Why are all fonts for screenplays typed in courier?

Question

I was looking at a screenplay for this The Seventh Samaurai in my TV prouductions class and my teacher told me that all fonts for screenplays are written in courier font.

Answer 1

I never knew that.

Screenplays should be written in twelve point Courier font. Twelve point Courier is an important component of the standard format for two reasons. One is nostalgic (Courier font resembles the look of a page written on a mechanical typewriter), but the other reason is highly practical: Courier is a monospaced font meaning every glyph is the same width (as opposed to variable-width fonts, where the "w" and "m" are wider than most letters, and the "i" is narrower). With a monospaced font only a certain amount of letters will fit on each row and each page, assuring uniformity of the format and achieving the one page per minute of screen time formula.