Hiya, I was wondering, when you use capitalisation and for what purpose. Are clean scripts with no capitalisation apart from character introductions better than inserting the odd bit of action or highlighting what you think is important? 

Cheers

Fran

I'm not a pro but what I've learned is that the things to be all in caps are few.  (1) The scene heading (Int/Ext, Location, and Day/Night)  (2)  The name of the person when first introduced, and (3) the name of the person having the dialogue.   There are, of course, other words such as "Fade In," "Fade Out," "The End" and perhaps a few others I've missed.  But sometimes when there are a lot of words in caps that shouldn't be, the reader will find it distracting.

To emphasize a word, it should be underlined.

I've looked at the first three pages of your script and here's what I noted:

Page 1.

Kudzi  should be all capped because it's the first time she's introduced.  This tells the casting director when there's a new actor required.

"REVEALS" should not be capped.  It's just another word in the action line.

Page 2.

ON THEIR LEFT, BLEATS, WHERE IS MOTHER HIPPO, PADDLE NOW, MOVE, BLEATS, STILL, TONNES HIPPO, JAWS CRUSH, SCREAM, CONFUSION, PANIC, SOMETHING CANNOT SURFACE, POUND --- These are all words that shouldn't be capped.

Page 3.

MERMAID is capped and should be because she's first introduced here.

BEAUTIFUL, FANGED, TERROR, BLOOD, HORROR should not be capped. 

Tembi should be all capped because she's first introduced here and the casting director will know another actor is required.

Hope this helps; maybe others can add to it.

OOOPs, I did not pick up the Character introductions, thanks very much for that... OK, I appreciate you going thru and seeing what needs changing. I just read so many scripts that have capitalisation in the scene descriptions, and it can be really random why they are there. THink I will stick to simple for now.

There are three articles in the Talentville University on capitalization, each written by T. J. Alex, you may want to read.

Under the Direction heading, I've here several articles on Capitalization here:

http://screenreads.com/formatting/

Hope people find this useful.

I agree with Billie Harris' first paragraph.; and to underscore words that need emphazing.  Hardly anyone formats the same, but i only cap the things Billie does - with an occasional exception.  My later scripts i went in and uncapped things to make the script easier to read.  My first script had about 500 capped sound cues.  Yrs later I went back and uncapped all of them.  But it was a story that had more sound cues than the avg story/script.  Other scripts i still have a few capped sound cues even though i just said i agree with Billie.