What Are the Benefits of Adjusting Page Margins and Font Sizes?

When people think of cost-saving strategies in the office, the first thoughts usually drift to big-ticket items like leasing more efficient multifunction printers or renegotiating supply contracts. But some of the most impactful, low-effort adjustments are hiding in plain sight—like your document’s page margins and font size.

It may sound simple, but tweaking how your documents are formatted can deliver surprising benefits. From reducing print costs and conserving paper to improving readability and enhancing your brand’s presentation, small changes can lead to big results.

Reducing Paper Usage Without Sacrificing Clarity

Let’s start with the obvious: the more text you can fit on a page, the fewer pages you need to print.

When you decrease page margins from the default 1-inch setting to 0.75 or even 0.5 inches, you're effectively increasing the printable area. Combine that with a modest font size reduction—say, from 12-point to 11-point—and you might fit an extra paragraph or two per page. Over dozens or hundreds of pages, that adds up quickly.

For companies printing long reports, legal documents, contracts, training manuals, or handbooks, this can translate into real, measurable cost savings. Less paper means:

• Lower paper purchases throughout the year
• Reduced wear and tear on printers
• Lowered output volume, which extends toner and ink life
• Decreased storage needs for physical files
• Less clutter in the workplace
  
  

For businesses with sustainability goals, it's an easy win for environmental impact, too. Fewer pages printed means less waste, lower transportation emissions for paper delivery, and fewer trees cut down.

GCOP’s multifunction print devices support fine-tuned control over margin and font size defaults through managed print software, letting your team implement these settings organization-wide.

Shrinking Your Print Budget Without Anyone Noticing

Reducing paper use is only the beginning. Font size and spacing adjustments play a direct role in how much ink or toner each print job consumes.

Take two identical documents, one printed in 12-point Times New Roman with 1.5-line spacing, the other in 11-point Arial with single spacing and slightly reduced margins. The second version not only uses fewer pages but also consumes significantly less toner per page due to tighter line spacing and a thinner font face.

You won’t need to go microscopic with font size. Most office documents remain highly readable at 10 or 11 points when the right typeface is chosen. By standardizing more efficient fonts like Calibri, Arial, or Century Gothic across departments, you can reduce your overall toner costs without disrupting productivity.

GCOP offers print management tools that allow administrators to enforce these standards with ease. You can create rules that auto-adjust font and spacing settings for common job types, or warn users when printing oversized formats to a desktop printer rather than the central MFP (multi-function printer).

Faster Printing and Fewer Printer Bottlenecks

Large print jobs slow everything down. If one employee’s 300-page training packet is clogging the printer, others are left waiting, or worse, rerouting their jobs to less cost-efficient devices just to meet a deadline.

Smaller, more compact documents print faster, plain and simple. Reducing margins and font sizes contributes to more efficient printing operations in busy office environments. It means:

• Less printer downtime
• Fewer support tickets related to job queues
• Better use of high-volume print features
• Quicker turnaround for last-minute documents

When multiple departments rely on shared MFPs, formatting decisions can make or break productivity. GCOP’s fleet management and print routing systems help your office prioritize jobs, auto-direct certain types of documents to the right machines, and streamline output even under high volume.

More Professional and Readable Documents

While the financial and logistical savings are compelling, there’s another important benefit to refining your document format: presentation.

Carefully adjusted margins and font sizes can improve the visual appeal of your documents, making them easier to read, more professional-looking, and better aligned with your brand.

Wider margins create a cleaner look for marketing or client-facing materials. Narrower margins and smaller fonts are often appropriate for internal communications or data-heavy documents. Font choice also affects tone—some fonts appear more modern or polished, while others may feel outdated or overly formal.

With GCOP’s software tools and multifunction devices, your team can establish formatting presets for different types of documents. Whether it's a memo, a report, or a proposal, you can ensure brand consistency across departments while still benefiting from cost-efficient formatting.

Supporting Accessibility and Diverse Reading Needs

Not all employees or clients process text the same way. In certain situations, increasing font size is just as strategic as decreasing it.

For readers with vision impairments or older clients, larger fonts and generous spacing can make a big difference in comprehension and accessibility. If your company deals with public documents, service contracts, or HR materials, providing versions with 14-point or even 16-point fonts can improve inclusivity and prevent misunderstandings.

Rather than printing multiple versions manually, GCOP’s print software allows users to select preformatted templates for accessibility needs. This saves time while ensuring your content remains readable to everyone.

Unlocking Workflow Automation with Smart Defaults

Imagine if every time you opened a document template, whether in Word, PowerPoint, or PDF, the margins and fonts were already set for optimal cost and clarity. No need to manually adjust settings or guess which size will fit best. That’s what workflow automation through GCOP’s solutions enables.

By standardizing formatting rules across your print fleet and software ecosystem, you create predictable outcomes:

• Lower page counts
• Efficient ink usage
• Faster prints
• Consistent document style

This also reduces user error. Employees are less likely to waste time formatting documents incorrectly or printing drafts that don't match your brand’s expectations. Templates with smart defaults simplify life and make print jobs more efficient across the board.

Combining Format Adjustments with Print Policies

When paired with print rules and quotas, formatting adjustments become part of a larger strategy to optimize resource use. GCOP clients often implement these tactics together:

• Quotas per user or department to limit print volume
• Rules for font substitution (e.g., convert all Courier to Calibri)
• Enforced margin and spacing presets on company templates
• Duplex printing defaults for multi-page jobs
• Routing large jobs to high-capacity MFPs instead of desktop printers

These policies can be enforced through centrally managed print software, helping office managers and IT teams maintain control without micromanaging users.

Real-World Impact: What a 5% Change Can Do

Let’s say your company prints 200,000 pages per year. By adjusting margins and font size to reduce each document’s length by 5%, you would save around 10,000 pages annually. That’s:

• Over 20 reams of paper saved
• Hundreds of dollars in toner and ink
• Less maintenance on print devices
• Reduced carbon footprint
• Fewer storage needs for paper files

Now multiply that across multiple departments or office locations, and the savings become substantial.

GCOP’s team can help assess your current usage and simulate potential savings with formatting adjustments, margin changes, font substitutions, and print policy updates.

Work Smarter with GCOP’s Print Solutions

In a time when every business is looking to cut unnecessary costs and improve sustainability, adjusting page margins and font sizes is a refreshingly simple strategy. It’s low-risk, easy to implement, and brings both short- and long-term benefits.

When you partner with GCOP, we help you take these small formatting tweaks and roll them into a broader print optimization strategy. From document workflow automation to print fleet management, our goal is to make your office smarter, greener, and more efficient.

Ready to trim your print waste and elevate your office output? Contact GCOP today to learn how our solutions can make every page more productive.