Autoformat: Fix a Screenplay's Formatting in One Click

EnsembleWriter reads each paragraph of your script as an element from the way it is written: a line starting with INT. or EXT. is a scene heading, a name in capitals with speech under it is a character cue, a line in capitals ending in a colon is a transition. Type quickly and some lines read as something you did not mean. Autoformat goes through the whole script and fixes them in one step.

What Autoformat Does

Autoformat writes each element into the text the way screenwriting software reads it:

• A character cue typed in lowercase, such as maya, goes into capitals: MAYA.
• A scene heading missing its period, such as int kitchen - day, becomes INT. KITCHEN - DAY.
• A transition typed as cut to becomes CUT TO:.
• A speech or a (beat) separated from its cue by a blank line is joined back to it.
• A direction typed on the name's line, such as MAYA (whispering), moves onto the line under the name as a parenthetical. Extensions such as (V.O.) and (CONT'D) stay beside the name.
• A line in capitals that is a sound or a beat, not a name, gets the period that keeps it action.

Lines that are easy to misread are checked by our AI provider, which judges each one from the scenes around it. Everything else is a set of rules applied in the editor's own terms.

Running Autoformat

Click Autoformat at the top right of the editor. A dialog says what will change; click Autoformat again to run it. A long script takes a few seconds. When it finishes, a message at the bottom of the screen says how many lines it changed.

Autoformat needs a free account and a script you can edit. It is on the desktop editor; phones do not show the button. If you are writing with co-writers, they see the result at once, like any edit.

Elements You Set by Hand

When you pick an element from the element menu, press Tab or use a shortcut such as Cmd+Option+2, the editor remembers your choice beside the text rather than in it. That choice is easy to lose: a Fountain export, a re-import or another screenwriting app only sees the words.

Autoformat turns each of those choices into text. A line you made a character cue is written in capitals, a line you made a scene heading gets its INT. or EXT., and so on. Afterwards nothing is set by hand any more: the script reads the same in every export and import.

What It Never Changes

Your words stay as you wrote them. Autoformat only changes case and punctuation, joins a line to the cue above it, moves a direction in parentheses off a character's name line, and adds INT., EXT. or another heading prefix where a scene heading has none. It never rewrites, adds or removes a word.

It also keeps your writing record honest. A name you typed and Autoformat put in capitals still counts as typed. Only the characters it added, such as a period, a colon or a heading prefix, are labelled as coming from outside your typing.

The script is sent to our AI provider for the check and is not kept there or by us. The privacy policy names the provider's role.

Undoing It

The message that says Autoformat finished has an Undo button. It puts the text back as it was, along with every element you had set by hand. Undo works until the message closes or the script changes. After that, Revisions in the right sidebar still has the version from before.