How many lines per page does Final Draft write and what are my line spacing options?
Under Document > Page Layout > Options are the four possible line spacing settings: Loose, Normal, Tight and Very Tight:
Set to Normal, a 100-page (exactly) script in the default Final Draft screenplay template (US Letter) repaginates (roughly) at:
- Loose: 106
- Tight: 95
- Very Tight: 89
Their lines-per-page counts are:
- Loose: 49
- Normal: 54
- Tight: 58
- Very Tight: 64
We strongly recommend using Normal because it comes closest to the 1-minute-per-page rule relied upon by readers, development people and (in particular) production staff.
Note that Final Draft doesn't always print down all the way to the bottom of every page. It's designed to keep certain paragraph together so there are no widows and orphans (paragraphs which belong together but are, incorrectly, separated by a page break). An example of this would be a character name at the bottom of page 11 and that character's dialogue at the top of page 12. To avoid this situation, the program will force the character name to the top of the next page to keep it with its dialogue. There will be no widows/orphans but you won't get the number of lines indicated above. For script purposes, it's better to not have widows and orphans than to have text on every possible line.
Also see Can Final Draft cheat the page count?
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