Screenplay revision marks — asterisks, coloured pages, and why

Once a script goes into production, every revision is tracked on the page. Asterisks mark which lines changed. Coloured pages mark which revision they belong to. Locked scene numbers stay the same forever, even when scenes are deleted. This is the system that lets a hundred crew members on a film set know they're all reading the same version of the script.

It's also the system that catches new screenwriters out the moment they sell a script. Spec drafts don't use revision marks. Production drafts do. Here's the full reference.

What are revision marks?

Revision marks are visual indicators added to a production script that show which content changed since the previous revision. They consist of three parts: the asterisk gutter (which marks changed lines), the coloured-page rotation (which dates the revision), and the locked scene-number system (which keeps the script's scene structure stable through rewrites).

The asterisk gutter

When a line of action, dialogue, or stage direction is changed in a revision, an asterisk appears in the right margin next to that line. The asterisk says: something on this line is new.

INT. KITCHEN — NIGHT

Jake stands at the sink, holding a glass.

                    JAKE                              *

          I'm not going.                              *

He stares out the window.

The asterisks tell the script supervisor and the crew exactly what changed since the last coloured page. They don't need to read the whole scene again — they scan for asterisks and read those lines.

The coloured-page rotation

Each revision after the production draft (the locked white pages) gets its own colour. The rotation runs in a specific order, and each studio has its own canonical order. The most common order — sometimes called the Universal rotation — is:

1. White (production draft / first locked draft)
2. Blue
3. Pink
4. Yellow
5. Green
6. Goldenrod
7. Buff
8. Salmon
9. Cherry
10. (then back to second-pass colours: 2nd Blue, 2nd Pink, etc.)

Some studios drop or reorder colours; check your production's convention. The pattern is universal — a new colour for every new revision so anyone holding the script can tell at a glance which version they have.

Page header and revision date

Every revised page carries a revision header at the top — usually the colour name and the date. BLUE REVISIONS — 11/14/26 sits in the top-left corner, above the page number. The header tells the crew which revision the page is from at a glance.

Locked scene numbers

Once a script is "locked" (i.e., goes into production), scene numbers freeze. They never change again. If scene 14 is deleted, scenes 13 and 15 stay 13 and 15 — the gap stays as a deletion. If a new scene is inserted between scenes 14 and 15, it becomes 14A. Inserts go A, B, C, etc. (and AA, BB if you go further).

Why: every department's paperwork — call sheets, strip boards, costume breakdowns — is keyed to scene numbers. Renumbering would invalidate every existing document. The lock keeps the production's memory coherent.

14   INT. KITCHEN — NIGHT                       14
     Jake stands at the sink.

14A  INT. HALLWAY — NIGHT                       14A
     He walks out.

15   EXT. STREET — NIGHT                        15
     Cold rain.

Scene numbers appear in both margins — left and right — on a locked production draft.

OMITs and STETs

Two pieces of vocabulary you'll see in production revisions.

OMIT. When a scene is deleted from a locked script, the slugline is replaced with OMIT.in caps. The scene number stays (because it's locked) so the document remains navigable.

14   OMITTED                                    14

STET.Latin for "let it stand". Used in revisions to mark a line that was changed in a previous draft and is now being restored to its original wording. Rare in modern productions; more common in publishing.

Spec script vs production draft

Specs do not use revision marks. No asterisks. No coloured pages. No locked scene numbers. Specs are clean white pages. The first time most writers ever encounter the revision system is when their script gets bought and a production manager hands them a coloured-page rewrite. (See How to format a screenplay for the spec-script format basics.)

How software handles revisions

Final Draft pioneered automatic revision marking and is still the production standard — most studios require FDX delivery. WriterDuet, Fade In, and Arqo all support the revision system to varying depths. The features to look for:

• Automatic asterisk gutter on changed lines, with paragraph-level granularity.
• Revision colour cycling — set the revision name, the tool advances the colour automatically.
• Locked scene numbers with insert letter support (14A, 14B…).
• Coloured-page export to PDF, where the page tints render correctly for crew.

For how Arqo handles round-trip with FDX preserving revision marks, see How we shipped FDX round-trip in four weeks.

Most-asked questions

What do the colours mean in a screenplay?

Each coloured page belongs to a different revision pass. White is the locked production draft, then blue, pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, buff, salmon, cherry — and after cherry, back to the start with a second-pass label (2nd Blue, 2nd Pink, and so on).

What does an asterisk mean in a screenplay?

On a production draft, an asterisk in the right margin marks a line that changed since the previous coloured revision. Spec scripts don't use asterisks.

What does OMIT mean in a screenplay?

That a scene was in the previous locked draft and has been removed in this revision. The scene number stays (because production scene numbers are locked) — the slugline is replaced with OMITTED.