Industry-standard manuscript format is Times New Roman (or a similar serif font) at 12 points, double-spaced, with a half-inch first-line paragraph indent, one-inch margins, and centered chapter headings that each start on a new page. It's the format literary agents, publishers, and most writing contests expect by default. Quillen applies this automatically to every manuscript, on screen and in export, so it's never something you configure yourself.
Why formatting is standardized in the first place
The standard exists for practical reasons, not tradition for its own sake. A consistent font, spacing, and margin size makes a manuscript easy to read quickly and mark up by hand or on screen, and it lets an agent or editor estimate word count accurately from the page count alone. When every submission looks roughly the same, the writing is what stands out, not the formatting choices around it.
The specifics
- Font: Times New Roman, or a similar serif font, at 12 point.
- Line spacing: double-spaced throughout.
- Paragraph indents: a half-inch first-line indent, no extra space between paragraphs.
- Margins: one inch on all sides.
- Chapter headings: centered, with each chapter starting on a new page.
- Scene breaks: a centered symbol (often
#or***) on its own line, with no indent.
Where this usually goes wrong
Getting the format right on page one is easy. Keeping it consistent across an 80,000-plus-word document, written over months and revised more than once, is where most manuscripts drift. A paragraph pasted in from another document brings its own font size with it. A heading style gets applied inconsistently. Indents turn into a mix of tabs and spacing that looks fine until you export and see it fall apart. None of this is a sign of a bad manuscript, it's just what happens when formatting is something you have to remember to maintain on top of everything else about writing a novel.
How Quillen handles it
Quillen's manuscript editor renders in industry-standard format on screen, not just on export, so there's nothing to configure and nothing that can drift out of sync between what you see and what you send. The rich text toolbar is deliberately limited to Bold and Italic, with no font, size, or color controls at all, so the formatting can't be accidentally changed in the first place. Chapter headings and scene breaks are inserted with a single click and centered automatically. When you export to Word (.docx) or PDF, the output matches the editor exactly, with no compile step and no options to configure.
This isn't a matter of Quillen doing something competing apps can't. Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener can all be configured to produce correctly formatted manuscripts. The difference is that Quillen never leaves the format as something to remember, set up, or get right at export time; it's simply the only format the editor produces.
Common questions
What is industry-standard manuscript format?
Times New Roman (or a similar serif font) at 12 points, double-spaced, with a half-inch first-line paragraph indent, one-inch margins, and centered chapter headings that each start on a new page.
Do I have to use industry-standard formatting?
If you're submitting to literary agents, publishers, or most writing contests, yes, it's the expected default. If you're formatting only for self-publishing, you have more flexibility, but agents and traditional publishers still expect the standard format for submissions.