Standard manuscript format: what agents and contests expect
The page agents and contests ask for: Times New Roman 12, double spacing, one-inch margins, a title page with the word count, a running header, chapter openings, scene breaks, and when to deviate.
4 min read · October 16, 2026 · All guides
Every agent, editor and contest that reads unpublished manuscripts asks for roughly the same page, and most of them call it standard manuscript format. It is not a style; it is a convention that makes a pile of submissions easy to read, estimate and mark up. Getting it right takes an hour and removes the one reason a reader has to stop before the first sentence.
Why one format
The format comes from the years when manuscripts were typed and read on paper. Double spacing left room for an editor’s marks; a fixed font and fixed margins meant that a page held about the same number of words whatever the book, so a page count was a word count. Readers still want the format because they read a great many manuscripts, and anything unusual on the page (a decorative typeface, single spacing, a coloured title) pulls attention to the page and away from the story.
So the aim is to be invisible. A manuscript in the expected format says nothing about you except that you know what the reader needs.
The page: font, spacing, margins
Twelve-point Times New Roman, double spaced, with one-inch margins on all four sides, on letter or A4 paper according to where you are sending it. The text is aligned left with a ragged right edge, not justified. Every paragraph begins with a half-inch first-line indent, and there is no blank line between paragraphs: the indent is what marks them. Courier is the older choice and is still accepted; Times New Roman is the default now and takes fewer pages.
One space after a full stop. Black text. No running decoration, no drop capitals, no ornament at the end of each chapter.
The title page
The first page carries, at the top left, your legal name and contact details (postal address, email, phone), one to a line, single spaced. At the top right, on the same first line, the word count, rounded: About 82,000 words. Round to the nearest thousand for a novel and the nearest hundred for a story; nobody wants to read 81,734.
A third to halfway down the page, centred: the title, then by on the next line, then the name you want on the cover, which may differ from the legal name at the top. A pen name goes here. Nothing else: no copyright line (the words are yours the moment you write them, and a notice reads as suspicion), no dedication, no epigraph, no contents.
The running header
Every page of text after the title page has a line at the top right: your surname, a word or two from the title, and the page number, with slashes between: Okafor / Tide Clock / 47. Numbering starts at 1 on the first page of text; the title page has no number and no header. On paper this line is how dropped pages go back in order; on screen it is how an editor’s note can say “page 47”.
Put it in the document’s header, not typed at the top of each page, so it survives every edit.
Chapters, scene breaks and emphasis
Each chapter begins on a new page, with its heading about a third of the way down (a few blank lines, or space before the heading in its style). The heading is centred, in the same typeface and size as the text, as Chapter One or Chapter 1 or a title, with the text starting a line or two below. A part gets a page of its own in the same way.
Mark a scene break with a single # centred on a line by itself. A blank line is not enough, because a blank line at the foot of a page vanishes. Use italics for emphasis, thoughts and foreign words; underlining is the typewriter-era way of asking the typesetter for italics, and a few editors still prefer it, but italics are the default. End the manuscript with a centred The End or #, so a reader knows the last page is the last page.
When the guidelines say otherwise
The submission guidelines of the agency, publisher or contest win over everything in this guide. Many ask for the first chapters pasted into an email rather than attached; some want a Word file, some a PDF; a few name a typeface or 1.5 spacing; and contests often require that your name appear nowhere but the entry form. Read the guidelines twice and follow them exactly. A reader who asked for pasted pages and got an attachment has already learned something about how you take instructions.
Where the guidelines are silent, the format above is what is expected. Where they say “standard manuscript format”, this is what they mean.