Add margins
What Add margins actually does
There are two ways to give a document more white space and they produce completely different files. The common one scales the content down and leaves it on the same sheet, which shrinks the type and is why a document run through it twice becomes unreadable. This page does the other one: it builds a larger sheet and places the original page on it at its original size, untouched, with the extra space distributed evenly around all four sides. Nothing is scaled, nothing is reflowed and no line breaks move. The reason to want this is almost always physical. A document about to be three-hole punched or comb bound needs room at the spine that the original layout never left. A document going out for handwritten comment needs room in the outer margin for the comments to go. A page whose footer sits too close to the trim needs a few more points before it goes to a printer who will cut it. In each case the content is already correct and the sheet is what is wrong, which is exactly the operation offered here.
How to use it
- Choose the PDF.
- Set the margin in points, where seventy-two points is one inch.
- Read the new sheet size the board reports. A letter page with a thirty-six point margin becomes six hundred and eighty-four by eight hundred and sixty-four points.
- Confirm the page count is unchanged and download.
Useful for
- Make room at the spine before comb, coil or three-hole binding.
- Open up the outer margin of a draft that is going out for handwritten notes.
- Pull a footer away from the trim edge before sending a document to a commercial printer.
- Give a dense scan breathing room before it is stamped or numbered, so the new marks are not sitting on the content.
Limits worth knowing
- The same margin is added to all four sides. An asymmetric binding gutter, wider at the spine than at the fore edge, is not offered.
- The sheet changes size, so the result is no longer letter or A4 and a printer will fit it to the paper unless told otherwise.
- Content that already ran to the edge still runs to the same place relative to the content. The margin surrounds the page, it does not move anything within it.
- Pages carrying a stored rotation are re-embedded upright, so the result reads the way the original displayed.
Questions people ask
Does my text get smaller?
No. That is the difference between this and a scale-to-fit operation. The content keeps its exact size and the sheet grows around it.
What size is the result?
The original width and height plus twice the margin, since the margin is added on both sides of each axis. The board states the number before you download.
Can I add more space on one side only?
Not here. The margin is even on all four sides.
Will my page count change?
No. Each page becomes one larger page and the order is unchanged.