Top Ten Tuesday: Printing Tips

Ten Printing Tips to Save Paper and Toner:

1) Click Save, not Print! Many instructors will accept your work in digital form. Submit and share your work via email or media (cd, flash drive, sdram, etc. )

2) Use narrow margins on your assignments.  For example, the default on Microsoft Word is 1” on each side. You can change this to make margins as small as ½” on each side.

3) Use a font that uses less toner. A study at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay found that Century Gothic “uses 30% less ink than the most commonly used default font – Arial.”

4) When you create PowerPoints (or other visual aids), use a dark typeface on a light background, rather than the reverse.  This will use less toner if printed.

5) Use electronic handouts. Rather than print handouts for everyone in class, use Blackboard or Google Docs to distribute them electronically. You will save paper and ink toner, as well as give your classmates handouts they can update.

6) Print only what you need. If you don’t need all of a document, don’t print it all. If your professor posts class notes online, ask which notes should be printed and which ones can remain electronic.

7) Print selectively. If you want to print only part of a document or web page, highlight the part you’d like to print, and choose Selection.

8) Use duplex printing (both sides) Library printers automatically do this. Generally instructors will specify if they want assignments printed only on one side, and more and more are (hopefully!) going green too and accepting duplex printing.

9) Print PowerPoint class notes as handouts (2-9 slides per page) rather than slides (one slide per page). See these green printing tips for instructions on how to do this.

10) Be patient. After you click Print on campus lab computers, it can take up to 10 minutes for your job to be processed and received by the printer. Clicking Print again will NOT speed up your print job. It will slow the printer even more and waste paper.