Margins

Margins
Okay, you finally broke me down. I'm going to discuss margins. Nothing written in stone, mind you, but a few basic guidelines that will help you approximate the look of a professional screenplay.
First, you want to leave a bit of room on the left side of your script. This is where the brads go. So leave about an inch and a half margin there.
On the right side, you don't want the words spilling off the page, so leave three quarters of an inch to an inch of nice white space showing. If you have to go past that once in awhile, don't panic, they'll be too involved in your wonderful story to care.
Top and bottom? Maybe a half an inch on top where the numbers go (see sample) and about an inch on the bottom. Conventional wisdom says it's always visually more pleasing to have a wider margin on the bottom than on top.
That covers the narrative, but what about dialogue?
Dialogue captions fall approximately in the center of your narrative, but are not centered. The left edges of all the dialog caps should line up down the page. The dialogue itself is indented about an inch or so on each side. The sample makes this pretty clear.
Last but not least, the parenthetical directions. Start them about five spaces in from the beginning of the dialogue. If they're long, format them as follows:
LISA
(tying
her shoe)
Are you coming or what?
Also, be sure to use only left justification on both narrative and dialog. Full or right justification looks terrible with Courier and will only succeed in casting suspicion upon your script.
The Use of "CUT TO"
At one time, everyone who wrote scripts used the phrase "CUT TO" to jump to a new scene. Here's what it looked like:
EXT. HOUSE
Billy emerges at a run, but the car is already tearing around
the corner. Defeated, he watches it disappear.
CUT TO:
EXT. BANK - DAY
Billy parks his bike in a street rack and bounds up steps to
the bank entrance.
Conventional wisdom says that this is no longer necessary. I sometimes use a modified version myself, but it's probably best to trust conventional wisdom on this one.
There are other transitional phrases closely related to "CUT TO," like "SMASH CUT," "JUMP CUT" and "FLYING SWING CUT WITH A CHERRY ON TOP." These phrases are outdated, outmoded television devices that may hold some slight significance to a film editor, but will mean absolutely nothing to anyone else. Avoid them like the plague.
And while we're on the topic of transitions, I might as well mention "DISSOLVE TO," which is usually used to signify a longer than normal passage of time between two scenes:
EXT. HOUSE
Billy emerges at a run, but the car is already tearing around
the corner. Defeated, he watches it disappear.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. BANK - DAY
Billy parks his bike in a street rack and bounds up steps to the
bank entrance.
This is okay to use as long as you don't overdo it.