We’re not particularly fussy about manuscript formatting. When reading submissions for Neon Literary Magazine we prefer to see manuscripts that are clean and clear, without fancy fonts or decoration, solely because they’re easier to read.
As far as we’re concerned standard manuscript formatting is greatly appreciated, but not compulsory.
Many publishers do insist on it, though – and formatting your work in something close to the standard fashion shows that you’re professional, aware of standards, and that you take your work seriously.
To help make that easier than ever to do, we’ve prepared a couple of standard manuscript format templates. Click the links below (you may have to right-click and select “Save Target As”) to download them.
They’re filled with dummy text at the moment. When you’re ready to use them, delete the bulk of the text, insert your details where appropriate, and then save the template somewhere convenient for you to use whenever you need it.
You can write directly into the template and save it as an ordinary Word document, or copy and paste text into it and use the embedded styles to make it look right.
If you want to know about other formats, we’d suggest consulting William Shunn, the de facto authority on manuscript formatting. Our templates differ from his suggestions only to take account of the fact that typesetting is often a digital process now.
Any questions? We’d be happy to answer them in the comments below, or you can drop us a line with feedback. We hope you find these templates useful!