What "Fit to page" does to graph paper
Most printers cannot print right to the edge of the paper; a strip around the outside, often about ¼ inch, stays blank. When a print dialog is set to Fit to page (or "Fit to printable area", "Shrink oversized pages", "Scale to fit"), it shrinks the whole page so it fits inside that printable area.
On a Letter sheet with ¼ inch unprintable margins, the printable area is 8 × 10½ inches. Fitting an 8½ × 11 page into it means scaling by 8 ÷ 8.5 = 94%. Every ¼ inch square prints at 0.235 inch, and a row of 30 squares that should be 7½ inches long comes out 7.06 inches: almost two squares short. You will not see it by eye; you will see it the moment you measure a drawing.
The setting that fixes it
| Where you print from | Choose |
|---|---|
| Chrome or Edge (PDF opened in the browser) | In the print dialog open More settings, set Scale to Default or Custom 100, not "Fit to printable area". |
| Adobe Acrobat Reader | Under Page Size & Handling choose Actual size. |
| Mac Preview | Show Details, then set Scale: 100% rather than "Scale to Fit". |
| Phone (iPhone / Android) | Open the PDF in a PDF app, print, and look for a scaling or "fit" option; turn fit off if offered. |
Our PDFs also ask the viewer not to scale (the PDF's PrintScaling setting is set to None). Adobe Reader follows it; browsers mostly decide for themselves, so it is still worth a glance at the dialog.
Check it in five seconds
Every sheet from this site has a scale bar in the bottom-right corner. Printed at actual size it measures exactly 1 inch (or 5 cm on metric and A-size paper). Lay a ruler against it. If the bar is 15/16 inch, the page was shrunk to about 94%; reprint with scaling off.
Margins are already built in (½ inch by default, adjustable), so printing at actual size never cuts off grid lines on an ordinary printer.
Questions
Why is my graph paper not printing to scale?
The print dialog is scaling the page to fit the printable area. Set scale to 100% or Actual size. The scale bar on the sheet should then measure exactly 1 inch or 5 cm.
Will printing at actual size cut off the grid?
Not with margins of ¼ inch or more, which covers almost every home and office printer. The default here is ½ inch.