Guide
Standard manuscript format: what agents actually expect
Every agency website tells you to submit in standard manuscript format. Almost none of them tells you what that is. Here it is, plainly, with the reasoning behind each rule — because the reasoning is what tells you when to break them.
Why any of this matters
It shouldn't, really. A good book is a good book whether it arrives in Times New Roman or Comic Sans, and no agent has ever turned down a masterpiece over line spacing.
But an agent's reader gets through a great many submissions, and standard format exists so that the document disappears and the writing is all that's left. When everything sits where the eye expects it, nothing gets in the way. When it doesn't — when there's a blank line between every paragraph, or the chapter headings are centred in bold pink — the format is the first thing noticed, and it says something about the writer before a sentence has been read.
That isn't fair. It is, however, what happens. And it's the easiest disadvantage in the whole business to remove.
The basics
The rules, and why they exist
- A serif font at 12 point. Times New Roman is the safe default; Courier is still accepted and some readers prefer it. Serif faces are easier on the eye over hundreds of pages, which is the entire point.
- Double-spaced text. The gap exists so a reader can write between the lines. Some agencies say 1.5 is fine — check theirs, and if they don't say, use double.
- Margins of one inch all round. Room for notes, and a predictable page count.
- Left-aligned, not justified. Justified text creates rivers of white space and uneven word gaps. Publishers justify at typesetting; you shouldn't.
- Paragraphs indented, with no blank line between them. This is the one people get wrong most often, because it's the opposite of how we write emails. Fiction uses a first-line indent and no gap. Use Word's indent setting, not the tab key and never the space bar.
- The first paragraph of a chapter or scene is not indented. A small convention, but a telling one.
- A running header on every page. Your surname, a short version of the title, and the page number. Printed pages get separated; this is how they find their way home.
- Chapters begin on a new page. Use a proper page break, not twenty presses of the Return key — otherwise everything shifts the moment the file is opened on another machine.
- Italics for emphasis. Underlining is a leftover from typewriter days, when italics couldn't be typed. Nobody expects it now.
- Sent as a Word document, unless the agency asks for something else. Word is what editors mark up in.
The title page
A separate first page, carrying only what's needed. No cover art, no epigraph, no dedication — those belong to the published book, not the submission.
- The title, roughly a third of the way down the page, and your name beneath it.
- The name you write under, if it differs from your legal name — and the legal one too, since contracts get signed with it.
- Your contact details — email is what will actually be used. A postal address does no harm.
- An approximate word count, rounded to the nearest thousand. Nobody expects the exact figure, and the precise number looks anxious.
The word count matters more than writers expect. It tells an agent immediately whether your book fits the shape of the market you're aiming at, before they read a word.
Scene breaks
The one genuinely ambiguous convention. When you move between scenes within a chapter, you need to show it — but a blank line alone is not enough, because a blank line that falls at the bottom of a page becomes invisible.
Mark the break with a centred symbol on its own line: a hash, or three spaced asterisks. It looks unlovely on the page and it is exactly right. Typesetters replace it with white space later; readers of your manuscript need to see it.
In the UK
What you actually send
Almost no agent wants the whole manuscript at first. A typical UK submission is three things, and the formatting above applies to all of them.
- A covering letter — who you are, what the book is, why this agent.
- A synopsis — the whole plot, ending included. It isn't a teaser and it shouldn't withhold anything.
- An opening extract — commonly the first three chapters, or the first ten to fifteen thousand words. Whichever they ask for, start at the beginning; don't send your favourite chapter from the middle.
And the book should be finished before you send any of it, if it's a novel. If an agent asks for the full manuscript, they mean this week, not once you've had a chance to write the last act.
The rule that overrides all the others
If an agency's own guidelines say something different, do what they say. Every time, without exception, even where their preference seems eccentric. Following the instructions in front of you is itself part of what's being assessed — and an agent who asked for 1.5 spacing and got double has learned something about you that has nothing to do with your writing.
The mistakes that show
- Spacing made with the space bar. It collapses the moment anything changes, and it's obvious to anyone who opens the file properly.
- Two fonts, or two sizes. Usually the ghost of something pasted in from elsewhere years ago.
- A blank line between every paragraph, and no indents. Email habits, on a book.
- Chapter headings in a display font. Save it for the cover designer.
- A title page with no word count. Small, but it's the first thing an agent looks for.
- Page numbers that restart at each chapter. They should run straight through.
- Double spaces after full stops. Another typewriter survival. One is correct now.
None of these is fatal. All of them are avoidable, and together they add up to an impression you don't want to be making while somebody decides whether to read your second chapter.
Doing it yourself
All of the above is achievable in an afternoon in Word, and if you're comfortable with styles and page breaks you should simply do it. There's nothing here that requires a professional, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Where it goes wrong is when a manuscript has been written across several years and several machines, and carries the residue of all of them — invisible formatting from a document created in 2011, spacing put in by hand, three fonts nobody can see. Stripping that out before you can format properly is the part that takes the time, and it's the part people give up on.
If that sounds like your file, or you'd simply rather it were done, that's what I do — a flat fee for the whole manuscript, whatever its length, and I'll tell you the price before anything is touched.