We propose an optical initial phase control technique for external modulation in the format of minimum-shift keying (MSK). In this scheme, the optical phase discontinuities inherent to external frequencyshift- keying (FSK) modulation are compensated by use of an initial phase controller in conjunction with a FSK modulator. We present the principle of the control method and then numerically and experimentally prove that the signal has a modulation spectrum more compact than that of conventional binary phase-shift keying. 10-Gbit/s external modulation in MSK format was experimentally demonstrated.