Paste your manuscript and check it against the standard format that fiction magazines and agents expect (the Shunn format). It reads the parts that survive a copy-paste: the contact block, a rounded word count, whether your paragraphs are indented or block-spaced, your scene-break markers, sentence spacing and the closing marker. Font, line spacing and margins are settings in your word processor, so we tell you what they should be but can't read them from text.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, sent anywhere or stored. Paste a manuscript above to check it against William Shunn's standard manuscript format.
Your manuscript never leaves this page. The checks run entirely in your browser: no upload, no server, no storage, no AI reading your work.
The fastest tell in a slush pile is business formatting: paragraphs sitting flush against the left margin, separated by a blank line, the way you would write an email. Fiction manuscript format indents the first line of every paragraph and puts no blank line between them. Paste a block-formatted excerpt and the checker fails it at once. This output is generated at build time by the same code that runs in your browser:
Fail: Paragraphs indented, not block-spaced
Your paragraphs are flush-left and separated by blank lines (business/"block" style). Fiction manuscript format uses no blank line between paragraphs and indents the first line of each one.
Fix: Remove the blank lines between paragraphs and give each first line a real first-line indent (set in your word processor's paragraph settings, never with the space bar).
Fail: Scene breaks marked with #
Scene breaks use non-standard markers (* * *). Standard format centers a single # on its own line so the break survives printing and reflow.
Fix: Replace *** / --- / blank-line breaks with a centered # on its own line.
Standard manuscript format is mostly about your word processor's settings, and a copy-paste strips those out. So the tool is honest about the split: it checks what the characters carry, and it tells you the rest so you can set it in your document.
Read from your text
Set in your word processor
Reading these from an uploaded .docx directly is on the roadmap, not in this tool yet.
Standard format shows an approximate word count, rounded: to the nearest 100 words under 10,000, and the nearest 1,000 above it. An exact figure like 73,412 words signals a first-timer and invites someone to count against it. The checker rounds your pasted text for you and flags a stated count that is not rounded.
A clean format is table stakes, not a competitive edge: it just stops your work being rejected before it is read. When the manuscript is ready, use theManuscript Style Analyzer for the prose, then the Submission Tracker to log where you sent it and when to follow up.
Because your manuscript never leaves your browser, we can't email you this report: copy anything you want to keep. What we can send is the newsletter: one practical writing tip, a new tool, and a fresh contest deadline each week. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.