Pat,
Which screws are you working with? There can be different markings. For the screws on the side of the receiver the most common thing I've seen is "-" on the left screws and nothing on the right ("left" meaning on the same side as the actual left barrel, and "right" meaning the same side as the actual right barrel, regardless of how the gun is oriented when working on it).
For the floorplate screws, I've seen different combiniations. Early guns have two short screws in the doll's head, and one longer screw at the rear (partially covered by the forward bow of the triggerguard). For these, I've usually seen just a "-" on the left screw. The other short screw is the right side by default, because the longer screw (also unmarked) goes to the rear. Some (later?) guns have three screws of equal length. On these, usually the left is marked "-", the right is unmarked, and the rear one carries the "+" marking. The terms "left" and "right" used here still follow the same convention as the others, and are defined by the gun's actual left and right sides. Therefore, with the gun inverted, the left will appear to be on your right as you are viewing it).
These are general guidelines, and I suppose there could be other variations. If the above advice doesn't help, you can just experiment with different placement to see what gives you the best alignment. Whenever you see a gun with buggered screws, there's a good chance they also weren't put back in the right place. When someone doesn't know how to use a proper screwdriver, there's a really good chance they didn't know that it matters where the screws go either.
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