[grammatim[_2_]]

May I suggest that you bring this situation (anonymously seems wise)
to the attention of the local media? They never pass up a chance to
ridicule academics over minutiae, and this appears to be a perfect
candidate for ridicule.

Could you tell us what country you're in?

On Mar 26, 2:08*pm, guyeda wrote:
Hi Graham,

You're preaching to the choir here! *I wish I could submit the document
electronically. *It looks great on screen, regardless of the printer I
choose. *I agree that the process is fundamentally flawed when for the large
majority of students, final approval is held-up on the basis of minute flaws
in the appearance of the thesis as opposed to the content of the thesis. *It
also results in a monumental waste of paper as student after student prints
out 100+ page documents only to have to revise/reprint because of minute
formatting deficiencies of the order of 1/32". *So much for this school's
effort to be a leader in sustainable living practices. *Nonetheless, while I
feel this whole formatting adventure is a pretty big waste of time, an even
bigger waste of time would be to try to fight the beauracracy on this issue. *
My guess is that the process will eventually change to match current
publishing practices primarily because these formatting requirements are
relatively archaic, but also because of the paper consumption issue.

Best wishes,

Greg



"Graham Mayor" wrote:
If you are submitting the documents electronically for the 'reviewers' to
view on screen, then unless you know what printer driver the reviewer has
set as active printer at the time he/she opens the document, and which
release of the font outlines he/she has installed then there is no possible
way that you can setup the document to ensure that how it is viewed remotely
reflects how you set it up locally.

Word is not a page layout application. It is a dynamic entity that calls on
the active printer driver and the Windows fonts to layout the document. If
the reviewers are not aware of this, they really have no business
criticising the layout of a Word document.

If you want to produce a document appears as more as you intend then you
need to create a PDF format of the document which doesn't rely on the
printer driver, but on its own driver. It *may* be possible to embed the
fonts you wish to use to overcome the display issues inherent in PDF
viewing, but the ONLY way you can present a document and be sure it appears
exactly as you intend is to print it and submit the hard copy. If the
reviewers think otherwise then they are deluding themselves ... and more to
the point potentially penalising or rewarding you for something over which
you have no control. If what you say about the process is true, then it is
fundamentally flawed.

--

Graham Mayor - *Word MVP

My web sitewww.gmayor.com
Word MVP web sitehttp://word.mvps.org


guyeda wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys. *As for firing the format reviewers,
unfortunately that's their primary function. *The acceptance process
requires approval from your supervisory committee, which makes their
decisions on the basis of content, and the format reviewer, who makes
his decision based solely on format. *So the format reviewer is
literally responsible for checking things like font sizes, margins,
etc. *It's ironic that the rationale for this is to provide
experience in creating "publication quality" material, but the
submission process for actual publication in my field is entirely via
electronic document, not physical paper ones. *I'll probably give the
PDF format a try, but since everything presumably goes through the
print driver my guess it'll still have this minor difference. *The
problem appears to be more with the black/white printer than the
color one and I've got several other printing options for that so I
don't think a solution will be too hard. *Still, I'm surprised there
isn't a way to do this. *Back in the day of dot-matrix printers this
sort of adjustment was usually mandatory.

Appreciate the help,

Greg

"Jay Freedman" wrote:

If I were the dean of a college and I found that thesis reviewers
were wasting their time measuring the margins of submissions, I'd
fire them on the spot.

Of course, that might explain why I'm not an academic and -- with no
more than a master's degree -- I'm employed in a position where I do
something useful. :-)

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP * * * *FAQ:http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup so all may benefit.

On Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:03:43 +0200, "Graham Mayor"
wrote:

Of course they are working fine, but they have different drivers
(and drivers that are probably different to those that the
reviewers are using). *Any* document printed from Word will be a
slave to the active printer driver's capabilities. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Formatting/TextReflow.htm. Print the
whole thing on the same printer, or use PDF format if you have to
supply a file version.

As Word is the industry standard word processing application, if the
reviewers are not aware of this aspect of the document creation
process, they have no business doing the reviewing!

--

Graham Mayor - *Word MVP

My web sitewww.gmayor.com
Word MVP web sitehttp://word.mvps.org


guyeda wrote:
Thanks for the reply macropod,

I think the printers are essentially working fine, they just have
minute differences in terms of the precise print locations. *The
left/right difference is less than 1/32" and the top/bottom
difference is about 1/32". Unfortunately for me, that difference is
enough for the reviewers to notice while measuring. *I'll probably
end up saving the file as a duplicate prior to the final printing
and goose the Word margin settings to match the physical print
margins, but this solution makes me somewhat nervous.

"macropod" wrote:

Hi guyeda,

This isn't something controlled by Word, but by your printer's
configuration. If you check the Printer properties (either through
Word's print menu or via the Windows Control Panel), you may find
a setting that allows you to define the print offsets. I doubt it,
though. Probably either or both of the printers need some
maintenance - or at least the paper trays adjusted properly.

Cheers
--
macropod
[MVP - Microsoft Word]
-------------------------

"guyeda" wrote in message
...
I'm printing a thesis that requires some pretty precise print
formatting (reviewers literally measure margins with a ruler!) *I
need to print the document on two printers: *one for the
black/white text pages and one for the color pages. *The problem
is that the two printers have slightly different print
characteristics. *The color printer prints slightly lower and to
the left and the black/white one prints far enough to the right
to have flush-right text fall within the right margin when
printed out. *Back in the day, this was common and there were
settings you could define that could correct for these
discrpeancies, but I can't seem to find them in Word 2003.-