A Somewhat Alternate View
I have a slightly different take on manuscript format, but that's partly because so much of my work concerns serious (academic and almost-academic) nonfiction. In other words,
this may not work for fiction.
If you have
any footnotes or endnotes in your manuscript; or any tables; or any illustrations with captions, use a clear, readable, proportionally spaced serif type for your manuscript, 12 points on 24 for the body, 11 points on 13 for the notes, tables, and captions. (In fact, book-length nonfiction should virtually always be submitted in a proportionally spaced font.) Book-length fiction seems to be equally acceptable in that format; from what I have seen, only short fiction and some trade short nonfiction remain fixated on monospaced type (like Courier or, for those of us old enough to remember, Pica). In nonfiction, you should
always use
true italics, not
underlining; the reverse still appears to be true in fiction.
Margins should be one inch all around (
not Word's default 1.25" L/R), you should not use justification, and you should use only a header in the upper right corner for identifying and paginating your manuscript. The preferred style these days looks like this:
Short Title | Page XXX
Note that the author's name is
not in that header in nonfiction, to facilitate blind and semiblind review (which is assumed in academic nonfiction, and becoming more common in certain areas of serious trade nonfiction). For fiction, most editors I speak to still prefer the author's last name right before that short title. In any event, the entire header shouldn't extend more than 2.5" or so into the page from the right margin.
Use numbered footnotes where possible instead of endnotes, but jump references to illustrations and tables, which should be placed at the end of each chapter or the end of the manuscript. (As a dirty trick, that's how I manage exhibit references in legal documents that get built part by part—I've reformatted the endnote function so that it keeps my exhibits nicely in order.) Interior headings, such as chapter and section names, should be centered and in the same font (typeface and size) as the main text, although boldface seems acceptable.
Personally, I think the continued insistance of some markets on Courier is goofy and ill-considered, as Courier is a particularly difficult-to-read font and doesn't photocopy well. But then, almost all of my typesetting experience has come on electronic compositors and modern page layout systems, so I haven't developed an "Editor's Eye" for estimating actual printed length by eyeballing a manuscript. And don't get too married to 12-point type, either; the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure now require use of
14-point type, even in footnotes.
Of course, these are all "default" rules. Some markets will have different requirements (for example, the Y[SIZE=-2]ALE[/SIZE] L[SIZE=-2]AW[/SIZE] J[SIZE=-2]OURNAL[/SIZE], until a couple of years ago, required triple-spaced body text and double-spaced endnotes!). Always follow the rules for the particular market to which you are submitting. This is vastly easier to manage if you use styles instead of hard coding for your work.