I agree that the writer should try not to clutter up the screenplay with too much technical jargon, and certainly needs to avoid being too specific as to shot selection, even if you're pitching to direct as well. I like the trend toward literary form in that sense. If I'm writing a piece I intend to produce and direct myself, I'm pretty cryptic; I want the script to move and to be visual without a lot of verbage to overwhelm that flow. However, I may have to explain more to some readers

I wonder how the rest of the end users of a screenplay feel about it. From a breakdown standpoint, it will get messy if everyone abandons too many conventions. It is a big help to know how pages time, for instance. It would be much less predictable if everyone picks their own favorite indenting standards, and things like those 'continueds' also help smooth a breakdown.

With formatting software, I don't feel that formatting conventions stifle my writing that much.

Tom, I think the trend toward the more literary approach to screenwriting style is a combination of screenwriters' personalities being reflected more and more on the page and the growing difference between a selling script and a shooting script. A writer has one goal with a selling script: To set up the project. Therefore it behooves us to write the best story we can in the best way we can to make that story come alive in the mind of a reader. Freed from the requirements of REVERSE ANGLE or SMASH CUT TO, we have more freedom with form and style than we used to.

There's also this subtle dynamic: We want to pull a reader into our story world and keep them there. 'Scripty' language and directing lingo remind the reader they are reading a script, can sometimes jar the reader out of the story.

Concretizing the shift toward this literary style is the fact movie screenplays are now more and more available in book form through outfits like the Newmarket Shooting Script Series.

Of course as you note, if you're writing a script you yourself are going to direct, you can write whatever the hell you like in whatever the hell fashion you like, especially if you already have the funding.

But for those who are writing a selling script (not a shooting script), screenwriting style, as part of our Narrative Voice, is one of many aspects of the writing process that can help get our script a "Consider" from script readers.

I liked what Jay Presson Allen had to say when asked if she put camera directions in scripts (in Backstory 3 interview):

"Oh, good heavens, no. No director wants to be told where to put the camera, unless it's specific to a line of dialogue. I don't dictate to a director. I work for a director. If you don't work very closely with a director, you're not going to see anything you want up on the screen. There's no way. So you had better invite the gentleman to piss a little on the script. Put his mark on it. Make it his."

Thanks for the link, Scott. I guess I was wondering mostly about action and description rather than technical jargon. It's always been my understanding that one mustn't write anything that can't be visualized. I recently read Ossana and McMurtry's screenplay for Brokeback Mountain and was struck by passages such as this:
"ENNIS presses his face into the fabric...hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of JACK. But there is no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain, of which nothing is left but what he now holds in his trembling hands."
Great writing, but is it possible to show visually what someone is hoping to smell? Can you show a scent visually, or the absence of it? Can you show memories?
It would be very liberating to know that one can do this sort of thing in a screenplay, but I've always understood that descriptive action had to be tangible and filmable.
Thoughts?

@Erik: This is a broad generalization, but I think it's fair to say there seems to be more latitude toward those 'novelistic' uses of scene description in screenplays. We can see this routinely when a character is introduced for the first time. As far back as "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" by William Goldman, we see this. Here is how Butch is introduced:

A MAN

idly walking around a corner of the building. He is BUTCH CASSIDY and hard to pin down. Thirty-five and bright, he has brown hair, but most people, if asked to describe
him would remember him blond. He speaks well and quickly, and has been all his life a leader of men; but if you asked him, he would be damned if he could tell you why.

• Hard to pin down
• Most people would remember him blond
• He speaks well and quickly
• A leader of men, but he doesn’t have a clue why he’s good at it

None of that can be acted by the actor, but it's helpful for a reader, especially in sorting out all the characters introduced in Act One.

That said, any non-pro screenwriter has to be careful. While there is some degree of latitude in this respect, especially with character introductions, the rule of thumb -- only write what an actor can act -- is still a good indicator of what you should be thinking about in a majority of cases. You do have some wiggle room to go 'inside' the character's mind and make some 'novelistic' descriptions occasionally. But not often.

This is a case where reading a bunch of scripts by pro writers is hugely helpful. Even if you read 20 of them with an eye specifically targeted on this point, you'd get a decent grasp on the degree of latitude available.