Backspace Key Functionality

We made the Backspace key Intuitive

Deleting text in the Script360 editor in most cases works like any word processor you are used to. Hit the backspace and the previous character is deleted. Select a word and hit backspace, the word is deleted. In addition, we also added some smarts specific to editing screenplays:

Situation 1: Cursor at the beginning of a paragraph

If the current paragraph is empty, the backspace key will remove the paragraph as expected.

However, if the current paragraph has some text in it, the backspace key will join the text in the paragraph only if the previous paragraph is the same type as the current paragraph (i.e. two action paragraphs you want to join together). If not (i.e. Action preceded by a Scne Heading), the backspace key will not join the action with the scene heading, something that rarely would make sense.

In this case, the backspace key will do nothing.

If you really want to join up two different paragraph types, which can happen if a paragraph of Dialogue was accidentally entered as Action, just hold down the Shift key and hit the backspace key (Shift-Backspace). The shift key will override the limits and let you join up any paragraphs.

After the Shift-Backspace, the dialogue is now properly formatted as one paragraph, with the Action paragraph (which was just improperly formatted) joined up with the preceding Dialogue.

Situation 2: When there is a selection range across paragraphs

Often you will want to select and delete text that spans more than one individual paragraph. In Script360, we built in some smarts similar so that different types of paragraphs don't just get slapped together. Take the following example:

What would make little sense would be to just join the remaining Action (at the end of what you selected) with the Dialogue at the start of the selection. In these cases, the editor will delete the selected text while keeping different paragraph types intact at the start and end:

Note that the remaining text in the Action paragraph is still an Action paragraph, even though the selected text was removed. With this, we hope deleting text will make sense in most cases.

If you want the paragraphs to be joined together (overriding the preceding), you can cut the text (Ctrl-X) instead of hitting the backspace key.