(And you can see a “Zoom” of 97% has been applied just under the preview.) The thing to look for in your PDF viewer is “Zoom” or “Page Scaling”:Īs you can see the default is “Fit to Printable Area”, exactly as I’ve described. The later is the most common default, and it’s likely exactly what you’re seeing.īefore and after – ever so slightly smaller to fit in printable area. Now, when printing there are two choices:
The upshot is that a printer will only be able to print on an area somewhat smaller than the full 8-1/2 x 11. It’s usually around 1/4 inch (but I must emphasize that this varies greatly depending on the printer). There’s a “margin” around the outer edge that will vary depending on the printer. The problem is that most printers cannot actually print on the entire sheet of paper. Now, when you print your document, it would seem logical that an 8-1/2 x 11 page would print just fine on an 8-1/2 x 11 piece of paper. Sadly, that’s typically not the case. Most PDF documents are intended to be a representation of an equivalent paper document.
