| The paperless office is about as likely as the paperless
paperback. Paper is here to stay. For the cost-conscious, as well as the
ecologically sensitive, there are good reasons to economise on the amount of
paper used.
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Confused?
Happily most printers will handle the process for you and guide you
with helpful graphics. |
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2-Sided printing
The obvious economy is to print on both sides of the paper. It needs a certain
amount of mouse clicking and some mental gymnastics but it can halve the size
of your manuscript.
If you just click the Print icon you usually get standard, one-sided printing. To organise 2-sided printing you need to select the printing
menu. The facilities available depend as much on your printer as the word
processor software, so it impossible to give precise advice. But all the
popular printers offer excellent support to help save paper. The screenshots
here are from an old Hewlett Packard printer. |
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In theory, there are 3 steps to this operation:
- Print the odd pages first
- Remove the paper and return it to the paper tray
- Print the even pages but this time in reverse order (i.e. last page first)
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Do not try this at home if your printer has a habit of
taking a handful of pages or feeding blank sheets. This will destroy the
collation. Ask a skilled secretary how to fan paper before loading it as this
will stop most double feeds. (Take half a ream of paper and make small circles
at the centre of the top sheet with your index finger while pressing down.
After a few moments the paper will begin to form a delicate spiral. You can
slowly unwind this to restore the stack - it is very therapeutic). |
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| An alternative offered by most software is to print
multiple pages on a single sheet by making the print smaller. If your original
is point size 12 or 14 then a 4-up print should be legible. If not, see an
optician. Ecological extremists could try double-sided, 4-up printing with 8
pages of type on each sheet, but make sure that you have included a
page number on every page.
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Feel the Quality
Paper comes in varying qualities. Along with the wood
pulp, additives such as clay and bleach are added to give a smooth, white
surface. Cheaper papers have less of these fillings. They are generally not as
white and feel less smooth, so cheaper papers do not look quite as good.
A few other points to note on paper quality:
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If you are going for anything other than black on white
using inkjet technology, go for quality as the sheet gets quite wet and cheap
papers change shape and bleed through. |
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Imagine painting a dot on a lawn with all the blades of
grass blurring your image compared with the same dot on some paving. You
achieve more precise marking on the smoother surface. |
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Recycled papers are a little cheaper and have spared
another tree, but they are not as strong unless a small proportion of new, longer fibres
are added to the mix. |
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Speed and quality
Don't overlook the ink in your economy dive. Most
inkjet printers have a range of settings from economy through to top quality.
In terms of dots per inch, 100 is legible but 600 is photographic quality. The
bonus of the lower quality setting is that the output speed will improve
dramatically.
Continuing the conservation theme, all the big retailers
and some of the mail order organisations will accept cartridges for
recycling.
Charities allegedly benefit from these donations but it makes ecological sense
to recycle cartridges which are in themselves remarkable pieces of technology.
It is worth mastering 2-sided printing in spite of the
odd, or even, disaster. The postie and your editor will both bless you.
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It sounds easy but there are a few demoralising things
that can go wrong if you do not pay attention to detail.
 | First, watch how the
paper passes through the printer. You can make a little mark on a sheet to see
if the paper is turned over and, in the case of many laser printer, find out
which end is the head of the page. |
| Reversing the order for the second print is
vital or the result might start as fiction but emerge from the printer as a
surreal fantasy. |
| It is vital that the turnover and turn round is done
well. Veterans of the printing industry will recall that it was the ultimate
crime to set the page blocks in the wrong order, as this meant that, when the sheet was
folded and cut, the bound pages were shuffled. Draw a little picture on the
printer, mark the face, head and foot of the page on the paper feed tray. |
| You must take care that you have an even number of sheets.
If the chapter ends on page 14, then add an extra blank sheet before
printing to the
top or bottom of the stack. |
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© Charles Jones 2001 |
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