The film/television industry is very conservative in some ways. Productions methods have stayed the same for nearly a century, often for very practical reasons.

The film/television industry is very conservative in some ways. Productions methods have stayed the same for nearly a century, often for very practical reasons. 12-point or 10-pitch Courier, the basic typewriter font, along with certain formatting rules, was found to produce a page of screenplay that equaled about a minute of screen time. Nothing has happened over the past 100 years to change that, so no one wants (or needs) to mess with an industry standard, which in this case might as well be a universal language understood by actors, producers, directors, etc. at least in the English-speaking entertainment industry. Thanks for the formatting, including the font used, everyone reading the script has the same idea about running time, scene lengths, character names, etc.