Screenplay Margins and Font: The Full Spec

Screenplay margins: the spec for every element

Screenplay margins are measured from the edge of a US Letter page, 8.5 by 11 inches. The page margin is 1.5 inches on the left and 1 inch on the right, top and bottom. Every element then has its own left position inside that frame. This is the table your software is quietly obeying:

Applications disagree by a tenth of an inch on the right edge of dialogue, and a tenth of an inch is invisible. A symmetric 1-inch margin, dialogue running the full width, or a cue centered on the page is not. The left margin is wider because scripts are punched and bound on the left, and scene numbers in a production draft live in that gutter.

Because Courier sets ten characters to the inch, the inches are also column positions. Count from the action margin as column 1: the parenthetical begins at column 17, the cue at column 23, dialogue at column 11, and action runs to column 60. Laid out with a ruler:

....:....1....:....2....:....3....:....4....:....5....:....6
INT. NORTH POINT LIGHTHOUSE - NIGHT

Wind hammers the glass. ELLIS (50s, keeper's coat, hands
that never stop moving) trims the wick by touch.

                      ELLIS
                (not turning)
          You're late. The lamp isn't.

                                                   CUT TO:

Screenplay font: Courier 12 and its variants

The screenplay font is 12-point Courier. It is a typewriter face, monospaced, and it is the standard because the whole page geometry above was worked out on 12-pitch typewriters and never changed. Every character is one tenth of an inch wide and every line is one sixth of an inch tall, and those two numbers are what make a page mean something.

Four fonts qualify, and they are interchangeable on the page:

• Courier or Courier New, which ship with most operating systems. Courier New is thin on screen and slightly grey in print, which is why writers look for alternatives, but it is fully acceptable.
• Courier Final Draft, bundled with Final Draft. Same metrics, darker stroke.
• Courier Prime, a free font commissioned for screenwriters, with a heavier weight and true italics. It has become the default in most modern screenwriting apps, and it is the one to choose if you have the choice.

All four produce identical page counts because the metrics are identical. What you must not do is substitute a proportional face. Times New Roman, Arial, Calibri and Helvetica hold 90 to 100 characters in the 6-inch action measure instead of 60, so every action paragraph loses a third of its lines and a 110-page script comes back as roughly 90. The words have not changed; the only measurement anyone uses has.

Inside the font, the rules are equally fixed. No bold in a spec. Italics only for a stressed word, a foreign-language line or an on-screen title. Action is never justified, hyphenated or indented. The page should look typed, because the format was designed for pages that were.

Line spacing and how many lines fit on a page

Screenplay line spacing is single, and it is not adjustable. At six lines to the inch, with 9 inches of text between the 1-inch top and bottom margins, a page holds 54 lines, quoted as 55 by some applications that let the bottom margin flex a line. One blank line separates every element from the next: heading to action, action to cue, speech to the next cue. There is no extra space before paragraphs and no half-line leading.

That geometry gives two numbers worth remembering. An action line holds about 60 characters, so a full page of action is 180 to 200 words. A dialogue line holds about 35, so a page of dialogue holds fewer words but more exchanges, because each cue line and its blank line cost space. The dialogue block format is narrow on purpose: it paces the reader at roughly the speed people speak.

Word processors offer 1.15 spacing, exact leading and space after paragraphs. All of them fit more or less script on a page than the standard allows, and a reader who has seen ten thousand pages notices before they can say why. If you are drafting in a plain text editor, paste the result into the free screenplay formatter and it will apply the standard margins on export.

One place the page is allowed to look busy is the page break inside a speech. When dialogue splits across pages, (MORE) closes the page at the dialogue margin and the cue repeats at the top of the next page with (CONT'D). Every screenwriting application inserts both automatically; the rules for that extension are in what CONT'D means in a screenplay.

Page numbers: top right, half an inch down

The page number sits at the top right of every page except the title page, flush to the right margin at 7.5 inches and half an inch down from the top edge, which places it inside the top margin and clear of the text. It is the numeral followed by a period: 12. Not Page 12, not 12 of 110, and never at the foot of the page.

                                                         12.

                      ELLIS (CONT'D)
          Then you'll carry it up yourself.

She hands him the oil can. He takes it without a word.

Page one usually shows its number; some writers suppress it, and either is fine. The title page never carries one and never counts toward the total, so a script that ends on the page numbered 112 is a 112-page script. Readers cite page numbers in notes and coverage, which is why the number has to be where they expect it: a note that says "the lighthouse scene, page 62" only works if your 62 is their 62.

Two things belong in the header of a production draft and nowhere near a spec. A revision date and colour in the top left, and CONTINUED: at the top of a page whose scene carries over from the last. Both are tracking devices for a script that is being shot. On a spec they are clutter, and they tell a reader the writer has copied a shooting script without understanding why it looked that way; spec script vs shooting script lays out every difference.

A4 vs US Letter: what changes and what does not

The standard is US Letter, 8.5 by 11 inches. Most of the world prints on A4, 210 by 297 millimetres, which is a quarter inch narrower and about seven tenths of an inch taller. British and European film and television use the same Courier 12 and the same indents, but usually on A4, so the question is what happens to the page.

The safe way to print on A4 is to keep the Letter text block, 6 inches wide and 54 lines tall, and let the extra height fall as white space at the foot of the page. Then the page count and the page-per-minute calibration survive. Fill A4 instead and your 110-page script prints as 106, until someone reads it on Letter and finds it is 110 again. Export to the paper size the recipient expects; Zen Writer, like every screenwriting application, re-paginates for Letter or A4 without touching the text.

Why one page equals one minute depends on the margins

The rule of thumb that a page of screenplay runs about a minute of screen time is not a property of stories. It is a property of the page: 54 lines of Courier 12 in a 6-inch action measure with dialogue in a 3.5-inch column. Mix action and dialogue the way a scene does and 54 lines of it comes out near sixty seconds, averaged across a whole script. Change any input and the average moves.

That is the reason the margins are treated as law rather than preference. A producer builds a schedule from page count, a reader reports the length in the first line of coverage, and a contest sets a page cap. Every one of those people is assuming your page is the standard page. How many screenplay pages equal one minute goes into where the estimate holds and where it breaks, and how many pages a screenplay should be covers the targets readers expect. Both articles assume the geometry on this page.

The practical consequence: do not write in a word processor and fix the format later, because every margin becomes a manual decision on every line. Zen Writer sets Courier 12 and the element margins as you type, and its script statistics report true page count and estimated runtime; Zen Writer for Mac exports a Letter or A4 PDF a reader will recognise on sight.

Margin and font mistakes that mark a draft as amateur

1. A proportional font. Times or Arial on page one ends the read before it starts. Use Courier 12.
2. Symmetric margins. One inch all round, with dialogue running the page width, is a manuscript, not a script.
3. Courier 11, or 1.15 spacing. Squeezing 126 pages into 118 does not hide the length. It hides the page count and reveals the squeeze.
4. Character cues centered. The cue starts at 3.7 inches; it is not centered on the page, even though it often looks close to it.
5. Page numbers at the bottom, or on the title page. Top right, half an inch down, numeral and period.
6. Bold and underline. Neither belongs in a spec. Italics, sparingly, is the only emphasis the format gives you.
7. Extra space between elements. One blank line, never two, and never a blank line inside a dialogue block.

All seven vanish in an application that knows which element it is formatting. The rest of the conventions are collected in the screenplay formatting hub, and screenplay formatting examples shows a complete sample page built on exactly these margins.

Frequently asked questions

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• V.O. Meaning in a Screenplay: Voice Over Format and Examples
• How to Format Dialogue in a Screenplay: Cues, Blocks and Rules
• How to Write Parentheticals in a Screenplay (Wrylies)
• What Does CONT'D Mean in a Screenplay? (CONT'D) Explained
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• How Many Pages Should a Screenplay Be?
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• Spec Script vs Shooting Script: What Is the Difference?