so do we or don't we? cap secondary characters

[south832]

CAP silent secondary characters?
Like a waiter that brings drinks and disappears... a doorman that opens the door silently and then we never meet him...
Some say put them in caps, some say don't... what is the current fashion?

[PurpleCurtain]

I usually cap them. No idea whether it's fashionable.

[wildgrace]

I cap the first letter: The Waiter walks over to the table. I do the same thing with Animals, since I figure someone will have to cast them too.

Grace

[WDAw0ng]

I usually cap every two legged human being when introducing them for the first time. Even the PATRONS, the strolling CIVILIANS, and the whimpering CAPTIVES of a bank robbery. Old habits.

:)

[ComicBent]

William Goldman used to answer questions on a bulletin board somewhere. I have long ago lost the link, and I am sure that he probably grew tired of that endeavor and gave it up. But here is what he said on the subject:

Q: In a screenplay's description of a scene, certain words
are typed in all upper case. Why and when should I do this?
Example: The children were playing in the street and a BOY
shows up.

The ALIEN SHIP cast a SHADOW over the house. People were
SCREAMING as cars and SCREECHED to a halt.

A: It's funny that half the questions sent to me here are
about format. I used to be awful at formatting "correctly."
... Technically, only speaking characters introduced for the
first time and electronic sound cues should be capitalized
... So in your example above, BOY would be capitalized if
it's the first time this character appears and it's a
speaking part. The children would not be capitalized if they
don't speak. This formatting serves as a signal to the first
AD [assistant director] that the character is introduced in
the particular scene so he knows to add the actor to the
production boards. Nonspeaking characters, known as extras,
are "wrangled" by the second AD and don't go on the boards.

Electronic sound cues like the PHONE RINGS or the DOORBELL
RINGS should be capped each time. Things like "a dog barks"
or "the window shatters" are not capped because they're
added in post. Because all sound is added in post these
days, it really doesn't matter anymore.

[refriedwhiskey]

From what I've read, the original idea was that you capped only speaking characters the first time they appeared, so someone could easily look through the script and see how many speaking parts there were. An aid to production, just like using the right font and margins so they can look at the page count and get a rough idea of how long the movie will be.

So if you want to be old-school correct, that's what you'd do. But that rule seems to be violated all the time these days, with writers capitalizing non-speaking characters, capitalizing certain words for dramatic impact, etc. I'd say it's ultimately up to the writer's tastes.