How to Set Your Top and Bottom Margins


Using the standard 8 1/2 x 11 paper, EZ prints documents with default margins of 1 inch on the top. If you want to change the top or bottom margin globally in the document, you can use the HM (header margin) and FM (footer margin) commands within a Format Note.

These commands are of the form:

.nr HM 2.5i
.nr FM 2.5i
to set the top and bottom margins to be 2.5 inches each.

Just type these commands in near the beginning of the document, then highlight them (with the mouse), and press the middle mouse button to get the menus. Go to the regioncard, and select Format Note. When you preview or print your document, it'll come out with the margins you specified.

Unfortunately, these commands do not take effect until the page AFTER you issue them. To get around this, you can put a

.bp 1
line (format noted) directly after the HM and/or FM commands to force a page break, thus tricking EZ into thinking that the text is on the next page. See the stock answer about changing page numbers for more information on the .bp command.

You can also use the .pl command to set the page length, indirectly setting the bottom margin. This works very similar to the .ll command used to set the line length when setting the left/right margins.