Sandi

[SJHillman]

I searched through the guidelines and forum posts... no answer, although the questions has been asked before.
What was suggested in one old post is to save the file as .rtf, which will preserve formatting but you won't have to worry about margins.

When I used LibreOffice, my margins were set to .79" all the way around. When I used Word, the default was 1" all the way around. I never had either format rejected. It could just be a fluke or a weird document corruption issue. If you don't want to use rtf, I would double-check that you have 1" margins and resave it, then open it on another PC just to be sure it looks the same.

Also, what version of Word are you using? 2003 and newer should have no issues. I've used 2003, 2007 and 2010 within the past year with no problems, as well as Office 365 (the online version). Word 2000, XP, 97 or older may or may not have issues when saving the file.

[sandradalton]

Thank you. I've tried it and I'll write back to say whether it fixed the problem or not. I also asked about it in the comments to the editor, so hopefully will have an answer to post that others can find in the future.

I've never had this problem before, but this is the first time I've submited and article since I got this computer, with a newer version of Word than I was using in the past. I suspect that has something to do with it, and I would love to know how to avoid this problem in the future. I hope sending .rtf is the answer.

[sandradalton]

I resubmitted in .rtf and it was accepted, so I'm assuming that fixed the problem.