Margins are often left to default while we write a document in our favorite editor.
The margin is simply the blank distance between the edge of the page/document and the text. In a document we have generally 4 margins: Top, bottom, left, and right.
Using and setting the margin sizes can be a good feature to modify the visual impact of your document when it gets printed. A big margin on the four sides gives more space around the text, at the cost of making your lines shorter, and of being able to fit fewer lines on a page. This generally means more pages in the final document. Configuring a small margin around your text gives less white space around the page, so it seems (and actually is) full of text. This can be handy if you want to optimize and reduce the number of pages in your document, for example, to print fewer pages and save paper.
Another problem a margin can solve is if you (or your readers) need to take side notes on your printed document. You can increase one of the side margins to give more space for side notes.
A good compromise for general text editing seems to be a one-inch margin, so we will follow the steps to discover how to put 1-inch margins on google docs. We say 1 inch, but you can easily use the same guide to set whatever number you like, even half-inch margins if you like narrow margins. So this will be more like a “how to change margins on google docs with a 1-inch margin example”.
Changing margins on google docs
As we said in a document we have always 4 margins: Top, Bottom, Left, Right. These margins are often set equal by default in a document, but they are always almost independent, so you can easily set each one with a different value.
Setting the same margin for Left-Right or Top-Bottom gives more symmetry to your text, but it’s not a rule, there are many cases where you can set them asymmetric. One of these cases is, as we stated earlier, when you want to leave some blank space for the reader to add side notes.
Even if margins are often set for the entire document, this is not always a constraint. In Google Docs, as in most word processors, you can change the margins (generally the Left and Right ones) for a single paragraph. This can help to put some “movement” on your content or to highlight a key paragraph.
We are going to see two different ways to create a one-inch margin on google docs, so you can choose the one that fits better your needs in every situation.
The first method is the broad “whole document” configuration, to set the margins for the entire document at once. In the second you will have the freedom to change the margins on smaller chunks of your text.
Changing the margins on a Google Doc for the entire document
This is probably the simpler method, which should be the starting point when you want to gain control over the margins of your document.
With this method, we are going to set the document margins, so these will be the default margin for the entire document.
- The first step is obviously to open our Google document
- Then we click on File menu in the top left corner to open the File drop-down menu.
- On this menu one of the last options is “Page setup“, that’s what we are looking for, so just click on it.
- This will open the Page setup window.
- In this window, we can find a list with the four margins.
- The next step is to set them to 1 inch (or 2 if you want 2-inch margins). As we said you can independently set each one to a different value if you like.
- Once you are satisfied with the settings you can just click on OK.
- In the Page setup, there’s also a “Set as default” button, you can use this to set the actual configuration as the default margin for every new document you create.
- Just to have another example, let’s pretend that we want, as we said earlier, to leave some spacing for side notes.
- We get back to the Page setup window and change our Right margin to 2.5 Inches, so we can share with people our document and they can write on the right side of our documents. This can be used even if we have to give a printed copy of our document to someone for a review, we add some margin for him/her to add some notes or comments during the review process. Obviously you can adjust the left margin if you want to leave space on the left margin. Here we can even check the paper size and orientation of our document to make sure this is the same as the size we will eventually print.
- The result will be a good chunk of white spacing on the right side of our document to allow side notes, with one-inch top and bottom margins.
Changing the margins for a single paragraph with the ruler tool
As we saw, changing the custom margins configuration for the entire document is pretty easy, with just a few clicks and some numbers to enter.
But what if we want more granular control over our margins? if we want to make adjustments to the margin for a single paragraph (or two, or three…)?
We can do it using the ruler tool, and it’s quick and easy.
- As always, open your google document.
- If you don’t already have the ruler on your document, show them by clicking on the view menu, and then on the Show ruler option.
- Two rulers should show up: An horizontal ruler on the top and a vertical ruler on the left.
- The top ruler has various elements inside:
- A Gray part and a white part: the borders between the gray and the white are the document level margins, the ones we modified from the Page setup window.
- A little blue triangle: You should have two of these, probably aligned with the document level margins, their function is to modify margins for single paragraphs.
- A little blue dash or rectangle: One of these should be aligned with the other two elements on the left margin. This marker controls the first line of the paragraph’s margin.
- You can see these three elements, moved to show them independently, in the screenshot below.
- To change the document-level margin settings, you just need to move the gray-white border to the dTo change the document-level margin settings, you just need to move the gray-white border to the desired point. The blue markers will follow so you don’t lose the eventual paragraph-level indent.
- Clicking on the document margin could be tricky if there are the other two markers covering it. A tip is to move the mouse cursor slightly on the left side of the blue markers, until the mouse pointer becomes a right-pointing arrow (for the left margin, and a left-pointing arrow for the right one). Then click and drag the margin.
- To change a single paragraph margin (or indent as google docs calls it), you need to move the cursor to the paragraph you need to adjust or simply select it.
- Then you need to move the left or right down-facing triangle arrows to your needs.
- To change a paragraph’s first-line indent, you should move the dash marker accordingly.
- To format multiple paragraphs at a time, you can select them and then move the markers.
- The next screenshot shows an example with all the markers moved for the second paragraph.
Using the ruler to get the right alignment can help you get consistent margins through your document.
As you can see from the example, moving the indents for a single paragraph helps to separate it from the rest of the documents. You can use this for example to highlight an important paragraph or to make a bullet list more evident. To add even more highlighting you could add a vertical line on the left, we talked about how to do it in the how to insert a line to google docs page.
Conclusions
We covered the two main methods on how to put one-inch margins on Google Docs, and how users can change margins for a single paragraph. You should now have all the instruments to start using margins to enhance your writing.