The Industry Standard Manuscript

As both a writer and as an editor of a literary journal (County Lines), I live and breathe manuscripts. I construct them for myself in preparation for submissions to publishers and I review hundreds upon hundreds of them every year.

I can also review your manuscript or assist in ensuring it meets a publisher's specific guidelines. For such services, check out my little shop. Or contact me and we can chat.

Like everything, there is a method. A convention. A convention of consistency and sameness. The publishing industry has its expectations, and if you are serious about writing, you need to be serious about ensuring your manuscript is formatting professionally and as expected.

Fortunately, publishers follow one set of guidelines fairly. A set of guidelines for short stories, long stories, screenplays, and poetry. Poetry is a bit looser in how they wish manuscripts to be formatted, but … there is still a convention.

The Templates

Provided below are links to a industry standard templates to help you get started. I do 99% of my writing and revision, scene by scene, in what is really just a glorified text editor. When I feel the work is "finished," I copy one of the templates to a new file (recent example: warner-gone-to-the-dogs.docx) and then cut-and-past the word over into the .docx file. (Make sure you learn how to paste the text as unformatted so that you don't copy over oddball formatting as well.)

What About LibreOffice or OnlyOffice or Google Docs?

For manuscript preparation, I recommend Microsoft Word online, OnlyOffice, or LibreOffice. I do not recommend Google Docs at this time though it can render a manuscript fairly close to the standard.

Regardless of what you use, start with one of the above templates, use it as your baseline, finalize your work, and when ready, verify it is formatted correctly by uploading it into Microsoft Word online.

IMPORTANT usage note for LibreOffice users: You must save the document as 'Word 2007' and not 'Word 2010-365'. LibreOffice's support for the newer Word format is simply not good enough for our purposes.

Remember to Always Check Submission Guidelines

Every outlet open to submissions posts guidelines for how they want the manuscript to delivered. Many say to simply follow the Shunn standards. If so, that's what is reflected here. (More on Shunn below.) But publishers may have specific instruction. Ensure you follow their instructions to a T.

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That should be enough for most people to get started. To understand all of the particulars, though, read on. Just remember: luck favors those who perservere!

—Todd Warner

CMoS and The Shunn Standard

Grammar and Usage and the Chicago Manual of Style

The mechanical format of your document is important, but so are the words on the page. Usually, for narrative fiction in the United States, styling is expected to steer toward The Chicago Manual of Style. Consistency is more important, but you are less likely to ruffle feathers if you try to follow the CMoS to the best of your ability.

The Shunn Standard

Author William Shunn provides an excellent resource that demonstrates standard manuscript formatting for prose (short and long) and poetry. His guidelines, though occasionally dated here and there, are what are used to develop what you see on this page. The templates here are more accurate to what the industry expects than the templates Shunn provides, currently.

What Standards Are Not Addressed Here?

1. Screenplays have strict guidelines and leverage the Courier Prime (Courier) typefaces exclusively. Check out articles by Final Draft, San José State, Careers in Film, StudioBinder
2. Non-narrative works (nonfiction how-to manuals and the like) generally follow something that looks like the guidelines for narrative fiction, but paragraphs are not indented and are instead space-separated, and sans-serif fonts are more acceptable. (For example, Aptos, Helvetica, or Arial).
3. Poetry: coming soon.

Word Counts for Short, Long Works

The format changes depending on word count. This is a rough guideline to where the boundaries are for short and long narratives. These "standards" are a bit mushy, but …

Short Format

• Flash: 1500 or 1000 or fewer (drabble: 100 words; dribble: 50 words … or fewer)
• Short story: 1500 to 7500 (but sometimes all the way up to 10,000 words)

Long Format

• Novelette: 7501 - 17,500 words
• Novella: 17,500 - 40,000 words
• Novel: 40,000+

Manuscript Formatting Standards, A Summary

For Narrative Works (fiction and nonfiction)

• file format: .docx
• typeface (font): 12pt Times New Roman—for everything
  (see comment later in this article about nonfiction)
• margins: 1" all around
• line spacing:
  • double-spaced for everything, except …
  • 1st page headers (contact block, word count block): single-spaced
  • inserted poems and other special-cased items
• paragraph text:
  • left justified, the first line indented by 0.5"
  • no extra spacing between paragraphs; this is not a blog post!
  • no sentence wrapping hyphenation
  • no two spaces after a sentence ends
• page 1 contact block:
  • left justified, upper-left-hand corner header, no indents
  • legal name, address, email
• page 1 title block:
  • 1/3 to 1/2 down the page, centered
  • title, then subtitle, then byline (your penname)
• page 2+ header:
  • right justified, upper-right-hand corner header
  • byline-lastname / title / page
• scene separation marker: #, centered
• story end marker: The End, centered

Note, though the .docx file format and Times New Roman typeface are proprietary technologies (annoying!), they are simply on what the industry has standardized. Many outlets are becoming more accepting of non-proprietary file formats and typefaces, but … Now's not the time to fight political battles. Use what is accepted by everyone. And for all of you fans of Courier (or the more modern Courier Prime), the world prefers Times New Roman over Courier unless you are writing a screenplay, which is beyond the scope of this document.

Specifics for Short Works

• word count block
  • right justified, upper right hand corner header
  • the count rounded to nearest 100 or 1000, depending. Example: 2000 words
• The story (the first scene) starts immediately after the story title block, and each scene appends to the next separated by scene seperation markers.

Specifics for Long Works

• word count block
  • center justified, in the footer
  • count rounded to nearest 100 or 1000, depending. Example: 42,000 words
• chapter title block:
  • new page, then 1/3rd-ish down the page
    … unless the chapter title block follows a part title block. If it does, it then is positioned just 3 lines-ish below the part title block.
  • title, subtitle, and byline (if different) … Example: Chapter 1
  • the chapter's scenes start immediately after the chapter title block, and each scene appends to the next separated by scene seperation markers

Less Common Elements for Long Works

• part title block: (if you have parts, a level above chapters)
  • new page, then 1/3rd-ish down the page
  • title, subtitle, and byline (if different) … Example: Part 1
  • the first chapter within a part will begin immediately below the part title block, just spaced a few lines below.
• books title page: (if you have books (rare), a level above parts)
  • each book containing parts and chapters is formated like its own full long form manuscript with the book title block on its own title page. Each book appends to the next. At the beginning of the document, the epic novel includes a title page representing the work in its entirety.
  • the book title page is formatted like a novel title page, minus contact block and byline unless those differ from the overall novel title page information

Advice About Epigraphs

There is no standard for formatting epigraphs in a manuscript being readied for submission. Epigraphs are either artful or serve as a very short prologue. And so, a good rule of thumb: if your epigraph serves as a prologue, include it; if it does not, perhaps don't include it at this stage of the process. Ask for advice from potential publisher or agent if you have that luxury.

Considering its nature, often an epigraph will be formatted as a very short "scene" at the beginning of a short story or chapter. If the format of the epigraph is non-narrative (maybe it is a poem, for example), then do your best to ensure it looks as professional and simple as possible.

Just remember, this is a manuscript formatted for submission for consideration for publication, this is not a manuscript in final published form. Often more artful flourishes are added in the publishing process, not in these pre-publishing processes.

Advice About Filenames

Make your filename for your document useful. I like following this construction: lastname-short-title-date.docx, all lowercase. For example, the filename for a recent submission of mine was warner-gone-to-the-dogs-20260131.docx.

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I hope this helps. Good luck! -t