How to Format a Manuscript for UK Literary Agents: A Step-by-Step Guide

You have typed the final full stop. The book is finished. What comes next is mostly admin — but it is the kind of admin that decides whether an agent turns to your first page with interest or with a quiet sigh.

Formatting is not decoration, and it is not vanity. It is a signal. A clean, standard manuscript tells an agent that you have read the guidelines, that you understand how the industry works, and that you would be straightforward to work with. That matters more than most writers realise.

Start with the page, not the prose

Set the document up before you fiddle with anything else. In Word, Pages or Google Docs, these are the settings UK agents expect as a baseline:

• Paper: A4, portrait.
• Margins: 2.5 cm all round.
• Font: 12 pt in a plain serif — Times New Roman is the safe default, with Garamond and Georgia close behind. Anything decorative is a distraction.
• Line spacing: double throughout, including the title page, unless the guidelines say otherwise.
• Alignment: left-aligned with a ragged right edge. Never justify your text.
• Indents: the first line of each paragraph indented about 1.27 cm, with no blank line between paragraphs.
• Punctuation: one space after a full stop, not two.

Use the paragraph-style tool for indents and spacing rather than hitting the space bar or the return key. When you change your mind later — and you will — you change one style instead of five hundred paragraphs by hand.

Use a page break to begin a new chapter. Never press return until the heading happens to land in the right place; the moment you edit anything above it, the whole thing slides out of position. And turn off automatic hyphenation, which makes a double-spaced page look cramped and uneven.

Italics, emphasis and scene breaks

Reserve italics for emphasis, internal thought and titles of works. No underlining, no bold for emphasis, no capital letters to convey shouting. Mark a scene break with a centred hash symbol or three spaced asterisks, choose one method, and use it every single time. Agents read fast; a reader who has to work out whether a gap means a new scene or a formatting accident will lose the thread of your story.

Build a title page that answers the obvious questions

Every submission should open with a title page. It is a single page, it holds nothing fancy, and it saves an agent from having to guess. Keep it to one page, double-spaced like the rest, and leave it unnumbered.

Title: THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER
Author: J. M. Hartley
Genre: Literary fiction
Word count: about 92,000 words
Contact: [email address] | [phone number]
Prepared for: Alice Fenwick, Fenwick & Co Literary Agency

Use the name you intend to publish under, and get the agent's name right. A title page is not the place for illustrations, epigraphs, a dedication, or an explanation of why you wrote the book. Those belong in the finished novel, not in the covering letter's shadow.

Headers, page numbers and running heads

Page numbers are essential. The common UK convention is your surname and the page number in the top right-hand corner: Hartley / 1. Some agencies prefer the fuller Hartley / The Lighthouse Keeper / 1, so check the guidelines if they specify. Whatever you choose, keep the header in the same font as the body or a point smaller, apply it to every page after the title page, and resist the urge to add your address or the date.

If you are using a document template, delete anything you do not need: track changes, comments, hidden text, automatic tables of contents. A stray editorial note left in a margin is the sort of small accident that costs a writer a serious read.

Chapter openings and structure

Begin each chapter on a fresh page. Drop down roughly a third of the page before the heading so it does not sit tight against the top margin. Then pick a style — Chapter One or CHAPTER ONE, centred or left-aligned — and apply it identically from chapter one to chapter thirty.

If your book uses titled chapters, put the title on the same line or the line beneath. If you are writing non-fiction, subheadings are welcome: bold or italic, on their own line, numbered only if the content genuinely calls for it.

Word count: give a round number

Quote your word count rounded to the nearest thousand. "About 95,000 words" is what agents expect. "95,438 words" reads as though you are unfamiliar with the conventions, and it invites scrutiny you do not need.

The usual rules of thumb, worth knowing before you decide whether your draft is ready to send:

• Literary and commercial adult fiction commonly sits between 70,000 and 100,000 words.
• Crime and thrillers often land between 80,000 and 100,000.
• Romance tends to run from around 70,000 to 90,000.
• Young adult fiction is usually 50,000 to 80,000; middle grade, 30,000 to 50,000.
• Picture book texts are counted in spreads and are rarely more than a few hundred words.

These are conventions rather than laws, and publishers break them happily when a book earns it. But a debut novel running far beyond the expected range is harder to place, not because agents dislike long books but because editing, printing and shelf space all cost money. If your story genuinely needs the length, make the opening pages so good that nobody is counting.

Non-fiction works differently. Most UK agents want a proposal — overview, chapter outline, competing titles, author biography and sample material — rather than a full manuscript. The word count you quote there is an estimate of the finished book.

What to send, and how to send it

Every agency publishes submission guidelines, and those guidelines beat anything written here. Read them twice. Where they are silent, the standard UK package is roughly this:

1. A covering letter in the body of the email, not as an attachment. One page, addressed to a named agent.
2. A synopsis if requested — usually one page, sometimes two, written in the present tense and revealing the ending.
3. A sample, commonly the first three chapters or the first 10,000 words, whichever is shorter, unless stated otherwise.
4. The attachment as a .docx file. A PDF if they accept one. Never a Google Docs link, and never a .pages file, unless expressly invited.

Name the file so the agent can find it again: Surname_Title_Partial.docx. Put the title page at the front of the sample, then the chapters in order. Do not send the whole manuscript unless it is asked for, and do not split it across several attachments.

Submission etiquette, briefly

Address the agent by name and spell it correctly. Give one or two sentences on why you are approaching them — they represent a writer you admire, they asked for the sort of book you have written, you heard them speak at an event. Do not claim to have read books you have not.

Keep the covering letter to one page: title, genre, word count, a short pitch, and a line of biography only if it is relevant. Simultaneous submissions are generally accepted in the UK unless an agency says otherwise, but check before you assume. Do not chase before the stated response time; if the guidelines say eight weeks, eight weeks means eight weeks, and a polite nudge at ten or twelve is plenty. Never ring the office to ask about your submission.

If another agent offers representation while your material is out elsewhere, tell the others at once in a short, factual email. That is one message agents want to

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