Printing from St. Paul’s’ Epistle

From time to time, I have made available attractively formatted PDF versions of particular posts on St. Paul’s’ Epistle. (See, for example, “Managing Change in a House of Worship,” where a link to a PDF can be found at the end of the post.) Because some extra work is involved in reformatting a post, however, I haven’t offered this option very often. Moreover, it is impossible for me to know what posts readers will find useful to print.

Taking advantage of a service called Print Friendly, I have now added the option at the end of all posts either to print the post or to turn it into a PDF file. Not only does the Print Frindly service format the post for easy reading, but it also eliminates material extraneous to the post, such as the contents of the sidebar. To use Print Friendly, click on the link just above the “Posted by” line at the end of the post.

Print Friendly does a very nice job of formatting text—graphics may be split across pages, however—but there is one thing you should keep in mind when printing a PDF file that it generates. Print Friendly uses very narrow margins, which may result in some text’s being cut off when using a printer that cannot print close to the edge of the page. You will likely want to print from whatever PDF reader you use—this will be Adobe Reader for most visitors—using an option that takes printer capabilities into account. In Adobe Reader, for example, you can select the Fit to Printable Area option or the Shrink to Printable Area option.

I know that many people prefer reading long essays on paper, rather than on the screen. For such folks and for people who want to share my essays with others on paper, I hope the new feature of this blog will be a welcome addition.

Happy printing!