What page am I on?

This will be a shorter entry this time, but I have to sound off about the formatting mistake that never fails to raise my blood pressure – the omission of page numbers.

See, when I read a script, I like to keep notes about particular plot points so that I can go back and refer to those scenes later, either when writing up the synopsis or when later revelations in the story motivate me to go back and revisit earlier scenes. Without page numbers, not only does that task become much more difficult, but it becomes nearly impossible to give specific notes about typos, bad lines of dialogue, awkward transitions and so on if I don’t have a page number I can cite.

Some might say, “Well, you could just write in the page numbers as you go. It only takes a second.” That’s true, but it also only takes one second for the writer to activate the page numbers in his word processor. If I have to write in each page number manually, it breaks the flow of the story for me, plus it puts me in a really bad mood. As we’ve established, it’s not wise to upset your reader.

Don’t make a reader angry. You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry.