Standard manuscript format in the US is 8 1/2 x 11 in.; the closest thing in metric is A4 size is close enough (and, no, you will not be penalized by using A4 paper in the US, especially if you’re submitting from outside the US).
Standard font is Courier 12. Some editors are getting used to Times Roman, but Courier makes their job much easier (it’s hard to get accurate word counts with a proportional font).
With all due respect, I’d never, ever set type in Courier. A monospaced font is too hard to read. Times New Roman may not be the perfect choice (that depends on the tone of the text), but it would not be a bad place to start.
If I was doing it myself, I’d go 5.5 x 8.5 and use Garamond or Goudy as the font. Very readable and very classy. 10pt size for the font, or 12 if you’re aiming for an older crowd.
I’m with Chuck. Timestamp is, to me, clearly talking about writing a manuscript for a book, not setting type for a book.
I started using a proportional font for manuscripts because I hate the look of Courier. Eventually I decided to go back and change all the files to Courier. Suddenly my streak of rejections ended and I started selling again.
Coincidence?
Probably, yes.
Still, all beginning writers would do themselves a huge favor to read the Manuscript Preparation links on that SFWA page.
Maybe you should tell us whether you are talking about how to prepare a manuscript for a publisher to read it, or how to prepare a document to be photocopied by a printer as a book.
Whatever you do, do not skip lines manually — set your word processing software to double space. And do not hit return at the end of every line — your word processing software automatically wraps text.
A computer is not a typewriter. If you manually insert blank lines and line ends, it will be hellish when you decide to edit and reformat.
William Shunn has an excellent overview of how to properly format a manuscript for submission here.
Be sure to download the PDF, it’s formatted precisely like your document should be.
Be sure to use styles in Word or whatever program you’re using. Don’t return at the end of each line, set the paragraphs to double space and set an automatic first line 0.5" indention, and you’ll be able to concentrate on your words, not your formatting. Courier 12 is boring, but the proper font to use.
It’s really simple to set it to double-space in MS Word. Go to Format and then Paragraph, and then Line Spacing and choose Double. From there, only use the “enter” key when you finish a paragraph. Also, yes, you should do this for manuscripts. It’s easier to read and people (editors…) can write in the margins and between the lines.
If you have done that, and you would like to fix it, it’s easy enough. First, go to “Replace” and replace ^p^p with ^p. Then Control-A, then go to format, double space, etc. Then, while in format, use “special” then “First line.” Voila. Mess fixed.
I know this because I’ve fixed countless students’ horrible formatting.
Thanks for the replies. I now have another question. How do I know how many pages my book would have when published in normal format? I don’t need to know the exact number of pages, but when do I know it’s enough? Suppose I want my book to have about 250 pages, how would this translate to a manuscript with 12 pt courier and 14 or letter format, with 1 inch margins?
It’s just to have a rough idea. It’s the first time I (seriously) try writing a book, but I used to be a pretty good writer in school (not english, but that’s probably obvious from my posts here :)), so I figuered I’d give it a shot.
Ah. – That’s exactly the reason why manuscripts are done in Courier: so you can make that estimately accurately.
As for the question, most novel manuscripts these days are a minimum of 80,000 words. This is a guideline, not a hard rule – if the book is good enough, it can be less or considerably more. The problem is defining “good enough.”
So the best suggestion is to do a word count and see if you’re hitting around 80,000 (BTW, don’t use the word count feature in Word – it’s highly inaccurate and shortchanges you). But don’t be concerned about length; be concerned about writing a good book. Planning the length out first is just a bad idea.
Great tips to date, including from published authors and editors (who ought to be the experts if anyone is)!
I’d simply add that, whether you choose Courier or another monospaced font, you should choose a serif rather than sans-serif font: Is “King Richard III” the title of a biography of the last of the Plantagenets, or a newspaper headline indicating that an incumbent king named Richard is sick? In SDMB sans-serif, you can’t tell!
For working purposes, my manuscript is formatted in 10 and 12 point Warnock Pro, a very nice Garamond-like font. It’s readable, attractive, and fits the mood of epic fantasy very well. From what I’ve heard, though, formatting choices in the published text are made by the publisher. This is one of several reasons why manuscripts must be submitted in a monospaced font such as Courier and formatted in a very strict way.
How is the word count feature in Word inaccurate? I get around 175,000 now – what is the real figure likely to be? I know that publishers estimate word count using a different technique than Word would use, and it seems to me that Word should be more accurate. Perhaps the method used in publishing just tends to overestimate.
Properly formatted (8.5" by 11", double spaced, one inch margins on all sides) manuscript pages average out to about 250 words, a bit more or less depending on how much dialog you use.
Therefore four manuscript pages = 1000 words.
Therefore an 80,000 word book needs about 320 pages of manuscript.
BTW, about that book length: it depends a lot on what genre you’re writing in. Try querying a publisher of the type of book you want to write to see what their guidelines are.
It depends on how you’re looking at it. Word is better with the actual number of words, but from a publisher’s point of view, it can be off. For instance, consider this:
“I’m pregnant,” he said.
“What?”
Word would have it as 5 words, manuscript format would have it considerably more (about 25). And that makes sense from a publishing standpoint, since those five words take up as much vertical space as two entire lines of text. Because of that, they need to be counted as two entire lines of text.
Also, Word doesn’t differentiate between the length of words. Thus both “a” and “semiphotospectroheliographically” are a single word to it, but to a publisher, they are obviously of different lengths. By setting a word as six characters, you’re measuring things using the same yardstick no matter what words the author uses.
Now the line count feature in Word is a better source – just adjust for the blank lines in the beginning. It will give you the total number of lines, which you can multiply by the number of words per line to get an accurate count.
Thanks! I was just wondering how many pages a 80,000 word book would have when it’s published? I know this will vary a lot, but what would the average be?
No, because that doesn’t take into account the issue of spacing from dialog or lists or other short material.
That’s why editors even today still prefer a monospaced font in standard manuscript format. It makes calculations instantaneous.
A standard manuscript page has one-inch margins, 25 lines per page, 6.5 inches of text per line. Courier 10 produces 65 characters per line; Courier 12 produces 80 characters per line. Multiply by 25, divide by six. A Courier 10 page has 271 words (rounded down to 250). A Courier 12 page has 333 words. So, instant knowledge. Either 4 pages for a thousand words or three pages for a thousand words.
That’s the only knowledge you need to know.
Of course, if you let them editors will use the actual word count to pay you, because the actual word count is always lower than the count from pages.
Now, books are a different issue. There are so many variations on font, type size, leading, and margins that no universal standard exists. But a quick approximation is usually 400 words per page, so an 80,000 word manuscript is only about 200 printed pages. Short, by today’s standards.