This article is based on interactions in the Ask a Techo forum on 5 September 2003
Where’d the right side of the page go?!
Something that drives many of us to distraction is finding the right hand side of a web page disappears off the edge of the paper when it’s printed. There are several ways to avoid this.
The first is to check whether or not the page has a ‘print this page” or “print this article” option. This takes you to a printer friendly version of the item. Different sites provide this function in different places (ie some at the top of articles, others at the bottom) - you might need to look a bit to find it. It's also something that seems to be specifically applied to articles (rather than "web pages") so I suppose it's only a useful tip if it's an article that you want to print.
Another trick is to go to print preview first (go to File, then Print Preview) them make the call whether to change the page orientation to Landscape or not.
Hint number three is to print only selected portions of a page. If you highlight only the material you want to print, then choose Print and click Selection instead of All, you save trees and only get the good bits.
If you’re doing a lot of surfing on a particular topic, this final hint may be for you. Open a blank Word document, and leave it open while you’re surfing. This is where you Copy and Paste the things you find and want to keep.
As you find text that you want to print
- highlight only the text you want
- right click your mouse
- left click on the word Copy
- open your blank word document
- right click again, and then
- left click on Paste to enter the text into your word document.
It might sound tricky, but it is just the same as if you are rearranging text in your own word documents.
You can be surfing all night and still leave the Word document open and ready for a new Copy and Paste. After you have found enough research material, you can rearrange, delete, modify, and adjust the font settings etc.
Just be careful you are not plagiarising for essay writing. If you want to use the research for quotes in essays, do the same trick for the address of the page you are copying, and paste the address alongside the text you have copied for your own future reference.
Oh. And don't forget to Save as you go.
