Manuscript format: standard settings and title page example

Standard manuscript format is the plain, deliberately unexciting layout agents, editors and magazines expect when you submit writing. It exists so that every manuscript on their desk looks the same, reads easily and has room for notes, and so that nothing about the page distracts from the words.

Most of it traces back to typewriter conventions, codified in what is usually called Shunn format after William Shunn's widely used guide. Individual agents vary a little. When their submission guidelines say something different, their guidelines win, so read them before each submission, even to an agency you have already queried once.

What are the standard manuscript format settings?

The table follows Shunn's guide, the usual source for these conventions. Where agents commonly differ, both options are given.

Two of those catch people most often. Justification: the manuscript is ragged right, because even word spacing makes it easier to read and to edit. A typeset book is often justified; a manuscript never is. Justified or ragged right explains why the two differ.

Paragraph spacing: indented first lines and no gap between paragraphs, not the block style of a web page or an email. If your draft lives in Google Docs or Markdown with blank lines between paragraphs, this is the setting to change on export.

What goes on the first page?

For a short story, everything goes on page one. For a novel, it usually goes on a separate title page. Either way it holds the same things:

1. Top left, single-spaced: your legal name, address, phone number and email.
2. Top right: the approximate word count.
3. Centred, about a third to halfway down: the title, and under it "by" and the name you publish under.
4. For a short story, the text begins a couple of lines below the byline. For a novel, chapter one starts on the next page.

This is the title page for a manuscript, and it is the part people search for an example of. Laid out, it looks like this:

Jane Doe                                        About 85,000 words
12 Example Street
Anytown, ST 00000
(555) 555-0100
jane@example.com




                          THE LONG QUIET

                           by Jane Doe

If you write under a pen name, the contact block carries your legal name and the byline carries the pen name.

How do you round the word count?

Round it. A manuscript's word count is an estimate for the editor, not an audit, and an exact figure looks inexperienced.

• Short stories: round to the nearest 100.
• Novels: round to the nearest 1,000.

Use your word processor's count. The old method of multiplying lines by words per line came from typewriters and is no longer expected. If you want a sense of what that count becomes as a printed book, word count to page count does the conversion. It will not match the manuscript's page count, which double spacing roughly doubles.

What does the header look like?

From page two onward, a line at the top right reads:

Doe / The Long Quiet / 14

Surname, one or two key words of the title, and the page number. The purpose is practical: if printed pages are dropped or separated, they can be put back in order and returned to the right writer.

How do you mark scene breaks and the end?

A scene break inside a chapter is a centred # on its own line. A blank line alone is not enough, because it disappears at the bottom of a page and the break is lost. Some agents accept three asterisks; the principle is the same, a visible mark.

A short story ends with a centred "END" or "# # #". A novel manuscript simply ends at the last chapter, though "THE END" does no harm.

Is manuscript format the same as a book layout?

No, and this is the point worth being clear about. A submission manuscript is a working document. Double spacing, Courier-era margins and ragged right exist so an editor can read it quickly and mark it up. It is meant to be read by a handful of people and then replaced.

A finished book is typeset for readers. It is single-spaced at 10–12 point, often justified, with a trim size, mirrored margins, running heads, chapter openings and front and back matter. None of that belongs in a submission, and none of the submission's settings belong in the book.

If you are going the traditional route, the publisher does the typesetting and your only job is the manuscript format above. How to write a non-fiction book proposal covers the rest of that submission. If you are self-publishing, nobody wants a manuscript-format file: KDP, IngramSpark and the ebook stores want the typeset book. Self-publishing vs traditional publishing covers the choice between the two.

What a self-published book needs instead

The self-publisher skips the submission format and goes straight from edited text to a typeset book. What is typesetting explains what that step involves, and book typography for people who are not typographers gives the settings that replace the ones in the table above.

This is the problem bukpress is for. You keep the manuscript as Markdown (clean text, with headings for chapters and a centred break where a scene changes), and bukpress typesets it into a PDF with real margins, controlled line height and chosen typefaces, plus a reflowable EPUB from the same file. If your draft is in Word, Word to Markdown covers converting it cleanly, and how to control page breaks in Markdown handles the chapter openings.

The honest limit: bukpress pages are A4, which suits non-fiction, workbooks and handbooks rather than a trade paperback novel for a press. And it does not produce submission manuscripts. For an agent, your word processor with the settings above is the right tool. From Markdown draft to published book is the whole self-publishing route.

Common questions

What is standard manuscript format?

A plain submission layout: 12-point Times New Roman or Courier, double-spaced, one-inch margins, left-aligned, with a header and a title page. Agents and editors expect it unless their guidelines say otherwise.

Is a manuscript single or double spaced?

Double-spaced throughout the text. Only the contact block on the first page is single-spaced.

Should a manuscript be in Times New Roman or Courier?

Either is accepted. Times New Roman is more common now; Courier is the traditional choice and some editors still prefer it.

Do I need a manuscript template?

It helps. Set the font, spacing, margins, indents and header once in a word-processor template and every submission starts correct.

Do self-published books use manuscript format?

No. Manuscript format is for submissions. A self-published book is typeset: single-spaced, at a trim size, with running heads and a print-ready PDF and EPUB.