Printing is reading.
Some of us read best on paper. No battery, no glare, no notifications, nothing else on the screen asking for attention. A sheet of paper can go in a pocket, onto a fridge, into a folder, across a table. It can be marked up, highlighted, folded, and handed to somebody who did not come to a website today.
That last one matters most. A Why Sheet does its real work in a room — an IEP meeting, a doctor’s office, a staffroom — where nobody is going to open a laptop. Paper is not a downgrade from the web page. For that room, it is the format that works.
So this page is about getting a good sheet out of your printer, with as little fiddling as we can manage.
The short version
Open the Aa Reading panel in the header and choose Print or save as PDF.
That’s it. You get the page’s words and pictures, with no menus, sidebar, or footer wrapped around them. It keeps the font and text size you chose in that same panel.
If you want a file instead of paper, use the same button and pick Save as PDF as the destination.
Why we added a button instead of instructions
We would rather fix a thing than explain it.
Your browser’s own Print command prints the whole web page: the header, the navigation, the search box, the footer, and the page you actually wanted, somewhere in the middle. People work around this by hunting through print settings on every single job.
No website can change your print settings for you. There is no way for a page to reach into your print dialog and tick the boxes. We think that’s right. A site that could decide what your printer does would have too much power over your machine.
What a page can do is hand the printer a different document. That’s what the button does. It builds a clean copy — the content, on white, in your font — and prints that instead of the website. The settings you used to change by hand stop mattering, because there is no longer anything for them to fix.
The one setting still worth changing
Turn off headers and footers. Your browser adds its own line at the top and bottom of every printed page: the web address, the date, the page number, sometimes the page title. It’s cramped, it’s rarely useful, and it eats the margin.
You lose nothing by switching it off. Our print button puts the page title, its full web address, and the date at the end of the sheet. Anyone holding the paper can still find where it came from.
In Chrome and Edge: in the print window, open More settings and uncheck Headers and footers.
In Firefox: in the print window, open More settings and uncheck Print headers and footers.
In Safari on a Mac: in the print window, uncheck Print headers and footers. You may need to click Show Details first.
Your browser remembers this. You set it once, not every time.
Leave “backgrounds” switched off
Browsers come with background printing turned off, and we suggest leaving it that way.
Our pages are warm cream on screen because it’s easier on the eyes than white. Paper brings its own colour, and printing a full-page background costs a startling amount of ink for no gain in readability. Our sheets are drawn as dark ink on white for exactly this reason.
You’ll find it as Background graphics in Chrome and Edge, and Print backgrounds in Firefox and Safari. If it’s already unchecked, nothing to do.
If you’d rather use your browser’s print command
The button is not the only way, and on some pages you may prefer your browser’s own tools.
Firefox has a Format setting in its print window with a Simplified option, which strips the page down using Reader View before printing. It’s good, with two catches: it only appears on pages Firefox recognises as articles, and it replaces your font and text size with its own. If you chose a font in our reading panel because it’s the one you can read, Simplified will quietly take it away.
Chrome, Edge, and Safari have no equivalent, so their print command gives you the whole page including the site furniture.
Broadsides print differently, on purpose
Our broadsides are single sheets built for paper first, at a fixed size that comes out uncropped on both A4 and US Letter. Each one carries its own Print button, right on the sheet. Use that one — it knows the sheet’s geometry, and it prints both sides in order.
How and why they’re made that way is written up in Designing for Paper.
Print as many as you need
Take them to the meeting. Put them on the noticeboard. Leave a stack on the table. Hand one to the person who needs it.
Paper you can give away is the whole point.
More ways to read this page
- Ear-Reading: Turn On Text-to-Speech in Your Browser — read with your ears instead
- Read This Site in Your Language
- Hover Text and Speak Under the Pointer
- Accessibility Field Guide — everything else
- Why we don’t use accessibility overlays — the reasoning behind handing you your own tools