Formatting Guides

Agents, publishers, and those who matter most want to receive completed works in specific formats. Ignoring these formats can be disastrous — a great manuscript might be ignored.

Courier? But it is so plain!

Basic Guidelines

While not visually appealing, prepare manuscripts according to established standards. These standards have developed over many years for valid reasons. The basic rules are:

• Use a 12-point “Courier” font.
• Begin with a 1-inch margin around the page.
• Use 20-pound, medium to bright white paper.

Why Courier?

The “Courier” typeface and other monospaced fonts are easy to read and edit, especially at the 12-point size. Standard fonts make it possible to estimate a manuscript’s published length. For stage plays and screenplays, the formats used help estimate the length of a work, as performed or filmed.

Fiction manuscripts tend to be double-spaced. A 12-point Courier text manuscript page averages 200 to 225 words. Non-fiction varies by publisher, especially among academic journals. Some accept single-spaced manuscripts, meaning 350 to 450 words per page.

Margins

While most manuscript formats require 1-inch margins, some use “binding” margins. A common binding margin is 1.25 inches, but 1.5 inches is sometimes required. The wider left-hand margin offers the illusion of equal margins after the manuscript is bound.

Formatting Topics

Templates and Software

Most word processors include templates for writers. There are also specialized applications for formatting manuscripts. While you could use a typewriter, why would you? Computers have made life much easier for writers.