Line breaks and indents

Enter↩ and TabTab are busy in a screenplay: Enter starts the next element and Tab changes what a line is. So the two things they do in any other editor, a new line and an indent, have keys of their own here.

A new line inside the same element

Enter↩ ends the element you are in and starts the next one. When you want a second line that is still the same element, as in a speech that runs to a second paragraph, a paragraph of action set on two lines, or the lines of a verse, press Shift+Enter⇧↩ instead (Format › Line break).

JUNE
I kept every ticket.
Every single one.

The new line belongs to the element above it: in the example, both lines are June’s speech. In the file they are two lines with no blank line between them, which is how Fountain keeps them together.

It works in action, dialogue, lyrics and centered text. In a scene heading, a character, a parenthetical or a transition a second line would not come back from the file as part of the same element, so there the shortcut works as Enter↩, starting the next element, and Format › Line break is greyed out. On a title page each line is an entry of its own, and an entry runs to a second line with an indent (below).

Pressed twice in a row, it ends a paragraph of action, lyrics or centered text, and leaves a pause in a speech: see Line breaks and spacing.

On a touch keyboard such as Gboard, press Shift and then Enter. The footer also has a button for it, drawn as lines of text with one wrapping round onto the next. It is greyed out where a line break is not allowed.

Indenting a line

Fountain keeps the spaces and tabs at the start of a line in two places only: in action, where an indent is part of how the line is laid out, and on the title page, where an indented line continues the entry above it. Those are the two places Calmly Script lets you indent:

• Format › Indent line (Ctrl+Tab⌥Tab) puts a tab at the start of the line the caret is on.
• Format › Remove indent (Ctrl+Shift+Tab⌥⇧Tab) takes one off again.

On any other element the indent would be dropped the next time the file is saved, so there Format › Indent line is greyed out and the shortcut does nothing. Format › Remove indent works everywhere, for a file that arrived with indents from another app.

On the continuation lines of a title page, TabTab and Shift+Tab⇧Tab indent and outdent too, because there is no element there to change (see Enter and Tab).

On Android, where the on-screen keyboard has no Tab key, the two rows in the Format menu are the way to type an indent.

The spacing rules of Fountain, blank lines included, are in Line breaks and spacing.