This is barely off-topic, and I know it's utterly amateurish, but does every script start with FADE IN? If so, wtf? It's like starting with THIS IS SCREENPLAY. Can't it be taken as read?

Ha Ha, funny Jay. And all the slavish rules about what to include or not include and yet every time FADE IN, FADE OUT, like we're on a seashore or something. WE SEE your comment, CUT TO reply, WIDE ANGLE on computer screen, FADE OUT. ( I know, I know, it's like nails on a chalkboard people). Do you know I'm going to lose the FADE IN and FADE OUT and I'll be hailed as a whole new writing style and I'll be fashionably followed for a decade.... Maybe.

And BTW it was my idea first!!!

For some time, I have been meaning to do an experiment on GITS. We can see how screenplay style and format is fluid, it changes. You can look at scripts, decade by decade, and see the changes. And I think we can safely say that a screenplay has evolved from a production-heavy document with lots of camera shots and angles, to a more 'literary' form. So per your point about FADE IN, what if we set out to CONSCIOUSLY attempt to reshape screenplay form? As opposed to it shifting by dribs and drabs per one screenwriter trying a little something different that gets picked up by another screenwriter, and so on, having a confab on GITS where we discuss what we could lose [like CUT TO] and how we could make screenplays read even less 'scripty'. Might be an interesting experiment...