Cues, dialogue and asides

A cue identifies the speaker and enters speech context. The following nonempty lines are interpreted as their speech until a blank line ends that context.

PETER
(from the doorway)
Sorry I'm late.

ANNA
It's fine. I was waiting.

This produces Character, Aside and Dialogue for Peter, then Character and Dialogue for Anna. The outer parentheses of an Aside are not part of its content.

Cue forms

Form outside speech	Interpretation
PETER	Uppercase cue
@Peter	Forced cue with its written casing
"Mrs. Washington"	Quoted cue
ANNA / PETER	Shared cue, names separated by /
PETER (quietly)	Cue followed by an Aside

For uppercase recognition, the trimmed cue base must contain at least one letter and equal its uppercase form. The reader uses Unicode letter and case handling rather than an ASCII-only A–Z test. Pure numbers or punctuation do not establish an uppercase cue.

A forced unquoted cue name is a single token without whitespace, ., / or @. Use quoted names for spaces and punctuation. Shared cue names are split on / outside quoted literals; an optional @ on a subsequent name is accepted.

+ is not a shared-cue separator in this text grammar. In a bare uppercase cue such as ANNA + PETER, the current reader leaves it in one decoded name. Do not substitute the editor’s input conventions for the file rules.

Cue names are decoded as names, not parsed for inline emphasis. A trailing parenthetical suffix creates an Aside after the Character block.

Inline cues

JANE: I told you already.

A recognized cue prefix followed by a colon can introduce Dialogue on the same line. The text after it is Dialogue even when uppercase. Further lines resume the ordinary speech rules.

The current reader looks for the first unescaped colon without reliably excluding quoted cue names. For example, "CAPTAIN: JANE" is mis-split and rejected as an unterminated name. Quoting alone does not protect a cue name containing a colon, including some forced quoted forms. Treat this as a current reader compatibility limit.

The reference writer normally emits the cue and its speech on separate lines. For JANE: HELLO, that can change the re-read block type from Dialogue to Lyrics. If that distinction matters, keep or regenerate the inline form deliberately.

Speech context and new speakers

Put a blank line before a new cue. Without it:

PETER
ANNA
It's fine.

Here ANNA is a Lyrics line in Peter’s speech, followed by Dialogue. It is not a new speaker. Prefixing a line with @ while speech is active does not establish a new cue either; it is handled as inline speech text and can contain a character reference.

Whole trimmed parenthetical lines are Asides while speech is active. The same parenthetical line outside speech is a Stage direction with its parentheses preserved.

Action within a speech

MICHAEL
Wait here.
!He pauses, listening.
I'll be back.

Column-one ! creates a Stage direction without ending the speech. The next line can continue the same speaker. Unforced action-looking text here would be Dialogue or Lyrics.

For lyric lines and an empty continuation that retains the speaker, see Music and lyrics. For names containing quotes or backslashes, see Quoted literals.