Tweaking the margin

I spent the afternoon making final changes to the new edition of my Housing Market Study Guide for AS. Just reducing the page margin by a small amount can have a considerable effect on the number of pages - which given that our school duplicating department will shortly be pumping out 120 copies of the thing did cause me to pause for thought.

Operating with a reduced margin saves paper and there is a campaign at the moment to persuade Microsoft to change the default printer page margins.

But

A reduced margin spreads the text out and reduces legibility - spending longer reading a document involves a (significant) time cost
Risks being affected by hole punches
The paper produced for printing on laser copiers is extrenely cheap ...and the trees have been grown especially for that purpose

Maybe instead of narrowing the margins (and/or reducing the font size!) I should focus instead on saying what I want to say with less fuss and waffle so that the document becomes more manageable in the first place. And perhaps I should drop the idea of duplicating the study companion and recommend instead that students use a pdf copy? Trouble is, I know that the majority of them will respond to that idea by heading off to the library printer and start running off copies ....and this is much more expensive than the original duplicating option.