Eco-Tip: Widen Your Word Document Margins (TreeHugger)

Tamara Krinsky has a remarkably simple idea to conserve paper: Set your word document's margin settings as wide as possible before you send it to the printer.

Krinsky was an aspiring (read: starving) actress/writer, who had to print sheaves of scripts and articles, when the brainwave hit her. Wider margin settings mean you can squeeze in more text per page, which in turn reduces the number of sheets of paper you'll need. For a person of very limited means, Krinsky says, these savings matter. "When a single paycheck stands between making rent at the end of the month and getting an eviction notice," she writes on her Web site, "you do whatever it takes!"

And now she wants Microsoft, the creator of the most popular word-processing software, like, ever, to do whatever it takes for the planet.

"The default margins for Microsoft Word are set at 1.25" on each side," Krinsky says. "According to the good people on the Microsoft Help line, there is no technical reason for this. It's merely a convention we have all gotten used to. Documents will print just as easily if you change the margins to 0.75" on each side."

We could all shift our margins ourselves, but Krinsky understands the basic human condition: We may not always do what is right, but we'll do whatever is easy.

She's slapped together a petition to Microsoft to officially set Word's default margins to 0.75", "so people wouldn't have to think about it." Are you feeling this, Bill Gates? :: Change the Margins

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Comments (2)

OR...edit your stuff better. I work in a library and there are a number of crazy fringe publications (left and right) that have narrow margins. They are unpleasant to read and impossible to photocopy legibly, and when you read them. they're full of extraneous ideological junk.

One of my college profs told me that you should practice putting EVERY idea into a 250 word piece, and if you can't, then cut the idea in half and try with two 250 word pieces.

August 30, 2007 5:03 PM |

flag a problem

rob says:

The margin is the blank space around the text... So why would decreasing this be making it wider? Isn't that making the margins smaller?

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You know, you're totally right. I just riffed off what she sent us; I'm going to change this.

August 30, 2007 5:06 PM |

Melanie says:

Eco-Tip: Widen Your Word Document Margins

by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 08.30.07

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Eco-Tip: Widen Your Word Document Margins

by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 08.30.07

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