The Industry Standard Manuscript

For writers of narrative fiction and nonfiction, read on for guidance and templates supporting the construction of an industry standard manuscript in preparation for submission.

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.

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, all publishers and agents follow essentially one set of guidelines. A guideline each 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. (Nonnarrative nonfiction is a beast unto itself. We are not going to address that here.)

What Publishers Want

Publishers want:

A clean manuscript in manuscript standard format, using the Times New Roman typeface in 12pt, and saved as a Microsoft Word .docx file. They look at a zillion manuscripts. They don't wants to spend excess brain energy on documents that look different from one to the next.

Publishers don't want:

Bespoke formatting; they don't even want MLA formatting; they don't want you to use your favorite typeface; and they don't want to see smaller or larger fonts or indents just because you like them better. Occassionally, some will accept documents formatted in the .pdf or .odt file format, but not often. Yes, .docx and the Times New Roman typeface are proprietary, but they are what the industry has standardized on. And for all of you who are fans of Courier (or the more modern, much improved, Courier Prime), the world prefers Times New Roman over Courier unless you are writing a screenplay, which is beyond the scope of this document.

Publisher requirements can be nuanced:

Specific requirements: Nearly all publishers post their formatting requirements. Especially if they have their own requirements that deviate from the norm. Verify with that publisher and adapt your manuscript to match. Some publishers are picky. Others are very tolerant.

Other Topics

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. More on that topic can be found here: https://errantruminant.com/resources/.

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-family of typefaces (Courier Prime and the older Courier New or the even older Courier) typefaces exclusively. Check out articles by Final Draft (which uses their own Courier Final Draft typeface which is what Courier Prime was developed from), San José State, Careers in Film, StudioBinder. Note that the Courier New typeface is guaranteed to be installed on all versions of Microsoft Word and, if given no other context, is the safer choice.

2. Non-narrative works (how-to manuals, explainers, and similar—example, this document) 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, Arial or Aptos). Refer to your publisher's formatting standards. Note that the Aptos typeface is only supported by the latest versions of Microsoft Word (as of 2026). The Arial typeface is a supported by all versions of Word and, if given no other context, is the safer choice.

What about genre and draft versions and such?

The genre of your story or novel, or the variety of your poem, goes in your cover letter. That being said, if you are not sharing a cover letter with the recipient (a critique group, for example), some folks will indicate the genre right beneath the word or line count. For the critique group example, I will often indicate the draft version with a date also placed with the word or line count. For example, rev. 20260222.

Advice About Epigraphs

There is no standard for formatting epigraphs. 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 at this stage of the process.

Considering its nature, an epigraph will often 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 (a poem, for example), do your best to ensure it looks as professional and simple as possible.

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 during the publishing process, not in these pre-publishing processes.

Advice About Filenames

Make your filename for your document useful. My preference: 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.

⸺I hope this helps. Good luck! -t