Is this font accepted for spec screenplays?

In the regulations of a screenwriting contest I´m willing to participate, is stated that "Use of font other than standard Courier font." should be avoided. I guess that "standard" excludes the Courier Final Draft Font, right?

Just use "Courier or Courier new" fonts at 12 point and you'll be fine.

I seriously doubt they would have a problem with Courier FD. Final Draft is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, screenwriting programs, so I'm sure there are many people who will submit scripts in Courier FD. If I remember correctly, Courier FD is the default font for FD. I would use it if I were you.

What's the contest?  

Thank you guys. You´re both right. I know I will be safe using normal courier font, but on the other hand FD is very popular, and courier FD is the default font (at least in my version). That are the reasons of my doubts. I kind of like courier FD font better.

Pete: the contest is just for latinamericans, but if you´re curious, you can check it here: http://www.voyfilmlab.com

I find Movie Magic is >FD, mainly because i can't figure FD out for the life of me (but i can figure out photoshop ok, go figure) olny reason for using FD is because i can not afford MM or crack it.


anyhoo, the FD font is just smaller than new, nothing really diffrent about it. it is safe to assume they would take it, i see no reason as to why they would not.

I find Final Draft Courier to be essentially annoying. I recently wrote a script that I shot for 45-50 pages. It was coverted to FD and get reduced to 37 pages. I am now told to come up with some new scenes to make up the difference. That's annoying.

LOL, I´m sorry hear that George. I would be annoyed as well.

A few days ago, I was able to try Final Draft 7.1.1 for the first time. As some people on here might be aware, I generally dislike screenwriting programs because I enjoy the freedom a regular word processor offers in writing anything, and I'm quite used to formatting everything manually without a program.

That being said, I popped The Fempiror Chronicles: The Initiation of David into this Final Draft to see what it would do to me. Beyond  few minor corrections I had to make based on the way I'd originally written it so it would work with the parameters of the program it looked good, but the format is not the reason I'm writing this.

I used the speech function that Wes mentioned on this program awhile back. Honestly, I could care less how the format looks, this speech function was probably the most useful part of this entire program. I sat there for an hour as it read out loud the first 45 pages of the script. (It would have gone on, but I really needed to go to bed.) I corrected several typos that existed from Draft One (September 2004) of the script that neither the spelling checker, Word's grammar checker, nor every single person who has read this script has ever caught. What I caught was not misspelled words, but missing words altogether, or correctly spelled words that were incorrectly vernacularly used (but from a grammar standpoint, might look correct).

Now, I will note that this machine does not put much feeling into the words, nor is the pacing altogetehr correct is how it is read. But the machine makes no mistakes is reading what is in front of it (though it does amusingly mispronounce some words and names -- Ophelia (oh-FEEL-yuh) was pronounced awful-EYE-uh and Rufus (ROO-fuss) was pronounced Roo-Fooz). I was impressed, though, that it has a built in phoentic dictionary or something, because it made several near-correct guesses at the pronunciation of several Felletterusk words in my script, which is a language I made up for this series. It even butchered the Felletterusk dialogue with an American accent.

So for something to read every single word exactly as you wrote it, the machine works perfectly. If you want feeling and emotion, get actors. But actors will likely make subconscious corrections to your work.

Someday, I might use this program to write scripts so all is formatted just so, but since I can't load this up at work, it's unlikely I will anytime soon for most projects. However, I will be running almost everything through that speech reader function. Bert, this would definitely catch your Angel/Angle issues.

And if this is in the wrong place, I'd like to know where else to put it.

In that program, I don't even think they show a measurement line/or the thing to show the angles.

Measurement line? Thing to show the angles? Could you be a litle more descriptive?

I know that writing beyond basic screenplays requires a knowledge of screenwriting format, since I had to add a couple of formatting things to it the first time I used it.

For me, the best feature of Final Draft is the character reports. It's great for tracking relationships between characters and ensuring their dialogue is unique. Go to 'tools' and 'reports'

Hey guys, I have FD 6 and I never worked with...I agree with George...I got Script Maker (a Word template) from its creator in 1995/6 and it works very well until now!

Quoted from George Willson Measurement line? Thing to show the angles? Could you be a litle more descriptive?

My bad. I mean the ruler, I guess.

I actually recommended FD6 as I hate FD7 but yeah, though they are a bit comedic it reads back what you wrote. I'm not sure what it would do with slang and or spelling mistakes like adn instead of and but who knows maybe it just skips over them.

I haven't used it really myself but did find a feature that allows you to talk to other writers as you write in it and possibly even share your work as you write it. The future of screenwriting programs is good.

The way I have been using the feature is to read the script as it reads it to me. You might call it two sets of eyes. I'm certainly not going for performace, as I said, but just for another level of proofreading.

And as this is the only screenwriting program I've ever messed with, I doubt I'll complain or anything since I don't need it for formatting. Interesting, though, how the font size shaved about 5 pages off my total count... That's good when your script was clocking in at over 140 pages, and not really that many visible places to cut anything (as I've made several trims here and there only to find myself adding other things to fill out character).

And there's a ruler on the top of the typing area. Not sure what went wrong there. I'll definitely play with it more since knowing how this works would be useful to me.