When you print out a Web page, you are not necessarily printing a single page -- a Web "page" could be very short or very long, depending on how it was designed. Unfortunately, part of the coding that goes into each Web page is information, such as the location of the page, that invariably gets printed out after everything else is printed. And because we don't see it on the screen, we don't take it into consideration.
There are other things we don't think about when we print out a Web page. Like all those ads or attributions at the bottom of the page -- stuff that may not be in front of our eyes (because we haven't scrolled down to look at them) but that will print out along with everything else. So how do you avoid printing out a lot of extraneous stuff -- and waste all that paper? There are some things you can do:
- Look for the link that says "Print This Story" or "Print." What that will do is take you to a version of the Web page that is stripped of extra graphics and ads (although sometimes one or two of the ads will still be there).
- Use your print preview. Instead of clicking on the Print icon, go to File and then Print Preview. You'll get a look at what is actually going to be printed out -- and how many pages it will take up.
- Just print what you need. There's nothing that says you have to print out the entire Web page. If you preview it, and see that you only need the stuff on the first two pages, then after you hit the "Print..." command, type in which pages you want to print. It will take a few more seconds, but the savings in paper will be worth the extra time.
