What prints and what doesn't
The script editor shows you a few things that are helpful while writing and would be wrong on paper. None of them reach the exported PDF or a Final Draft file. This page says which is which, so nothing in the export comes as a surprise.
Shown on screen, never printed
- Blank lines. Press Enter twice and you get an empty line to type into. An empty element is not printed — the spacing between elements is fixed by the format and does not need help. So the export can come out slightly shorter than the screen suggests.
- Notes in the margin. A note somebody leaves on a line (the speech-bubble marks on the right) is for the room, not for the page. A screenplay with margin notes is not a screenplay a crew could work from.
- The small orange
!beside a name where a typed(CONT'D)was removed. Why it appears. - Spelling underlines, and the colours that mark different kinds of line.
Printed, though you did not type it
(CONT'D)after a name when the same character resumes after an interruption, and(MORE)/(CONT'D)around a speech that crosses a page break. Both are worked out from the page. The full story.- Page numbers, top right, from page 2 onward — the first page of a script is not numbered, by convention.
- The title page, in front of page 1.
Printed exactly as you see it
Everything else: scene headings, action, names, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions, and where the pages break in the Pages view. What you see there is what the PDF shows.