When writing a script, I currently use Celtx, should you use "CONTINUED" when dialogue or any text is continued onto the next page? With Celtx, you can choose whether to or not. I'm sorry if this is in the wrong section.

Thank you,
Tyler.

No.  It's just an incredible waste of space.

If Jane is talking at the bottom of the page and there's more talking at the next page, we'll figure out whose dialog it is.


Phil

I've just recently started using Celtx, and even more recently, stopped using it.  As of right now, I'm not digging it too much.  It seems like too much of a hassle to get things the way I want them.

I know how to take the more's and continued's out of dialogue when it wraps to the next page, but it won't take the continued's out at the top and bottom of every page, (maybe I downloaded a crap version of it, but I couldn't find anywhere how to take those out.)  And it won't let me skip spaces to start the next description or dialogue paragraph on the next page if there is an orphan line or anything.

Also, when I type it out in the draft and do get everything lined up the way I want it, when I look at the pdf version, it's totally different and off and I have to go back and guess where the next page starts.

Maybe I'll go back and try to mess around with it again at a later time, but right now I kind of can't stand Celtx.

Thank you Phil and rc1107. I'll take this into consideration.

rc1107 -- all of your complaints boil down to not being used to the software.

Format Options > Second Tab > "Continued" Options for dialogue and page breaks.

There are never, ever any orphan lines in Celtx (as far as action paragraphs go). It avoids that automatically; that's why it's not letting you do it manually.

As for in dialogue, it is automatic and hardly a waste of space (if one looks at just how much space they actually take up) but you CAN also disable them if you want to.

I never disable dialogue breaks in my scripts,  nor will I ever. I think if they're not included, the text looks like shit. I do disable "CONTINUED" in action paragraphs though.

I never had any complaints like yours with Celtx while I was using it; the reason I moved on to Movie Outline was because Celtx is simply too irritating for me to look at -- the display is simply not easy on the eyes.

--Julio

Moved this to screenwriting class, and thought I should comment on this since this thread turned into two minor issues. First, to use continued or not is just based on how you want to work the dialogue. This is all a matter of preference, but what I think you should not do is orphan a portion of the dialogue on a new page without its header. So you have a couple of choices to keep it clean:

Let's say you have something like this:

            JANE
When I decided to write out a
section like this, it actually ran
longer than I ever believed
possible, probably because I
talk way too much, you know
what I mean?

Here's what I think you should not do, just because it looks sloppy:

            JANE
When I decided to write out a
section like this, it actually ran
longer than I ever believed

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

possible, probably because I
talk way too much, you know
what I mean?

This forces you to flip to the previous page to figure out who said what. Sure, we can figure it out, but it comes off as sloppy. It's not a novel, where you can do this. It's a screenplay. So here's your continued option:

Moved this to screenwriting class, and thought I should comment on this since this thread turned into two minor issues. First, to use continued or not is just based on how you want to work the dialogue. This is all a matter of preference, but what I think you should not do is orphan a portion of the dialogue on a new page without its header. So you have a couple of choices to keep it clean:

Let's say you have something like this:

            JANE
When I decided to write out a
section like this, it actually ran
longer than I ever believed

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

           JANE (CONT'D)
possible, probably because I
talk way too much, you know
what I mean?

It doesn't look bad, and completely acceptable, whether you're writing a spec or not. It makes it clear that the dialogue continues from a previous page and doesn't make us look back for it.

The other option is to just drop the dialogue to the next page. This can create a lot of white space on the previous page, but it won't kill anyone. I do this most of the time unless the diaogue is quite long.

now, if I've misunderstood this topic and you're actually asking about the CONTINUED(x): at the top of every single page to indicate this page continues a scene from the previous page, yeah, that's a bit redundant. You should turn that off.