6 Tricks To Squeeze Your Letters Onto One Page

Anyone who has read any of my articles on the subject ofletter writing or resume writing will know how important I believe it is to minimize the number of pages, preferably limiting them to one page whenever possible.

And, we all know how tacky it looks when we put the finishing touches on a letter and it overflows onto the second page by one or two lines. Very unprofessional!

So, there are a number of handy little tricks that I'veused over the years that can help "squeeze" a letter orother document onto one page without it being noticed bythe average reader. These tricks can be applied using anystandard word processing software program.

I'm not sure whether a purist at a secretarial school wouldapprove of some of my methods since they may deviate fromcertain technical standards, but I have used them hundredsof times and nobody has ever been the wiser. The main pointbeing that I was able to keep a letter on one page when thefirst version overflowed by a few lines onto a second page.

Below are my "page compression tips", listed in the order in which I suggest you apply them:

1. Adjust Side Margins First

Move both the left and right margins out about 1/4 in. closer to the edge of the page.

2. Top and Bottom Margins Next

Move the top and bottom margins out about 1/4 in. closer to the edge of the page.

3. Eliminate The Overflows

Edit out the one or two word "overflows". What I mean here is this: After the letter is drafted take a good look at each paragraph. See if there are any that have an ending sentence that "overflows" onto an additional line for the sake of one word. If so, make a minor edit or two in the paragraph that shortens it a little so that the last word or two will not overflow onto the following line. Using this method, you can often gain two or three extra lines in a one-page letter.

4. Play With Your Spacing

Adjust the line spacing on the page. You can gain considerable space on a page by adjusting the line spacing of the text. For example, if the default line spacing is set to "single" at 12 points try setting it to "exactly" at 12 points if your font size is 12. If that doesn't do it, try "exactly" at "11 pts". Often you have to experiment a bit with this one to get the look just right.

5. Reduce The Font Size

As a last resort, try reducing the size of the font by 1 point size, say from 12 to 11 points.

6. Edit One More Time

If it still doesn't "fit", there's one final thing you can try if you're the author of the letter. Go back and edit it one more time. Look for redundant thoughts and phrases, or those that can be combined into one sentence rather than two. Is every word and phrase absolutely essential to your message? You'll be amazed at the space savings that this process can result in.

As I stated earlier, try the above methods in sequence,one-at-a-time, checking each time to see if your latestchange has done the trick for you.

What happens if it still won't fit?

Now, if you've used all of the above tricks and you stillcan't get the letter to fit onto one page, it's time toadmit that you've got a real two-pager. In which case, you should then think about "reversing" some of the compression tricks that you applied when you tried to"squeeze" the letter, and then concentrate on making a balanced looking second page.

There's nothing worse looking than a letter with a one ortwo sentence second page! So in this case, you may wantto actually "stretch" the letter out a bit.

Often, at this stage I actually increase the line spacingand reduce the margins slightly so that there will be adecent sized overflow onto the second page.

For example, try reversing steps 1, 2 and 4 above. Soinstead of decreasing the top, bottom and side marginson page one, try increasing them by 1/4 in. all around.Then increase the point size and see if that helps.Ideally, try to get the page to break cleanly at a paragraph break, for a nice tidy page-to-page transition.

Again, I have used these little "compression" tricks thousands of times, and nobody has ever pulled out theirruler and chastised me for inaccuracy.

The important thing is to end up with a professional"looking" letter.

In fact, if you do a very detailed check of the real-lifetemplates included in any one of my Writing Toolkits youwould find that I have used one or more of the above trickson many of them. But, I'm not telling which ones!

Click the link below my name to see a full list of all of those Writing Kits.

© 2005 by Shaun Fawcett

Shaun Fawcett, is webmaster of the popular writing help siteWritingHelp-Central.com. He is also the author of severalbest selling "writing toolkit" eBooks. All of his eBooks andhis internationally acclaimed f-r-e-e course, "Tips and TricksFor Writing Success" are available at his writing tools site:http://www.writinghelptools.com