Many users find that when they Print This Page or any document, the printer leaves noticeable margins, preventing the text from reaching the edges of the paper. You might assume these margins are easily adjustable in printer settings, but often, that’s not the case. Printers typically have built-in hardware limitations, often leaving a 0.2″ – 0.3″ unprintable border around the page. This can be frustrating, especially when you want to maximize the printed area, perhaps to enlarge the text size for better readability or to fit more content on a page.
One workaround to effectively increase the printable area and enlarge text, particularly useful when you print this page from PDFs, involves a bit of printer trickery using custom paper sizes. The goal is to print a larger document image, effectively shrinking the perceived margins and allowing for expanded text. Let’s consider a scenario where you want to print two 8.5 x 11 PDF pages side-by-side (2-up) on a single sheet of Legal-size paper (8.5 x 14).
For printers like the Xerox Phaser that support custom paper sizes, you can define a larger “virtual” paper size. For our 2-up example on Legal paper, instead of the standard 8.5 x 14, you might define a custom size like “Big Legal” at 10 x 14.3 inches. By telling the printer it has this larger paper size, you effectively fool it into printing closer to the physical edges of the actual Legal-size paper. This results in each page image being expanded, leading to moderately larger text – a significant advantage when you print this page for easier reading. Using this method, you can often get the print to within approximately 0.5″ of the paper edge.
However, this technique has limitations. While it expands the overall print area, it doesn’t reduce the margins between the 2-up images. You’ll still have to contend with the original PDF’s right and left margins in the center of your 2-up layout. Furthermore, there’s a limit to how much you can increase the custom paper size. Pushing the “Big Legal” size too far, beyond roughly 10 x 14.3 inches in our example, might cause the Xerox printer (and potentially others) to initiate tiling, splitting your print across multiple sheets – defeating the purpose of efficient 2-up printing.
Despite these limitations, this custom paper size method offers a valuable solution, especially when you frequently print this page from software manuals or lengthy documents distributed as PDFs without hard copies. Being able to print 2-up with moderately enlarged text significantly improves readability and saves paper and toner compared to standard single-page printing. It’s a practical approach to make digital documents more user-friendly when printed.
