The Format menu provides the full range of formatting functionality that affects the appearance of text in the document. See Formatting and Elements for more information.
Scene Heading
Action
Character
Parenthetical
Dialogue
Transition
Shot
Unformatted Text
Choosing any of the above applies that built-in element style to the current paragraph or selection.
Quick Reformat
Displays the Reformat dialog to provide quick and easy reformatting of all or part of the document.
Element Styles
Enables management of elements. Changes to elements affect only the currently open document.
Modify Element StyleBold
Modifies an existing element style, either built-in or user-created.Create Element
Creates a new user element.Delete Element
Deletes an existing user-created element. Built-in elements may not be deleted.Apply/Insert Element
Brings up a list of element styles to either apply the chosen style to the current element, or insert a new element of the chosen type.
Left Align
Center
Right Align
Sets the alignment for the text of the current paragraph (or multiple paragraphs, if the current selection spans
more than one paragraph).
Highlighting
Highlighted text is displayed with one of a number of preset colored backgrounds.
HighlightFormat Font
Toggles highlighting for either the current selection or, if there's no selection, the current typing. If the text is already highlighted, highlighting is removed; otherwise, the text will be highlighted using the currently indicated highlight color.Find Next, Find Previous
Finds the next or previous occurrence of highlighted text, if any.(Specific Color)
Highlights the current selection or, if there's no selection, the current typing, using specific highlight color.
Upper/Lower Case
Changes the case of the current word or selection (within a single paragraph).
Note that this has no effect on element styles that are already capitalized such as the default Scene Heading and Character elements.
Adjust Line Length
The line length of individual paragraphs can be adjusted if a shorter or longer line length than that specified
by the element style is desired.
Adjust Current Length
Adjust the indentation for the current paragraph from that of the underlying element style. Selecting this will bring up the ruler panel (which is normally hidden, unless you choose to always display it under Preferences > User Interface), from which you can increase or decrease the line length relative to the default.Auto Adjust Lines
Check all paragraphs in the document or selection to see if extending the line length slightly will allow an orphaned trailing word to fit on the previous line. Can be applied to all elements, or a single element type.Find Next, Find Previous
Finds the next or previous paragraph with an adjusted line length, if any.
Make Dual Dialogue
When selected, formats the currently selected Character line and its dialogue, as well as any immediately following
character and dialogue, to appear in side-by-side columns to indicate speaking simultaneously.
Page Break Before
Forces the current paragraph to always begin on a new page.