Standard manuscript format is a formatting style for manuscripts of short stories, novels, poems and other literary works submitted by authors to publishers. Even with the advent of desktop publishing, making it possible for anyone to prepare text that appears professionally typeset, many publishers still require authors to submit manuscripts within their respective guidelines. Although there is no single set of guidelines, the "standard" format describes formatting that is considered to be generally acceptable.
Although publishers' guidelines for formatting are the most critical resource for authors, style guides are also key references for authors preparing manuscripts since "virtually all professional editors work closely with one of them in editing a manuscript for publication."
Manuscript formatting depends greatly on the type of work that is being written, as well as the individual publisher, editor or producer. Writers who intend to submit a manuscript should determine what the relevant writing standards are, and follow them. Individual publishers' standards will take precedence over style guides.
Features
In general, a document with standard manuscript format will have the following features:
- 8.5"×11" or A4 paper size.
- Courier or a similar monospaced serif font.
- 12-point (10 Pitch (typewriter)|) or 10-point (12 pitch) font size.
- Double-spaced lines of text (set in a word processor as 24-point or 20-point line spacing according to the chosen font size).
- 24 or 25 lines of text.
- 1, 1.25 or 1.5 inch margins.
- Paragraph indentation of 0.5 inches.
- Printed one-sided with black ink.
On the first page of the document, the author's name and contact information appears in the top left corner. In the top right corner of the first page, the word count appears.
Page numbers, author's name, and title on every page ensure that if an unstapled manuscript is shuffled on a table, shared among two or more people, or dropped, it can easily be reassembled, and if a stack of unstapled manuscripts is dropped, it can easily be sorted into the correct sets.
Other manuscript formats
There are formatting conventions for different kinds of written works, including:
- Plays and screenplays
- Novels and novellas
- Essays and longer nonfiction works
- Stories and collections of stories
- Poems and collections of poems
- Research or academic papers
See also
- Draft document
- Preprint
- Manuscript format
- Style guides
- List of style guides
- Sentence spacing
- Sentence spacing in language and style guides