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If you’re thinking about publishing your manuscript, you’ve probably been asked at some point to submit in “standard manuscript format,” usually as a submission requirement for something. But what is standard manuscript format?

What Is Standard Manuscript Format?

While some heavily formatted documents may have other requirements, most texts will adapt well to standard manuscript format. (And of course, if any of the guidelines contradict or strip out something you’re doing in your manuscript, just ask your editor.)

If you’re submitting your manuscript to a freelance editor like me, hitting the basics—whenever possible, and whenever it makes sense for your manuscript—should would just fine:

8.5″ x 11″ page size with 1″ margins all around
Text flush left (with ragged right margins)
No extra line spaces between paragraphs
Regular 0.5″ indents, automatic (not tabbed)
Times New Roman
12-point font
Double-spaced

(And while we’re at it, please leave a single space between sentences, not a double space!)

Some of these guidelines have changed to embrace new technology and shifting goals. Monospaced fonts like Courier are valued for their spatial regularity and reliability to typesetters, but this freelance editor relies on the characteristics and visual discrepancies of Times New Roman to confidently navigate a text.

Other freelancers will have different formatting requirements and different thresholds for their own work environments. It’s always a good idea to check the website of any editor or publisher you’ll be working with and follow any submission guidelines you find there.

Why Does Standard Manuscript Format Matter?

The reason a manuscript might need to conform to a standard set of requirements depends on who’s asking for the manuscript and what they’re planning to do with it. Because of this, while the basics requirements tend to be the same pretty much anywhere, the details can vary slightly in scope.

Working with Freelance Editors

When I copyedit a manuscript, I like documents in standard manuscript format mostly because I do my best work in a consistent work environment. It’s easiest for me to spot typos, duplicated words, and other rogue elements when I’m looking at the same font I usually look at (Times New Roman), and consistency in elements like page margins and line spacing helps me isolate issues I might otherwise miss.

If you’re formatting your manuscript for submission to a freelance editor and they ask for standard manuscript format, this is probably why they’re looking: when every manuscript looks the same, copyeditors can sink into their comfort zones, and busy editors appreciate when authors take the steps themselves.

Traditional, Printed Submissions

Before the Internet, word processing, digital publishing tools, and all the other creature comforts that make self-publishing possible for so many authors, there was the process of sending physical submissions to agents, publishers, editors, and anyone else who needed one.

For obvious reasons, requirements were set in place simply to keep these submissions functional within the publishing machine: double-spaced to leave room for editing and annotating, single-sided to allow for photocopies, and special elements like em dashes and italicized text coded in certain ways useful during the typesetting process, to name a few.

(As any middle schooler knows, tinkering with font sizes and page margins can yield new page counts as if by magic. To accurately estimate word counts and do their best work, editors, like teachers, needed to rely on certain basic parameters that brooked no tomfoolery.)

But that was then, and this is now, and any manuscript formatting requirements you find today are likely to have a very different purpose behind them than keeping printed manuscripts workable.

Pre-Formatted or Complex Documents

For most manuscripts—those that have not been formatted for print and those that do not contain a great deal of special elements—making all the necessary changes globally should work well.

But while this all-at-once approach to converting a nonstandard manuscript into standard settings works for most manuscripts, it may prove problematic for others. In some cases, making global changes can disrupt highly formatted elements even as it “corrects” all the regular text, and that’s when you’ll need to think outside the box.

Anyone preparing a manuscript for an editor or publisher should always submit it in the format requested, but there are times when it’s desirable to preserve some of the formatting of the original text (so you don’t have to do all that formatting work over again!). Rather than starting over from scratch, review these special-use cases for solutions.

Charts, Graphs, and Other Special Page Elements

The presence of special elements such as charts and graphs doesn’t have to be problematic, depending on how you created them in the first place.

Consider taking screenshots of charts and embedding them as images–or simply save an old version to refer back to, then copy-and-paste the formatted charts from the old version into the edited text, replacing whatever got mangled.

Depending on how your book is being produced, there may be other options as well. If you’re concerned about the elements of your manuscript, ask whoever will be working with it how they prefer you handle these elements, and consider sending along a PDF copy of the manuscript so the people you’re working with can refer back.

Print-Book Formatting for Early Drafts

While some authors keep the drafting process firmly separate from the production process, other authors write with an eye toward physical publication right off the bat: shrinking the pages to paperback size, formatting intricate chapter headings and subheadings, and lining up the text with both left and right margins.

For some authors, this can be an incredibly satisfying way to write—you get a real-time preview of what the book might look like to readers as far as length, look, and feel—and it’s exciting to watch your book grow in the format it will eventually appear in. But spending too much time formatting a book for print can have adverse effects.

When I receive a manuscript for editing that’s been lovingly formatted for print, I cringe a bit. This is a potential indication that the author has shifted out of drafting mode and may be so set in production mode that they may not be receptive to editorial changes that could be perceived as “disrupted” (whereas a minimally structured book in standard manuscript format—clear “draft format”—tells me their thought process is still fluid and they’re still open to new ideas.

Whether or not this is the case, if it’s this much of a bummer for me to break the news to authors that all of their formatting work may be for naught, I can only imagine how much of a bummer it is for the author who did the work.

[Note: I now offer formatting services for print books!]

You can always change the font, page size, and even paragraph settings to whatever you choose, but when you’re paying good money to work with an editor, allow them to do their best work by giving them the freedom to work within their preferred work environment. You’ll get their best work.