Put contact information such as your name, address, phone number and email address in the upper left corner of the first page of your manuscript.
Include your novel's genre (e.g., Science Fiction, Romance) and its current word count in the upper right corner. Round your word count to the nearest thousand.
Place your title in all caps a third of the way down your first page. Put "by [your name]" two lines below the title. Center both of these.
Create a header. Put your novel's title followed by a flash and your last name on the left. Shorten your title in the header if it is more than five words long. Place your page numbers on the right beginning with your second page.
Select either Times New Roman or Courier 12 point font and set your margins to one inch on all sides.
Indent your paragraphs by half an inch. Do not simply use the Tab key -- this makes the typesetting process more difficult.
Double space the entire body of your manuscript.
Use only a single space after periods. You can use your word processor's Find and Replace feature to eliminate instances of two spaces.