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Taiwan format or Hollywood: choosing by who receives it

Last updated September 10, 2026 · 14 min read

In one line: which of the two formats to put a screenplay in, what actually changes on the page when you flip, and why the choice belongs to the file rather than to you.

Ink Tide (Screenplay), Episode 01 in Preview mode with the toolbar's format toggle on Hollywood. The paper opens with the title block — EP01, the title, Written by, and the episode's one-line logline — then the first scene: the heading reads INT. YOU'AN SCRIPTORIUM – DUSK (THE SHOPFRONT), the action lines run flush left with no marker, the cues GU SUI and SHEN YAN sit centred on their own lines in caps, the dialogue is indented under them, and a parenthetical (pushing a string of cash across) gets its own line. Hollywood and Taiwan are the two halves of one toggle; the gear beside it opens the format settings.

Two formats, and the decision is not about you

Slima has exactly two screenplay formats: Taiwan and Hollywood. There is no third.

So the question is never "which do I prefer" — it is who is going to read this page.

The page is going to Give them
A Taiwanese production company, a broadcaster, a local director's team Taiwan
A contest, a festival, an agent, anyone reading in English Hollywood
A co-producer overseas on a Taiwanese show Hollywood — and see the warning about hard-coded Chinese further down
Nobody yet: you are drafting Whichever you type faster in. It flips later at no cost.

A new .script file is created in Taiwan format, always — whatever your interface language, whatever the other files in the book are set to. Nothing infers it from your locale. If you write Hollywood, flipping is your first move on a new file.

The toggle lives at the right end of the toolbar

Open the screenplay and look at the far right of the toolbar: a two-button pill, Hollywood on the left and Taiwan on the right, with a gear beside it. Click a side; that is the whole action.

The setting belongs to the file, not to the book and not to your account. Flipping episode 1 to Hollywood for a contest leaves episodes 2 to 12 exactly as they were. That is deliberate — one episode, one file, one decision.

Before you hand anything over, press Preview. Preview runs the same layout engine as the Word and Fountain exports, so what you see there is what comes out.

What actually changes on the page

The file stores structure, not typeset text: a scene heading is interior or exterior, a location, a time of day; a line is action or dialogue or a shot. Each format is a way of printing that. The same data, two rendering rules — which is why flipping is instant and lossless.

Taiwan Hollywood
Scene heading 1. 內景 You'an Scriptorium 昏 INT. YOU'AN SCRIPTORIUM - DUSK
Scene number on the heading Yes Never
Location printed as you typed it UPPERCASED
Action line prefixed △ no prefix
Character cue Shen Yan（畫外音）： — full-width colon, left SHEN YAN (V.O.) — uppercased, centred
Cue and the line after it merged onto one line two lines
Parenthetical ▲（quietly） (quietly)
Shot ▲ 插景：her father's letter INSERT — HER FATHER'S LETTER
Transition presets in the dropdown 3 9
Scene grid above each scene available not available
PDF page A4, 14pt, a CJK sans face US Letter, 12pt, Courier
(MORE) / (CONT'D) across a page break no yes, in the PDF
Title page title as typed; the logline printed in grey underneath title UPPERCASED and bold; no logline; Anonymous when no writer is named

The same episode, the same preview, with the toggle flipped to Taiwan. The heading becomes one numbered line — 1. 內景 You'an Scriptorium 昏（the shopfront）— the action lines pick up a △ in front, the cue and its dialogue merge onto a single line joined by a full-width colon (Gu Sui：Twelve coppers.), and the parenthetical is marked ▲ on its own line. Note that the Taiwan layout keeps 內景 and 昏 in Chinese even in the English interface: those markers are part of the format, not of the UI language. Same file, not a word changed.

Two of those rows deserve their own sentence.

The merged cue. In Taiwan format the character's name and their line print together — Shen Yan：I'll copy what you recite. — where Hollywood stacks the name above the speech. This is the difference people notice first, and it is not something you can turn off.

The scene grid. Taiwan format can print a small two-row table above every scene with the scene number, the time of day, the estimated length and the cast of that scene. It is off until you switch it on in the gear panel, and Hollywood never draws it at all.

The gear: the details, and how to make twelve episodes match

The gear next to the toggle opens Format Customization. Everything in it is stored per file.

Taiwan Options   (only shown while the file is Taiwan)
  Action prefix △
  Insert prefix ▲
Display
  Scene numbers
  Scene grid layout   (Taiwan only)
PDF Export
  Page size
  Font size           (10 / 12 / 14pt)

When you press Save and the book holds other screenplay files, Slima asks: Apply to the other scripts? — "This book has N more script file(s). Apply the format settings you just changed to them as well?" with Apply to all and Just this one.

That prompt copies the details only — never the Taiwan/Hollywood choice itself. There is no "make the whole book Hollywood" anywhere in Slima. Twelve episodes means twelve flips. It is also only offered after you save the gear panel; flipping the toggle never raises it.

Scene numbers is offered for both formats but only does something in Taiwan — no Hollywood page in Slima prints a scene number, with the toggle on or off.
And once you have pressed Save even once, page size and font size stop following the format's defaults: a Taiwan file saved at A4/14pt keeps A4 and 14pt after you flip it to Hollywood. Check the gear after a flip if the paper matters.

What flipping does not do

It does not re-classify a single line. Which lines are dialogue, action, a shot or a transition was decided when you typed them or when the file was imported. The toggle repaints; it never re-reads. If a line came in as the wrong type, put the caret on it and press Ctrl+1…5.

Your transition text is not translated. Transitions are free text. Type SMASH CUT TO: in Hollywood, flip to Taiwan, and it still says SMASH CUT TO: — a word that isn't even in the Taiwan preset list. Transitions are the one thing you have to fix by hand.

Location and annotation text stay as typed. Hollywood uppercases the location as it prints it — and uppercasing does nothing to Chinese or Japanese characters, so a Chinese location on a Hollywood page appears exactly as you wrote it.

Scene numbers are not renumbered. They are renumbered when you add, delete, split or merge a scene — never by a format flip.

The runtime estimate does not move. The minutes readout is built from word counts and your file's pacing, and knows nothing about format.

There is one thing that does change beyond the page, and it surprises people: the typing flow. Enter and Tab walk you between element types on a different path in each format — in Hollywood, Enter on an empty action line takes you to a character cue; in Taiwan it leaves you on the action line. Old lines are untouched; the next thing you type behaves differently. The full tables are in Enter and Tab: the element flow.

The awkward part: the Taiwan page speaks Chinese

Taiwan format is a Taiwanese industry convention, and Slima prints it the way that industry prints it. The furniture is Chinese no matter what language your interface is in:

內景 ／ 外景                      the interior/exterior marker
日 夜 晨 昏                        the time of day
△ ▲                              the action and insert prefixes
畫外音 ／ 畫外 ／ 續               the character modifiers (V.O. / O.S. / CONT'D)
插景 特寫 中景 遠景 蒙太奇 …        all eleven shot labels
場次 時間 Time 角色 景： 天候：     the scene grid
編劇                              the writer credit — but only in the PDF, Word and ePub

Set your interface to Korean, Japanese, Spanish or Arabic and those words are still Chinese in the preview, in the PDF, in Word, in the ePub and on a share link. It isn't a missing translation — it is what the format is.

One exception, the last row: the writer credit label follows your interface language in Preview and on a share link. Only the exported PDF, Word and ePub print 編劇 outright.

So: Taiwan format is for a recipient who reads Chinese. If your reader doesn't, use Hollywood, where the furniture is English (INT., DAY, V.O., (MORE), Written by) — and where an unnamed writer prints as Anonymous, so fill that field in.

Why the editor says one thing and the page says another. The scene-heading chips you click in the editor are interface text, so a Hollywood file opened in a Chinese interface shows 內景 on the chip while Preview and the PDF print INT. Both are correct; the chip follows your language, the page follows the format. Preview is the honest one.

Imported files: the format was guessed, so check it

  • .fdx and .fountain always arrive as Hollywood, no guessing.
  • .rtf and pasted text are guessed from the shape of the content, and a tie goes to Taiwan.

The guesser reads the first hundred lines and scores what it recognises: canonical headings (1. 內景 地點 日, or INT. LOCATION - DAY with the period), △/▲ prefixes, Taiwanese cues sitting alone on their own line ending in ：, known English transitions, and all-caps lines. So if you want the guess to land, tidy the source's headings before you import rather than fixing the file afterwards.

One quirk worth knowing if you are round-tripping through Slima itself: the merged Taiwanese cue Slima exports (Shen Yan：I'll copy what you recite.) is not the shape the guesser rewards — it wants the name alone on its line. A Slima Taiwanese PDF or Markdown pasted back in may still be read as Taiwanese, but only just.

Details: Bring an existing screenplay in.

Handing a season over in two formats

  • One episode, two versions: flip, export, flip back. Nothing else in the book moves.
  • A merged season PDF takes the first episode's format for the whole document. If episode 1 is Hollywood and the rest are Taiwan, you get a Hollywood-shaped document — check episode 1 before you merge a folder.
  • Word and Fountain exported per episode keep each episode's own format, because each file is rendered on its own.
  • A single ePub of a season also keeps each episode in its own format, one chapter each.

The routes themselves are in Handing the screenplay over.

When not to bother

  • Don't flip to fix mis-typed lines. It repaints, it doesn't re-read. Ctrl+1…5 is the fix.
  • Don't flip a whole season for one delivery. Twelve flips, twelve flips back, and one you will forget. Flip the episode you are sending.
  • Don't expect numbered Hollywood headings. Slima does not print scene numbers on a Hollywood page. If a production needs a numbered shooting script, Taiwan format is where the numbers are.
  • Don't count on Slima to translate transitions or annotations. Those are your words and they stay your words.

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