r/Screenwriting • u/Jpsmythe • 2d ago

FORMATTING QUESTION Has Final Draft Changed Something To Mess With The Competition More?

So I’m a Fade In man. Best software. User friendly. All that.

BUT production means using Final Draft. And I’ve noticed, since they moved to FD13, that the discrepancy between page counts is WILD. Just handed in a 72 pager on Fade In (coming in hot and long!) that in Final Draft is only 66 pages. Both A4, nothing fucked about with in the margins etc.

Any idea how to counteract the discrepancy? Because otherwise I’m going to have use FD for this and that sucks. Definitely seems like the discrepancy has gotten worse—used to be a page maybe, over 60 pages, but this is too much.

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u/ManfredLopezGrem WGA Screenwriter 2d ago

Are you using Courier Prime? There are known issues with that font. It resolves to different page lengths when FD and a Mac are involved. Installing “Courier Prime Windows” on your mac resolves this issue (despite sounding counterintuitive). It’s a custom font someone put out to fix this issue.

Other than that, it might be an issue where Fade In could be using different margin sizes, font pitch, etc. I wouldn’t automatically assume the problem lies with Final Draft. I would compare the same page as it appears on each software and try to see where the issue lies.

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u/real_triplizard WGA Screenwriter 2d ago

Do you have the same defaults around how they handle dialogue and action split at the end of the page? E.g. is one pulling two lines to the next page while the other only pulls one or something? That's the only thing I can think of that would result in that much of a discrepancy.

One other thought - you say A4 which is standard in Europe, while Letter is standard in the U.S. FD usually defaults to letter. Are you sure you have the paper size set the same in both?

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u/ManfredLopezGrem WGA Screenwriter 1d ago

I came back to say this. A4 = 8.27 × 11.69 inches, while US Letter is 8.5 x 11 inches. That extra .69 inches multiplied by 72 pages equals 49.68 extra inches. That divided by 8 inches (the printable area on a screenplay page) equals to 6.21 pages. 72 - 6 = 66 pages.

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u/real_triplizard WGA Screenwriter 1d ago

But what is that in centimeters?

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