How to Format Dialogue in a Screenplay: Cues, Blocks and Rules

How to format dialogue in a screenplay: the block

A dialogue block is three stacked elements: the character cue, an optional parenthetical, and the dialogue itself. Each sits at its own position on the page and readers recognise the shape before they read a word.

INT. LATE-NIGHT PHARMACY - NIGHT

A fluorescent tube flickers. NOOR, 40s, in a pharmacist's
coat, counts pills she has already counted.

                    NOOR
               (not looking up)
          We close in four minutes.

                    CALLUM
          Then I'll talk fast.

• Character cue: the speaker's name in capitals, on its own line, starting about 3.7 inches from the left edge of a US Letter page. It is not centred; it is a fixed indent, which is why long and short names start at the same column.
• Parenthetical (optional): a short delivery or action note in lower case, in parentheses, on its own line starting about 3.1 inches from the edge.
• Dialogue: the words spoken, starting 2.5 inches from the left edge and wrapping at roughly 6.2 inches, so the block is about 3.7 inches wide. That narrow column is why a page of talk runs close to a minute.

Everything is 12-point Courier, single spaced, with one blank line between blocks and no blank line inside a block. You do not set any of these positions by hand; a screenwriting app assigns them by element. Type a name in caps in Zen Writer, press Enter, and the cursor is already sitting at the dialogue margin. The numbers are in the margins and font guide if you need them for a manual template.

Character cues: names, extensions and consistency

The cue is the name the character is known by in the script. Pick it at the character's introduction and never vary it. NOOR on page 3 cannot become DR. HAQ on page 40 without the reader assuming a new person has walked in. If a character is unnamed, describe them and keep that description as the cue: PHARMACY CUSTOMER, COP #2.

An extension is a tag in parentheses after the name that says where the voice is coming from. It lives on the cue line, in capitals, and it is not a parenthetical:

A group speaking together is cued as the group: CROWD, STUDENTS, ALL. Two named characters saying the same line at once are NOOR AND CALLUM, or dual dialogue if the lines differ.

Two situations need one more mark on the cue or in a parenthetical: a speech in another language, covered in how to format foreign language dialogue and subtitles, and a speech that is typed rather than spoken, covered in how to format text messages.

Parentheticals: short, lower case, rare

A parenthetical is a delivery note or a tiny action that the reader needs in order to hear the line correctly. It goes on its own line between the cue and the dialogue, in lower case, in parentheses, no full stop.

                    CALLUM
               (a beat; then, quietly)
          It's for my daughter.

                    NOOR
               (sets down the bottle)
          Four minutes.

The rule that keeps them under control: if the line already tells the actor how to say it, delete the parenthetical. (angrily) above Get out of my shop is noise. If the note runs past four or five words, or contains something the camera has to see, it belongs in an action line instead. Anything longer than a short phrase is no longer a parenthetical, it is direction hiding in the dialogue column. The parentheticals guide goes through placement, the (beat) convention and the overuse problem in detail.

Interruptions, trailing off and overlapping talk

Dialogue on the page has two punctuation tools for broken speech, and they mean different things.

• Dash for a cut-off. The speaker is interrupted, by another character or an event. Use a double hyphen or an em dash and nothing after it.
• Ellipsis for trailing off. The speaker runs out of words, hesitates or lets the sentence die.

                    CALLUM
          If you could just check the system for
          a prescription under --

                    NOOR
          I've checked the system.

                    CALLUM
          Then maybe under her mother's name...

Noor finally looks at him.

When the interrupted speaker picks up again, they do not get (CONT'D), because another character spoke in between. They simply get a fresh cue. Do not write (interrupting) as a parenthetical; the dash on the previous line already did that.

For two people talking at the same time, use dual dialogue: two blocks side by side, each narrower than usual. It reads as simultaneous speech and it is accepted in a spec script when used a few times, not as a house style. Most screenwriting software has a dual dialogue command; Fountain marks the second speaker's cue with a caret. In plain text you cannot do it at all, which is one reason not to draft a dialogue-heavy script in a notes app.

                    NOOR                          CALLUM
          I am not losing my           Please. Please, I'll
          licence for you.             pay whatever --

(MORE) and (CONT'D): dialogue across a page break or action

Two things can split a speech: the bottom of the page, and a line of action inside it. Each has its own marker.

Page break. When a speech runs off the bottom of the page, (MORE) appears on its own line at the dialogue margin, and the cue is repeated at the top of the next page with (CONT'D):

                    NOOR
          Every night someone stands where you're
          standing and tells me a story.
                    (MORE)

------------------------------ page break ------------------------------

                    NOOR (CONT'D)
          Most of them are better than yours.

You never type (MORE) yourself. It is a pagination artefact and the software places it, then removes it when the text reflows. If a speech can be broken at a sentence end rather than mid-sentence, the software will, and a reader never sees a broken word.

Action inside a speech. When the same character keeps talking after an action line, the cue repeats with (CONT'D). Software adds it automatically; some writers strip it in a spec for a cleaner page, and both are accepted. What is not accepted is doing it by hand and missing half of them. The CONT'D article covers the whole convention, including the difference between (CONT'D) in a cue and CONTINUED at the top of a shooting-script page.

                    NOOR
          Show me the prescription.

Callum takes out a folded page. It has been folded a lot.

                    NOOR (CONT'D)
          That's a letter.

Common dialogue formatting mistakes

1. Centring the cue. Cues are indented to a fixed column, not centred. Word processors centre; screenwriting apps indent.
2. Dialogue that runs the full page width. The block is about 3.7 inches wide. Full-width dialogue turns a two-minute scene into a one-page scene and wrecks the page-to-minute ratio.
3. Extensions on the parenthetical line. (V.O.) and (O.S.) belong beside the name.
4. A parenthetical on nearly every line. Two or three a page is a lot. If the words do not carry the delivery, fix the words.
5. Bold, italics or underlining for emphasis. Underlining a single word for stress is the one tolerated exception, and even that should be rare. Capitals in dialogue read as shouting.
6. Blank lines inside a block. One block, no gaps. A gap means a new element.
7. Character names in capitals inside the dialogue. Capitals for introductions apply to action lines only. In speech, names are ordinary words.
8. Speeches that run half a page. Not a formatting error, but the first thing a reader flips past. Break them with action or with the other character.

If you have a draft in a text file or a Word document with all of these problems, the free plain text screenplay formatter reads cues, dialogue and parentheticals from messy text and outputs Fountain, FDX or PDF. Or paste it into the free online screenplay editor, which applies the same element rules as the app without an install or a login. To see how much of the script is talk, the dialogue vs action heatmap paints the balance page by page.

Format is the floor, not the ceiling

Everything above gets the dialogue onto the page correctly. It does not make the dialogue good. Correctly formatted lines that say exactly what the character means, with no subtext and no pressure, are the most common failure in a spec, and no margin fixes them. The craft of screenplay dialogue is a separate subject with its own article. Phone calls, which combine most of the elements on this page in one scene, have their own phone call formatting guide. Every other element, from scene headings to transitions, is covered on the screenplay formatting hub.

The practical upshot: pick an app that handles the positions, extensions and page-break markers for you, so the only thing you spend attention on is what the characters say. Zen Writer does that for free on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android, offline, with nothing uploaded.

Frequently asked questions

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