You print a PDF from a European company, school or pattern designer on ordinary US paper, and the top line or the page number is missing. Or you set the printer to “fit” and the sewing pattern's test square comes out too small. It happens the other way round too, when a US form is printed on A4.
The cause is simple: A4 (210 × 297 mm, 8.27 × 11.69 in) and US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) are not the same shape. A4 is 0.23 in narrower and 0.69 in taller. Something has to give: the content shrinks, or part of the page is cut off, or you use bigger paper. Which one is right depends on what you are printing. We worked through the numbers on 4 October 2026 with a real home printer driver (an Epson L3050 on Windows 11) and with test PDFs whose correct sizes we knew in advance.
What the print settings actually do
Every print dialog has some version of two choices: print at actual size (100%), or fit the page to the paper. Fit usually means fitting the printable area, which is smaller than the sheet: printers cannot print right to the edge. The Epson driver we checked reserves 0.117 in (3 mm) on every side of both A4 and Letter.
| PDF → paper | Actual size (100%) | Fit to printable area |
|---|---|---|
| A4 PDF on Letter paper | The top and bottom 0.46 in (11.8 mm) of the page are not printed: 0.35 in falls off the sheet, plus the printer's own margin. | Everything prints, at 92.1%. A 2-inch test square prints at 1.84 in. |
| Letter PDF on A4 paper | The left and right 0.23 in (5.9 mm) are not printed. | Everything prints, at 94.5%. |
| A4 PDF on Legal paper (8.5 × 14 in) | Everything prints at 100%, with spare paper at the bottom. | Not needed. |
So “cut off” and “too small” are the two sides of one trade-off. For an ordinary document, losing 8% of the size is invisible; losing the page number or a signature line is not. For a pattern, map or anything measured, it is the opposite: the size is the whole point.
Printing a document: shrink it, once, in the file
Letters, forms, invoices, homework and reports should shrink to fit. Two ways to do it:
- In the print dialog, choose Fit, Fit to printable area or Shrink oversized pages instead of Actual size, and check the preview. This works, but you have to remember it every time, and so does anyone you send the file to.
- In the file itself: convert the PDF to your paper size once with Resize PDF Pages, then print normally. An A4 page becomes a Letter page with the content at 94.1% and a blank band of 9.2 mm on each side; Letter to A4 is 97.3% with bands at the top and bottom. The text stays sharp and selectable, links and fillable form fields keep working, and pages that are already the right size are left alone. Nothing is uploaded, which matters for tax forms and contracts.
The second way also fixes the file for the next person, which is why it suits forms you have to send back: the office receives pages in its own paper size.
Printing a sewing pattern (or anything to scale): never shrink
A pattern printed at 94% makes a garment two sizes too small. Patterns come with a test square, usually 1 or 2 inches, for exactly this reason. We converted our own 3-page A4 test pattern with a 2-inch square to Letter: with Fit, the square came out 1.88 in, which is useless for sewing. So:
- Look for a Letter version first. Many designers include both A4 and Letter pages, or Letter and A4 layers in one file. That is always the best answer.
- Print only the test-square page at Actual size (100%) and measure it with a ruler. If it is right, the scale is right.
- Check what the edges will lose before printing everything. An A4 page on Letter paper loses about 12 mm at the top and bottom. Open the pattern in Resize PDF Pages, choose US Letter and Keep size: the content stays at 100%, and the tool names every page that has ink in the strip that will not fit. On our test pattern it flagged only the page whose lines ran to 8 mm from the edge and cleared the other two. It checks the paper difference, not your printer's own 3 mm or so, so treat lines very close to the edge as at risk too.
- If pages would lose pattern lines, print those pages on Legal paper (8.5 × 14 in), which holds a whole A4 page at 100%. Many home printers' trays extend to Legal; the Epson driver we checked offers it. Otherwise a copy shop can print on A4.
Still cut off at the right paper size?
If a PDF that already matches your paper loses a few millimetres at every edge, it is the printer's margin, not the paper size: content placed right to the edge of the page cannot print on most home printers. Choose Fit to printable area for that print, which costs a few percent in size (on our Epson, an A4 page on A4 paper prints at 97.2%). Software “printers” such as Microsoft Print to PDF have no margin at all, so a test print to PDF will not show this problem; only the real printer does.
Quick answers
- Printing an A4 document on Letter paper: Fit to printable area, or convert it to Letter first. Expect about 92 to 94% size.
- Printing an A4 pattern on Letter paper: Actual size, test square first, and Legal paper for any page that would lose lines.
- Printing a Letter PDF on A4: the sides are what get cut; Fit costs only about 5%.
- Making a printable file for someone else: resize it to their paper size and send that.
Related: if the problem is a photo that prints at the wrong size rather than a whole page, see how to print a 2x2 passport photo at the right size.