What Is Standard Manuscript Format?
Quick answer: Standard manuscript format explained: font, spacing, margins, headers and word count, so your story submission looks professional to any editor.
Standard manuscript format is the plain, uniform layout editors expect for prose submissions: 12-point Times New Roman or Courier, double-spaced lines, one-inch margins, your contact details in the top left of page one, an approximate word count in the top right, the title centred about a third of the way down, and a running header with your surname, a keyword from the title and the page number. Paragraphs are indented, with no blank line between them.
The format exists for a practical reason. Editors read hundreds of stories a week, and a predictable page lets them judge the writing rather than the packaging. A manuscript in hot pink Comic Sans does not look creative to a slush reader. It looks like extra work, and it signals that the writer has not done the basic homework of the trade.
The full checklist, top of page one to the last line
Most magazines follow some version of what writers call Shunn format, named after William Shunn, whose online guide became the de facto standard. Page one carries your legal name, postal address, email and phone number in the top left corner, single-spaced. The word count, rounded to the nearest hundred, sits in the top right. Drop down a third of the page, centre the title, and put your byline beneath it, which is where a pen name goes if you use one. Then begin the story, double-spaced throughout.
From page two onward, a header in the top right reads surname, a short version of the title, and the page number, like this: Mehra / Night Bus / 2. Indent every paragraph about half an inch using your word processor's paragraph settings, never the tab key or spaces. Mark scene breaks with a centred hash sign. Use a single space after full stops. Italics are typed as italics now; the old convention of underlining them belongs to the typewriter era. End with a centred hash or the word End if the final page could be mistaken for an incomplete one.
Where the rules bend
The honest answer is that standard format has regional and house variations, and the guidelines of the specific market always win. Some magazines ask for Courier, some forbid it. Some want anonymised manuscripts with no name anywhere because they judge blind, and sending your contact block on page one to a blind-reading market is a real and common error. Others specify file types: .doc and .docx are near-universal, PDF is sometimes refused because editors like to add notes, and Google Docs links are almost never welcome.
Contests are stricter than magazines, not looser. A contest that says no identifying information means exactly that, including the file name and the document's metadata author field. Writory's Short Story Contest reads every entry blind against a published rubric, which is precisely why clean, anonymous formatting matters there. When a market's guidelines contradict Shunn, follow the guidelines and do not write to explain your preference.
See it working: why editors defend the beige page
Ask any slush reader and they will tell you the same story. The manuscripts that get read fastest are the invisible ones, where the eye falls straight through the formatting into the fiction. Neil Gaiman has described professional format as the writer's equivalent of showing up in clean clothes. The Chekhov story you love, the Mansfield story you studied, reached their first editors as unremarkable typed pages; the words did all the work.
There is also a hard mechanical reason. Double-spaced 12-point text at one-inch margins gives editors room to annotate, produces a reliable words-per-page estimate for layout, and reads comfortably on screens and printouts alike. Uniformity is a courtesy that costs you five minutes in a template you set up once and reuse forever.
Set it up tonight
Open a blank document and build the template before you write another submission. Set the font, the line spacing, the margins and the automatic first-line indent in the paragraph style itself, so the whole file obeys one rule. Add the header with the page number field. Save it as Manuscript Template and duplicate it for every new story.
Then make a second, anonymised version: identical, but with the contact block deleted and your name stripped from the header, the file name and the document properties. Those two templates cover ninety-five per cent of markets and contests on earth. The remaining five per cent will tell you what they want in their guidelines, which you will read every single time, because guidelines change and editors notice who noticed.
Mistakes that mark a manuscript as amateur
The classics: single spacing, block paragraphs separated by blank lines like a business letter, fancy fonts, coloured text, a title page with clip art, tabs used for indents, double spaces after full stops, and a synopsis nobody asked for stapled to a short story. None of these will get good fiction rejected on its own, but each one adds friction, and slush reading is a friction-sensitive business.
The subtler errors hurt more. Sending a .pages file to a Windows-based magazine. Leaving track changes visible. Forgetting the word count, or inflating it to sound substantial when the guidelines cap entries. And the most avoidable of all: ignoring a stated house rule because the Shunn guide says otherwise. Format is not a test of taste. It is a test of whether you can follow instructions, which is the first thing an editor learns about you.
What poets can take from this
- Build one reusable manuscript template and one anonymised twin, and never format a submission from scratch again.
- Put the indent in the paragraph style, not in the tab key, so a reflow never breaks your layout.
- Check the file name and document properties before sending to any blind-judged market.
- When house guidelines contradict standard format, the house wins, every time.
- Round your word count to the nearest hundred; nobody wants to see 4,983.
Try it yourself
Take a finished story you love and prepare it twice: once in full standard manuscript format, once fully anonymised for blind judging. Time yourself. If either version takes more than ten minutes, refine your templates until both take five.
Questions
Should I use Times New Roman or Courier for a story submission?
Either is safe unless the guidelines specify one. Times New Roman is the modern default; Courier survives from typewriter days and some editors still like its generous spacing. Pick one, apply it consistently, and switch only when a market asks.
Do I need a cover page for a short story?
No. Short fiction carries its information on page one of the manuscript itself, in the top corners. Separate cover pages belong to novel submissions and to certain contests that request them for blind judging.
Does manuscript format affect my chances of acceptance?
Good format never sells a weak story, but bad format can sink a decent one by irritating a tired slush reader. Think of it as neutral packaging: its whole job is to disappear so the fiction gets judged on merit.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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