Print size check
Is your printer telling the truth?
One page, one ruler, one minute. Print the check page, measure the boxes, and you will know for certain whether your worksheets print at true size - and the one setting to fix if they do not.
The check, in three steps
1. Print the check page. Download it below and print it once, exactly as it comes.
2. Measure the two boxes with a real ruler. One must measure exactly 80 mm (8 cm). The other must measure exactly 3 inches. The page also carries a 150 mm ruler strip and a 6 inch ruler strip to check against yours.
3. If a box is off, fix the one setting. Print again and choose Actual size or 100% in the print dialog - never "fit to page" - then measure once more. When the boxes are exact, every EduPacket worksheet from that printer is exact too.
On-Screen Guide
This box is drawn at 80 mm in your browser. Screens vary, so treat it as a rough guide only - the printed page is the real test.
If this box measures close to 80 mm across on your screen, your display is near true size. Your printer is still the one that matters.
EduPacket is free for every classroom. If it saved you some prep time, a coffee helps cover the domain and keeps it that way.
Buy Us a CoffeeWhy worksheets print the wrong size
Almost every wrong-size worksheet traces back to one quiet default. Print dialogs want to be helpful. They notice a page, notice your printer cannot print to the very edge, and offer to "fit" the page into the printable area. Fitting means shrinking - usually to 94 or 96 percent. It happens silently, on every page, until somebody measures. Six percent sounds like nothing. Then it lands on a five-year-old's tracing page, and the letter she practised all week arrives visibly smaller than the one on her name card. Or it lands on graph paper, whose 5 mm squares no longer agree with the ruler the lesson is about. EduPacket PDFs are generated at exact size, so the PDF is never the problem. The dialog is. Actual size (or 100%) tells the printer to keep the page exactly as drawn and to accept the white margin the design already includes.
Questions teachers ask
The boxes measure right at home but wrong at school. Why?
The setting lives in each printer's dialog, not in the PDF or your computer account. School printers are often administered with "fit" as the default. Run the check once per printer you actually use, and pick Actual size each time you print there.
My box is off by just a millimetre. Does it matter?
One millimetre over 80 is about 1 percent - tracing letters will be fine. If you see 5 mm or more of error, that is the fit-to-page shrink, and it is worth fixing before a term of name practice prints small.
Does this check work for other sites' printables too?
Yes. The setting belongs to your printer, not to us. Once it is right, any honestly sized PDF prints true. If another site's printable still measures wrong at 100%, their file was generated at the wrong size - that happens more often than it should.