Printing without surprises in Write by Zaweba

Printing should hold no surprises. Yet in many programs the printed page differs from the screen: a line wraps differently, a picture moves, a heading slips to the next page. Write by Zaweba avoids that by drawing the screen, the print preview, the printer output and PDF exports with the same renderer.

One renderer for everything

Write lays out pages as they will print, with headers, footers, page numbers and footnotes in place while you edit. Print preview uses that same layout, and so does printing. A PDF exported from Write uses it too.

The practical result is that if a page looks right in preview, it prints right. If your CV fits on one page on screen, it fits on paper. That saves wasted sheets and the familiar cycle of printing, spotting a problem, fixing it and printing again.

Using print preview

Open print preview before printing anything important. It shows every page as it will come out, including margins. Use it to check a handful of things.

Page count. A letter that has crept onto a second page by two lines can usually be brought back with a small change to spacing or margins.

Breaks. Headings should sit with the text they introduce, not alone at the foot of a page. Tables and pictures should be where you expect them.

Headers and footers. Page numbers, dates and titles should be correct, and absent on pages where you don't want them, such as a title page.

Colour. If you print in black and white, coloured text and highlights turn grey. Make sure they are still readable.

Before you press Print

Hide anything you don't want on paper. Highlights used while drafting will print, so clear them. Formatting marks, shown with Ctrl+Shift+8, never print, so you don't need to switch them off.

Update fields. If the document has a table of contents, click in it and press F9 so the page numbers are current.

Check the paper. Write supports A4, A5, Letter, Legal, envelopes and custom sizes, portrait or landscape. A document set up for Letter will not look right on A4 paper, and vice versa, so match the page setup to the paper in your printer.

Printing envelopes and merged letters

Write includes a DL envelope template, so you can print an address straight onto an envelope. Mail merge can send one letter per contact straight to the printer, which is handy for club mailings. Print preview the first few before sending a large batch.

Print or PDF

Sometimes a PDF is better than paper. If you are sending a document to someone else to print, export a PDF instead. Fonts are embedded and the text is real text, so it looks right on their computer and prints well. Because the PDF uses the same renderer as Write's printing, the result matches what you would have printed yourself.

A good routine for anything important is to finish editing, check the whole document in print preview, fix any layout issues, and then print or export. It takes a minute and saves paper, ink and frustration.