Finishing someone else's sentence?

[StevenHarvey1990]

Firstly I'm not too sure where to post this. Either here or the basic questions thread. Chose here as it's specific to screen-writing. Here goes:

Which is correct:-

This one -



This one -



This one -



Or, is it in fact NONE of the above?

Help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

[Melville]

Originally Posted by StevenHarvey1990

Firstly I'm not too sure where to post this. Either here or the basic questions thread. Chose here as it's specific to screen-writing. Here goes:

Which is correct:-

This one -



This one -



This one -



Or, is it in fact NONE of the above?

Help would be very much appreciated. Thanks.

You can use 1 or 2, which ever you prefer -- I'm seen it done both ways.

An ellipsis, or this ... in dialogue means there's a pause, as opposed to missing text, and there's generally no pause when someone leaps in to finish another's sentence.

[StevenHarvey1990]

Thanks very much Melville.

[WriteKnight]

I'd go with number two over number one - but either is good. Number three doesn't read the way you want it to.

[dpaterso]

You could also go with:

              TARA
Yeah.
    (pointing to her house)
Yeah. That's it there. The last
house--

              ADAM
    (finishing sentence)
--on the left.  Hmm...

(Note the use of CODE tags above to post text monospaced, as opposed to posting images for each sample.)

-Derek

[StevenHarvey1990]

Thanks guys.

Good advice Derek that would be much handier. Problem is I can't get the dialogue etc centered or as neat as you have it.

TARA
Yeah.
(pointing to her house)
Yeah. That’s it there. The last house--
ADAM
-- On the left. Hmm ...

That's the mess I make when trying.

[dpaterso]

Originally Posted by StevenHarvey1990

Good advice Derek that would be much handier. Problem is I can't get the dialogue etc centered or as neat as you have it.

You're centering your text, I just typed it in manually with spaces and lined things up by eye, a total cheat just for example's sake.

I'm presuming you're using a screenplay processor like Final Draft or Celtx? Save as plain text. Copy/paste from this text file (viewed in Notepad or similar dumb text editor) into the forum editor window. Highlight the text, and select the "Wrap [CODE] tags around selected text" icon # from the menu bar. Select the Preview Post button to see how it looks.

(There's a section in the screenwriting tips thread that says much the same thing.)

-Derek

[StevenHarvey1990]

Okay will try that next time. Thanks a lot Derek.