Final Draft is a screenwriting software program which is brilliant in its design. It formats everything for you – screenplays are very specific, in what they need to look like – indentations for characters, voice over moments, actions, transitions – and once you get the hang of it, you can just fly. There is no hovering over your keyboard doing it manually. You can just WRITE, and the formatting happens by itself (once you know what you are doing). It was a gift, and I absolutely love it.
Today I was doing spellcheck on something I had just written.
One of my characters swears like a truckdriver. Final Draft had a hell of a time figuring out what to do with the swears.
For “bullshit”, Final Draft suggested “blushing”.
For “fucking”, Final Draft suggests “flacking”.
For “fuck”, Final Draft suggests “luck”.
For “jagoff”, Final Draft suggests “takeoff”.
For “crap”, Final Draft suggests “cap”.
Now this isn’t a swear, but I found it amusing:
For “Tupperware”, Final Draft suggests “Tipperary”.
But my all-time favorite suggestion is:
For “douchebags”, Final Draft suggests “doodlebugs”.
I seriously need to do a “Replace All”, just to see how bizarre my script will now read.
“What should I do with the leftovers?” “Oh, just put them in a Tipperary container”.
“Don’t be a takeoff, why won’t you listen to me?”
“You need to understand that I DON’T GIVE A CAP.”
“What the luck?”
“What you’re saying is all blushing.”
“You need a flacking clue is what you need.”
“I don’t like his friends. They’re all doodlebugs.”
Final Draft, as sponsored by the coalition for American Families, or something like that.
HAHAHAHAHAHA
I was amazed that “crap” wasn’t in there!!
It’s like Mad Libs! My favorite is “flacking.” I’m going to try to incorporate that into as many conversations as I can now.
Doodlebugs?
hahahahaha I know. “douchebag” is actually a word, swear though it may be. You have “doodlebugs” in your dictionary and not “douchebag”???
Ha! So it would say something like, “Kanye West is such a doodlebug.” Awesome.
Sarah – yes!! hahaha Speaking of Mad Libs plus Kanye West (I know you saw this on my Facebook page) – but for others who are not in the loop: Check out the Kanye West Apology Generator. HOURS of fun to be had.
Heck, I think I’m going to have some shirts made – “Don’t be a doodlebug!”
If I had a nickel for every doodlebug I’ve met in my lifetime…
Holy cap, Jean, you ain’t kidding.
I’m going to institute “doodlebug” as the new “doom” or “fiduciary” or “seduce.”
Fiduciary!! hahahahahaha
DOOM.
That’s funny. It’s like Mary Poppins was in charge of spellcheck for that software. “Oh my, that won’t do at all. We shall suggest “doodlebug”.
Earlier versions of Word spellcheck used to suggest some funny ones for proper names IIRC. The one that recently made made me scratch my head was how Typepad spellcheck didn’t recognize the word “blogger”, since fixed. My favorite suggestions there were “flogger”, or “blower”.
That’s an easy fix. Just open up Preferences and change the settings from “PG” to “R”.
Mark – Is that for real??
No, it’s not real, but now that I think of it, it really should be. Suggest that to the creators and maybe they’ll put it in the next version.
I like Mark’s suggestion a lot. However, the “X” setting changes phrases like “took out the garbage” to “shit my pants.”
DYING!!!!!!
Yeah. You don’t even want to know what it did with “Pastor Milton wore a lovely frock” in the Church Bulletin.
That sentence brings up disturbing images as it is.
LOL. I wrote that as I was leaving for work. I meant, “Pastor Milton’s wife wore a lovely frock.” LOL. Not that that’s much better.