The ABC's of Script Formatting: Font Style, Size and Margins

Every industry have some certain rules to follow and in the art of formatting the screenplay. For the scripts, it is largely or courier new, the type writing font style with a 12 font size. The line spacing is a one line spacing, unless you are indicating a break from action to character names, to dialogues. 

An average script have this format

Scene headings: This indicates the location and time of the scenes

Action lines: This is what transpires in each scene

Characters: The people on-screen at the scene

Dialogue: The choice of words spoken by the characters

Parentheticals: The emotions of the characters in the dialogue

Each of the above format have their specific margins they should have on the script. If you are sending in a script, it is advisable to use this format, it helps you stand out from other submissions and it indicates that you are a professional. 

If you are using the normal Microsoft app, then Courier font style will suffice, with the 12 point font size. The line spacing is a one-line spacing, but two when you are separating the action to the character names and so on. 

The margins are indicated above, the headings and descriptions (i.e the location, time and action) takes up the 1.5” margin from the left, with 1” from the right.

The character names are 4” from the left

The parentheticals (that is the adjective of the person’s mood) takes 3.5” from the left

Dialogues are 3” from the left and 2” from the right

Whereas, the top and bottom margins are just 1” each.

Generally, scriptwriting soft wares provides the formatting already, so there is no need to bother. I use Celtx because it is a free software, as is indicated in the second image. 

However, the first picture is how it appears on Microsoft, the margins and font style are shown there. Using a script-writing soft-ware is much convenient because the person does not have to be changing the formatting all the time and it makes writing much easier, but in the absence of those soft-wares, the manual formatting should be used.

©️ Chinenye Anikwenze