Choosing the Right Template: A Decision Framework for Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Academic Manuscripts

Fiction: The Invisible Page

The governing principle of fiction typography is transparency. Beatrice Warde articulated this in her 1932 lecture "The Crystal Goblet," arguing that the ideal typographic vessel is invisible — the reader should see the wine (the text), not the glass (the type). For fiction, this means a serif body face with moderate stroke contrast, generous leading, first-line paragraph indents (not block paragraphs with inter-paragraph spacing), and margins wide enough to prevent the text block from feeling cramped against the binding.

Bringhurst recommends a text size of 10 to 12 points for book-length fiction, with leading of 120 to 145 per cent of the type size (The Elements of Typographic Style, 4th edition). A 6×9-inch trade paperback set in 11-point Source Serif with 15-point leading produces approximately 62 characters per line — comfortably within the 45-to-75 character range he identifies as optimal. First-line indents of 1 to 1.5 ems signal new paragraphs without interrupting the vertical flow. Drop caps at chapter openings provide a visual entry point, as discussed in "Drop-Caps and Entry Points," marking the transition from the reader's world to the author's.

Templates designed for fiction — such as the Paperback template (cinematic page-turner) and the Memoir template (personal narrative) — encode these conventions. They use serif body faces (Source Serif 4 and Libre Baskerville respectively), first-line indents, generous leading, and chapter-opening treatments that create visual ceremony without competing with the text. The choice between them is tonal: Paperback is optimised for pace and forward momentum; Memoir favours a more contemplative measure with slightly wider margins.

Non-Fiction: The Navigable Page

Non-fiction readers behave differently from fiction readers. They scan, they skip, they return to earlier sections, they consult the index. The typographic system must support non-linear reading: clear heading hierarchies, running heads that identify the current chapter or section, visual differentiation between body text and subsidiary material (block quotes, tables, figures, captions), and — in reference works — marginal notes or shoulder heads that allow the reader to locate information by flipping through the book.

The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition, 2017) prescribes a three-level heading hierarchy as the minimum for non-fiction: chapter title, section heading, and subsection heading, each typographically distinct through a combination of size, weight, and spacing. Jan Tschichold, in "The Form of the Book" (1975), argued that the heading hierarchy should be self-evident from the typography alone — the reader should never need to consult a numbering system to understand the structural relationship between sections.

Templates suited to non-fiction — the Chicago template (academic press), the Exhibit template (modern trade), and the Operator template (technical documentation) — implement these principles with varying degrees of visual formality. Chicago follows university press conventions: a classical serif face, modest margins, and footnote support. Exhibit uses contemporary sans-serif display type with generous white space, suited to design-conscious trade non-fiction. Operator is built for technical content with admonition boxes, code blocks, and cross-reference infrastructure. The choice depends on the reader's relationship to the material: scholarly engagement (Chicago), considered browsing (Exhibit), or task-oriented reference (Operator).

Academic Work: The Verifiable Page

Academic manuscripts serve a unique function: they are not simply read, they are scrutinised. Every claim must be verifiable — traceable to a citation, a data set, or a methodological description. This imposes typographic requirements that neither fiction nor trade non-fiction shares: footnotes or endnotes anchored to specific passages, bibliography formatting (author-date or note-bibliography, as prescribed by the Chicago Manual), double spacing for manuscripts under review, and margin widths sufficient for reviewer annotations.

The Thesis template implements the requirements most university style guides mandate: double-spaced body text, 12-point serif type, 1-inch margins on all sides (or wider for the binding edge), and a title-page format that accommodates institutional requirements. The Symphony template offers a more refined alternative for finished monographs — single-spaced with Van de Graaf canon margins — while retaining full footnote and bibliography support. Both templates handle the citation pipeline, processing .bib files through Typst's built-in bibliography engine to produce properly formatted references.

The critical distinction for academic templates is the relationship between the text block and the note apparatus. Footnotes must be close enough to their reference markers that the reader can glance down without losing their place, but separated enough that the note text does not visually contaminate the body. Tschichold recommended a thin rule (one-third the measure of the text block) above the footnote area, a convention that both Symphony and Chicago follow. As "Widows, Orphans, and the Ragged Bottom" discusses, the footnote area introduces particular challenges for vertical rhythm — a problem that baseline-grid-aware templates solve by ensuring that both body text and notes align to the same grid.

Specialist Genres: Poetry, Cookbooks, Screenplays

Beyond the three primary categories, several specialist genres impose their own typographic regimes. Poetry demands preserved line breaks, generous vertical white space, and often a centred or optically centred text block — requirements served by the Verse template, which uses EB Garamond and disables paragraph reflow to honour the poet's lineation. Cookbooks require a structural separation between ingredients and method, clear recipe titles, and often a multi-column layout that distinguishes the component list from the procedural text — the Heirloom template implements this with ingredient blocks and recipe-specific formatting.

Screenplays follow the most rigid formatting conventions of any genre. The Hollywood standard mandates Courier 12-point, specific margins for dialogue, action, and character names, and a page-to-screen-time ratio of approximately one minute per page. The Cinema template implements the Fountain markup syntax, translating Markdown conventions into the industry-standard format. In each case, the template is not a decorative choice — it is a functional specification that the genre's readers (and, in the case of screenplays, industry gatekeepers) expect.

The Decision Matrix

Selecting a template is a diagnostic exercise, not a creative one. The author must answer three questions. First: what is the reader's primary mode of engagement — immersive (fiction), navigational (non-fiction), or verificational (academic)? Second: does the genre have established formatting conventions that the reader will expect (screenplays, poetry, cookbooks) or is the author free to choose within a broader tradition (literary non-fiction, essay collections)? Third: what is the output medium — trade paperback, mass-market paperback, hardcover, or digital — and what physical constraints does it impose on margins, type size, and page count?

The answers to these three questions reduce the field of 15 templates to two or three candidates. From there, the choice is tonal — the degree of visual formality the author wishes to project. A literary memoir might suit either Paperback or Memoir; the decision rests on whether the author wants the reader to feel the pace of a novel or the intimacy of a journal. This is a legitimate aesthetic decision, but it is the last decision in the sequence, not the first. The structural requirements come first; the tonal preference refines the selection.