You may have written the perfect query letter, but if you’re going to send it on florescent, scented paper, you can kiss your submission, as well as the accompany paycheck it may have brought, goodbye.

Stick to regular mail format. In fact, dump the regular format, and be welcomed into 2008 by going e-mail only.

I’m only partly kidding. Some writers still do send work by postal mail, and some editors still do accept it. Some editors claim to work only with writers who mail in their proposals. But they are very rare.

Personally, the last time I sent anything by mail was in 2004. It didn’t get a response. I sent the same proposal by e-mail, and I received an acceptance.

For those very rare times when you may need to format your submissions to send through postal mail, I’m including a short section on how to do that below. For the most part though, stick to e-mail. It’s convenient, it’s faster, and it’s the preferred mode of communication. It also saves trees.

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Formatting Fundamentals: Snail Mail

Formatting isn’t all that tough as it’s made out to be. Reading all those articles in writing magazines, you’d think you’re up against heavy competition and one misplaced comma is going to wreck your life. Not so. In fact, the query letter is just like any other ordinary business letter. If you got through sixth grade English without a problem, you probably already know how to do it. But sixth grade was a long time ago. So here’s a crash course.

* Use high quality white paper. Make sure the sheet is clean and there’s no smudging from the printer ink.

* Use a standard font or typeface. Times New Roman, size 12 is a safe bet. Avoid excessive bold, italics or underlining.

* Your name, address, phone number, e-mail and website address should be in the upper left-hand corner of the first page. You can also use your own letterhead, in which case your contact information will already be printed on it.

* Use a margin of at least 1″ on all sides.

* Address your query to a specific editor, preferably the department editor of the section you’re targeting. Don’t send letters addressed to “The Editor” or “Whoever it May Concern.”

* Your query letter should always follow a block format, which means no indentations, an extra line between paragraphs, and single line spacing.

* If your list of credits is going on too long, or you’d like to include a resume, consider attaching a separate sheet with only your credits or resume.

* Avoid fancy fonts, illustrations, goofy pictures or anything that is normally absent from formal communication.

* Don’t staple the pages together. Use a paperclip.

* Include a SASE or postcard for a reply and mention it in your cover letter.

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Formatting Fundamentals: E-mail

When I wrote this section just two years ago, I advised readers to keep a healthy balance between snail mail and e-mail. If a magazine doesn’t take e-mail queries, that’s fine, I said. Keep your options open.

In my experience, those days are now gone.

I have communicated with editors at some very well-respected publications, and most of them handle their business via e-mail. In fact, even if you make the first connection via snail mail, you will likely be asked to continue the relationship over e-mail.

Personally, I no longer use regular mail. But again, I recommend keeping options open. Whatever works.

The most overlooked aspect, and perhaps the most beneficial, of e-mail pitches is that the editor has to read at least one part of it—the subject line. So make it work for you. The format I usually follow is “Query: Creative Article Title.”

Be extra careful about your titles. Service pieces are the ones most in danger of being filtered out as spam as they tend to be of the how-to or take-an-action-now variety. The trick is to find some way to phrase the subject line so it doesn’t have any words that trigger off the filters. With a little care, you can easily turn your title “Lose Weight Now” to “10 Weighty Mistakes Smart Women Make.”

As a side note, don’t even try to disguise the fact that you’re sending a query letter. The last thing you want to do is have the editor think that your e-mail is spam and hit the delete key.

Another element unique to e-mail pitches is the “From:” header. What does yours say? The correct answer is your name. In my case, for example, all the e-mails I send are clearly marked from “Mridu Khullar.” However, I frequently get e-mails from people with cutesy nicknames of the JellyBeans or FloatingIce variety. Very unprofessional!

In a traditional query, your name, address, and other contact information go on top of the page. In an e-mail pitch, this information goes below your signature line. I sometimes create a separate “Contact  Me” block so that the editor can see it easily if she scrolls down the page. Include your phone number so the editor has the option of calling you.

If you don’t do so already, keep the graphic elements, including dancing crocodiles and silly emoticons out of professional correspondence. If you wouldn’t stick it on top of your professional letterhead, don’t stick it on top of (or below) your e-mails.

Finally, learn the difference between text and HTML e-mails. Better yet, learn the difference between text, rich-text, and HTML e-mails. Without getting into too many details, I’ll give you a simple tip that’ll save you a whole lot of headaches in many e-mail clients including MS Outlook and Outlook Express.

Open up a new e-mail, paste your query letter, look for the “Format” option and select “Plain Text.” That’ll change your e-mail to plain text, removing all peculiar formatting and symbols. Now look through the e-mail and change anything that looks like gibberish.

There are also options to make the default settings plain text. See if you can find them so that you don’t have to do this every time you send an e-mail.

You’re now officially ready to send your query letter.

Don’t miss out on this important step though. Unless you’re a computing pro—and even if you are—you have no idea what the e-mail is going to look like on your recipient’s computer or e-mail client. This way, at least you can be sure she’s going to get legible characters and not a bunch of gooblydoogock.

One last thing—certain spam filters will require people who send e-mail to you to confirm their identities by authorizing themselves through various methods, including identifying certain characters on the screen, counting the number of cats or dogs in a picture, or some other such time-consuming method. Editors don’t have the time to jump through hoops for you. If an editor wants to send you an acceptance (or even a rejection) and is required to go through various levels of spam filtering, she’s simply going to delete your e-mail address and give the assignment to someone else. If you’re using a method like this, whitelist your editor before she has a chance to e-mail you.