Government Subject

Standard Manuscript Form

It has come to my attention that many of you might have questions regarding what constitutes “standard manuscript form,” especially those of you who may have enrolled in multiple classes with multiple composition formats and styles. In order to clarify this peculiar term, I have prepared this brief overview of the standard manuscript form, shared by most academic style guides.

Standard Manuscript Form (sometimes called Standard Manuscript Format) is a convention common to professional academic associations (such as my own, the American Political Science Association) as well as publishers of novels, short stories, academic monographs, poetry and other literary forms. The basic expression of Standard Manuscript Form is commonly held by the Modern Language Association, the American Psychological Association, the University of Chicago, and the Congress of Science Educators to facilitate the review of academic articles submitted for publication. While citation styles vary significantly across the various disciplines and fields of study, there nevertheless remains a broad consensus concerning the content format itself.

The parameters of the Standard Manuscript Form are as follows:

Page Size: 8.5” X 11”, Portrait Orientation

Left and Right Margins: 1”

Head and Foot Margins: 1”

Line Justification: Left

Spacing: Double line spacing (24-25 lines of text per page)

Font Style: Non-decorative font, preferably monospaced (e.g. Courier, Lucida, Console, Monaco). However, some proportional fonts are permitted (e.g. Times New Roman, Garamond, Perpetua).

Font Size: various typesetter’s scales can be used. The following are equivalent to each other:

Font points: Minimum 10, maximum 12.

Pitch (characters per inch): minimum 12 cpi, maximum 10 cpi

Pica: minimum 0.8, maximum 1.0

Inches: minimum 0.14”, maximum 0.17”

Page One Header: Title Centered on Line One of Content, Other Style Guides Vary for Author & Course Information. Since Political Science does not adopt a consensus regarding style, you may wish to adjust the style guide according to the features of the sources you use. (MLA emphasizes location of information in the source, while APA emphasizes date of publication). For the record, this document is not in Standard Manuscript Form.