Reader Shane Saylor is displeased with how TextEdit and Safari print. He writes:
I need help with fonts and their sizes on my new Intel/Universal iMac. When I type something in TextEdit and print it out (no matter what font size I choose) the text comes printed out like its either 6 pt. or 8 pt. The same problem applies to printing from Safari. Any help or advice would be appreciated.
In regard to TextEdit, this is intentional. The idea is that TextEdit, by default, will wrap text based on how wide the onscreen document window is. You can see this in action. Type a couple of long sentences and then drag the bottom right corner of the TextEdit window to resize it, bigger and then smaller. Notice how the text rewraps based on the width of the document. If you print this document, that printout will match exactly what’s on the screen, right down to where the words wrap. Therefore, if you’ve put a mess of text on a single line, the font size will decrease in the printout so all the text fits on that single line.
This is a useful feature if you’re entering lines of code and prefer to see those lines unbroken. But it’s not so hot if you’re expecting TextEdit to behave like a word processor rather than a text editor. Fortunately you can change TextEdit’s behavior simply by choosing Format -> Wrap to Page. When you do, the text will wrap to the size of the page specified in Page Setup and fonts will print at the chosen size.
As for Safari, you can increase the size of printed text by increasing the size of the browser’s text on your Mac’s screen. Just press Command-+ (Plus) to increase text size and Command- – (Minus) to decrease the size of the text. Printouts will mimic what you see on the screen.