To draw a perfectly straight horizontal or vertical line, stretch a tiny Pen dot with its bounding box, duplicate a Scene Divider line, or rotate a text box of underscores.

Method 1: Stretch a Pen dot (iPad and iPhone)

You can draw perfectly straight lines on iOS by stretching a tiny Pen dot horizontally or vertically with the bounding box.

1. Use the Pen tool to create a tiny dot.

2. Tap + drag a corner of the bounding box to expand your dot left/right or up/down. Doing so will create a perfectly straight line.

3. With the line created, tap the Style Palette to adjust the style, color, opacity, and thickness of your line. You can also tap Save to create a Saved Annotation.

4. Want to change your line's orientation? Adjust the line thickness and the bounding box to change directions.

Method 2: Using Scene Divider Lines

With the addition of Scene Divider Lines in Info Layers, you can duplicate those divider lines for quick, perfectly horizontal lines:

1. Turn on the Scene Dividers Info Layer.
2. Duplicate the Scene Dividers Info Layer to make the lines editable;
3. Select one of the Scene Divider Lines and tap Save to add it to your Saved Annotations.
4. Return to any other annotation layer, open your saved annotations, and place the horizontal line wherever you wish. You can adjust its appearance anytime from the Style Palette.

Method 3: Using Text Box Annotations

This method lets you create both horizontal and vertical perpendicular lines using text boxes:

1. Create a text box annotation, and type several underscores in a row until you reach your desired line length (e.g. _______).
2. Select the text box and open the Style Palette to customize the size, color, and font of the underscores.
3. For a horizontal line, save the annotation so it's easily reusable.
4. For a vertical line, tap the text box, then rotate it 90 degrees by grabbing the circle handle below the annotation. It won't snap into place, but rotating slowly will eventually land the line in a perfect vertical position.
5. Save the vertical line for quick access as well.

To adjust the length of a line made this way, simply add or remove underscores.

Making these reusable as shot marks

Some users like to draw horizontal shot marks across the page to indicate the exact word where a camera shot begins, with the camera number and shot description written to the left. Whichever method above you use, save your finished shot mark as a Saved Annotation so you can drop it into your script repeatedly without redoing the setup each time.

Have an idea for a built-in shot-mark tool or a keyboard modifier for straight-line drawing? Share it on the Feature Request board — upvotes and comments directly help us prioritize what to build next.

What's Next

What are Saved Annotations and how do I use them?
How can I draw lines, arrows and shapes?
What are Info Layers, and how do I use them?

Updated on: 08/10/2026