Following on from a previous blog What Good Are Headers, Footers And Margins In Google Docs? it’s time to really talk about the margin on a page and why they are so important.
History – Printed Pages
We often think of margins in relation to printed ‘documents’, from books, manuals to notebooks. You may be wondering why a space was left around the edges of a page. Here are a few reasons why:
- Rats and mice – would eat the edges of paper, destroying information; extra paper was added to safeguard the important information.
- White space – if you’ve ever looked at a busy page of information, you’ll appreciate leaving a margin around the page reduces the amount of information on a single page. Making it a bit easier to see and read the important text.
- Space for binding – without a margin, you’d miss out all of the words on the left side as they’d be in the binding.
- A space for your own notes – without a margin where would you write your additional notes?
Did you know?
Marks in the margins of a book or other document are called Marginalia. They may be scribbles, comments, glosses (annotations), critiques, doodles, or illuminations.
For Harry Potter fans – think of the Half-Blood Prince…
The Digital Page
Computers and the Internet have revolutionized our consumption of the written word. Books are digital without physical pages, with text being viewed on a number of different devices.
In the early days of the Internet web browsers didn’t use margins, with the text stretching from side to side. However, as computer screens got bigger this became an issue for the readability and aesthetics of text.
As new formatting for web pages became available, web designers were able to control the margin of their web pages and leave more white space. Although margin-less web pages do still exist, it is now normal to have wide margins to provide white space around text to improve usability and readability for the onscreen text.
In fact, margins have become even more important today because web content shares visual space. Including other elements such as the web browser’s interface, and other icons and windows. Not forgetting the ever present ads!
Margins also play an important role in digital word-processing. The default margins for Microsoft Word from version 2007 onward have been 1 inch (25.4 mm) all around; a change from the earlier version. Word 2003, the default top and bottom margins were 1 inch (25.4 mm), with the left and right margin being 1.25 inches (31.7 mm).
Google Docs matches the current version of Word with 1 inch (2.54 cm) around all four edges.
Google Docs Margins
To find the settings in Google Docs:
In the File menu, select Page setup to see the dialog box.
These settings change the whole document, and you can change them ‘on the fly’ using the ruler.
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