IEEE conference paper margins: the official Letter and A4 numbers

IEEE margins on US Letter (template values)

Most IEEE conferences use the standard two-column conference template on 8.5 × 11 inch paper. These are the numbers the template bakes in.

• Top margin 0.75 in (19 mm), bottom margin 1 in (25.4 mm), left and right margins 0.625 in (16 mm)
• Two columns, each 3.5 in (89 mm) wide, separated by a 0.25 in (6 mm) gutter
• Body text in 10-point Times New Roman, fully justified
• Title in 24-point, author names in 11-point, affiliations and abstract in 9-point
• Abstract and index terms in bold 9-point at the top of the left column

IEEE A4 margins

Conferences held outside North America often accept the A4 template. It keeps the same 3.5-inch columns and 10-point body but changes the margins: 19 mm at the top, 43 mm at the bottom, and 13 mm on each side. Pick one page size and use it for every page; mixed Letter and A4 pages are a common reason a proceedings system rejects a file.

Do not add page numbers, headers, or footers

IEEE conference papers are submitted without page numbers because the proceedings publisher stamps its own numbering and copyright line onto the pages. If your word processor or LaTeX class added numbers, remove them before you generate the final PDF, or use Crop PDF to trim about 40 points from the bottom edge of every page.

PDF requirements that trip up submissions

Many conferences validate the PDF with IEEE PDF eXpress before accepting it.

• All fonts must be embedded, including fonts inside figures
• No password protection, encryption, or usage restrictions
• The page size of every page must match the template (Letter or A4), with no stray landscape pages
• Some conferences also reject bookmarks, form fields, comments, and hyperlinks, so check the call for papers
• Stay under the size limit stated by the submission system, typically a few tens of megabytes

Fixing the final PDF in the browser

PaperKit runs entirely on your device, which matters for unpublished research. Resize PDF sets every page to Letter or A4, Remove PDF Metadata clears the author name for double-blind review, Compress PDF trims the file for an upload limit, and Delete PDF Pages drops a stray blank page. Fonts, columns, and text sizes still have to come from the template itself.

Double-blind review reminders

Anonymous submissions leak identities through the PDF as often as through the text.

• Clear the Author and Title metadata fields before uploading
• Remove self-identifying acknowledgments and grant numbers from the anonymized version
• Check figure files for embedded author names
• Cite your own prior work in the third person