Standard Manuscript Formatting in the KidLit World by Wendy BooydeGraaff

Strange that in an art form such as writing, especially writing for children, there is such a thing as standard manuscript formatting. We’d expect the rules to allow for fun fonts, experimental spacing, and coloured paper. Many publishing houses and magazines have guidelines that spell out exactly how to format your submission, but what about those that don’t? Does that mean they’ll accept any creative way you’d like to present your words?

Sorry, no. There is such a thing as standard manuscript formatting that most of the writing world adheres to. And while different publishers and agents may prefer slight variations on that, a clean professional manuscript in standard formatting allows your words to shine.

So unless your editor has a fondness for Garamond, or an agent wants you to format your cover page in a specific way, follow these guidelines. There are several sources out there, but the unifying factors are:

• font—Times New Roman is standard, in 12 pt. or another classic, serif font. There is a strong hatred for Comic Sans out there, so don’t risk sending your work out in it, even if you love it and don’t see what the fuss is about.
• one-inch margins
• double spacing (except for poetry)
• numbered pages
• byline
• header with name and address
• title/chapter heading centered half way down page

SCBWI’s The Book has an article and example on page 9. There are also numerous examples available online. Here are a few gold standards:

For picture books: https://www.writingpicturebooksforchildren.com/sample-title-page.html

For magazines, you’d do the same as the picture book format, but in the upper right corner, put First Rights (or whichever rights you are offering). A word-count is also nice.

For novels, there is specific formatting for the title page: https://www.shunn.net/format/novel/

Each chapter begins half way down the page, and there’s a running header with the title/author/page number: https://www.shunn.net/format/novel/

For poetry: https://www.shunn.net/format/poetry/

One final reminder—standard formatting is for your final draft. Get those initial drafts and revisions down any way you like. I like to draft in block format, Cambria is my font of choice, and I print on coloured paper for my critique groups.

Questions? Put them in the comments and I’ll try and answer them.

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Wendy BooydeGraaff wrote this blog post in Comic Sans, but the editor changed it. She’s the author of Salad Pie (Ripple Grove Press, 2016) and has written a humourous bit about writer’s guidelines for Emrys Journal Online. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals including Bending Genres, Third Wednesday, and Smokelong Quarterly, and is forthcoming in NOON, Jellyfish Review, and So It Goes. Find out more at wendybooydegraaff.com or on Twitter @BooyTweets.











Wendy's tips are just in time to help you finalize your submission to the SCBWI-MI 2020 Nonfiction Mentorship Competition! The submission window opens May 5th, and everything you need to know can be found here: https://michigan.scbwi.org/2019/10/23/non-fiction-mentorship-2020/