GB/T 9704 Official Document Format Explained: Margins, Fonts, Line Spacing and a 10-Point Checklist

Keywords: GB/T 9704, Chinese official document format, party and government document layout, A4 margins China

Two hours of drafting, five minutes of rejection. Most Chinese government and SOE documents bounce back not for content but for formatting: margins off by a millimeter, the wrong FangSong variant, line spacing set to "1.5" instead of "exactly 28pt". Here is the complete cheat sheet for GB/T 9704-2012 — the national standard for Party and government document format — so you can check everything before submitting.

1. Page setup: five numbers to memorize

| Item | Standard | |------|----------| | Paper | A4 (210mm × 297mm) | | Top margin | 37mm (±1mm) | | Bottom margin | 35mm | | Left margin | 28mm | | Right margin | 26mm |

That makes the type area (版心) 156mm × 225mm. In Word, enter 3.7 / 3.5 / 2.8 / 2.6 cm directly.

2. Body text: font × line spacing × grid

• Font: Size 3 (16pt) FangSong_GB2312 — not plain "FangSong"; the exact font name matters for embedding and printing
• Line spacing: exactly 28pt (fixed value), never "1.5 lines" or "at least"
• Grid target: 22 lines per page, 28 characters per line, set via Word's "Doc Grid" option
• First-line indent: 2 characters via paragraph settings — never spaces or tabs

3. Heading hierarchy: numbering and font must match

| Level | Number style | Font | |-------|-------------|------| | Title | centered, Size 2 XiaoBiaoSong | may wrap in trapezoid form | | 1st | 1、(Arabic + ideographic comma) | Size 3 HeiTi | | 2nd | （1）(fullwidth parens, nothing after) | Size 3 KaiTi_GB2312 | | 3rd | 1.（Arabic + period） | Size 3 FangSong bold | | 4th | ①(circled number, nothing after) | Size 3 FangSong |

The two classic mistakes: writing "1." where "1、" belongs, and adding a comma inside "（1）、". The rule is "no double punctuation" — parentheses and circles already delimit, so nothing follows them.

4. Primary recipient and date of issue

• Recipient agency: one blank line below the title, flush left, followed by a fullwidth colon; enumerate parallel agencies with 、, different categories with ，
• Date: Arabic numerals, no leading zeros — write 2026年8月27日, not 2026年08月27日, not the old-style 二〇二六年八月二十七日
• Single-agency signature: date indented 4 characters from the right edge

5. Attachments, tables, punctuation traps

1. Attachment note goes one line below the body, indented 2 characters: 附件：1.XXX — no punctuation after the name
2. Tables spanning pages need 续表 ("table continued") on each continuation page
3. All punctuation is fullwidth; number ranges (15~18) must use one consistent style document-wide

6. 60-second pre-submission checklist

• [ ] Margins 37 / 35 / 28 / 26 mm
• [ ] Body: FangSong_GB2312, size 3, exactly 28pt
• [ ] 22 lines × 28 characters per page
• [ ] Level-1 headings 1、 in HeiTi; level-2 （1）in KaiTi with no trailing punctuation
• [ ] Recipient flush left + fullwidth colon
• [ ] Date in Arabic numerals, no padding zeros
• [ ] Attachment note indented 2 characters
• [ ] Continued tables marked 续表

7. Automate it

Manual checking of a 20-page document takes half an hour, and formatting hides across dozens of Word styles. 公文格式助手 (Official Document Format Assistant) checks a .docx against all eight rule categories of GB/T 9704-2012 and produces a located issue list — what's wrong, where, and why. Checking is free forever; one-click fixing generates a corrected copy without ever touching the original. All processing runs on-device: nothing is uploaded, which matters for classified-sensitive material.

FAQ

No FangSong_GB2312 on my machine? Install it or embed fonts in the file (Options → Save → Embed fonts), or layout collapses on other devices.

28pt set but still under 22 lines? You also need "Specify lines and characters" in Doc Grid — spacing and grid are separate systems.

Is 1.5 line spacing ever OK? Not in formal outbound documents. The standard demands 22 lines × 28 characters filling the type area.

The app currently supports .docx up to 50MB. Files received in WeChat can be opened via "Share → Open in another app".