Funeral program size, paper and folding

Common sizes

These are the common formats, and what each gives you. The first is the easiest to print, at home or at a shop:

• Letter bifold. A letter sheet, 8.5 by 11 inches, folded once to 5.5 by 8.5 inches. It gives four panels: the cover, two inside panels and the back.
• Legal bifold. A legal sheet, 8.5 by 14 inches, folded once to 7 by 8.5 inches. The four panels are wider, with more room for words and photographs. Check that your printer takes legal paper before you choose it.
• Tabloid bifold. A tabloid sheet, 11 by 17 inches, folded once to 8.5 by 11 inches, the size of a letter page. It opens like a booklet of letter-size pages. Few home printers take a sheet that large, so plan on a print shop.
• Trifold. A letter sheet folded twice into three panels on each side, each about 3.7 by 8.5 inches. The six narrow panels give each part of a longer service its own place, though the sheet holds no more than a letter bifold.
• A single card or sheet. Printed on one side or both, and not folded. It suits a short service or a graveside committal, and it is the quickest to print.

A long program can take extra sheets, nested inside the first. Each extra sheet adds four panels, so the page count goes up in fours. Two sheets can simply be nested and folded together. More sheets hold together better with staples along the fold, which a print shop calls saddle stitching.

Paper in plain words

Paper in the United States is sold by weight in pounds, but different kinds of paper are weighed on different scales, so the number alone can mislead. Cover paper, which is card stock, has one scale and text paper another: 80 lb cover is much heavier than 80 lb text. Copy paper has a scale of its own, called bond.

Grams per square meter, written gsm, is one scale for every kind of paper, so it is the easiest way to compare. Here is how the common weights line up:

Every figure is rounded, and two papers of the same weight can still differ in thickness and feel.

For a folded program:

• Everyday copy paper works, and any home printer takes it.
• A slightly heavier paper, such as 24 or 28 lb bond or 80 lb text, shows less through from the other side and feels more substantial in the hand. It still folds easily.
• Heavy text paper or card stock, such as 100 lb text or 65 to 80 lb cover, feels most like a keepsake. It is harder to fold, and card stock should be scored first.

Check what your home printer accepts before you buy paper. Its user guide, often in a section on paper handling, gives the heaviest paper it takes and says whether heavy paper has to go through a rear or manual feed. Some printers will not print on both sides of heavy paper by themselves. Print a single sheet before you print them all.

Matte, satin or gloss

The finish is the surface of the paper. It changes how the program reads and how the photographs look:

• Matte has no shine. It is the easiest to read under bright or overhead lights, it resists fingerprints, and it is easy to write on.
• Satin has a soft sheen. Photographs look richer than on matte, with less glare than gloss.
• Gloss is shiny. It gives the brightest color and the sharpest photographs, but it can catch the light and shows fingerprints.

For a program that is mostly words, matte or satin is the safer choice. Uncoated paper, which includes most copy paper, has no shine at all and reads as easily as matte. For choosing the photographs themselves, see the funeral program with photos page.

If you print at home, buy glossy paper made for your kind of printer. Inkjet ink sits on top of glossy paper made for laser printers and smears easily, so an inkjet printer needs glossy or photo paper labeled for inkjet printers. The other way round is worse: the coating on inkjet photo paper can melt inside a laser printer and damage it.

Folding

• Let the ink dry before you fold or stack the pages, especially where there are photographs or large areas of color.
• Fold with the cover on the outside. If there is more than one sheet, nest them in order first and fold them together.
• Line up the edges before you crease, then run a thumbnail or the side of a ruler along the fold.

Heavier paper can crack along the fold, and the crack shows most where ink or toner covers the fold. A score, which is a crease line pressed into the paper before it is folded, helps prevent it. Ask the print shop to score card stock before folding it.

Folding by hand takes longer than it seems when there are a hundred copies. Two or three people at a table make it go quickly, and it gives relatives who want to help something useful to do.

Printing on both sides

A folded program is printed on both sides of the sheet: the cover and the back on one side, and the two inside panels on the other. The sheet prints sideways, in landscape, with two panels side by side.

• Flip on the short edge. In the print settings, choose two-sided printing with "flip on short edge", sometimes called short-edge binding. Most printers are set to flip on the long edge, which prints the inside upside down.
• Print at actual size. Choose 100% or "actual size", not "fit to page", which shrinks the panels.
• Test one copy. Print one sheet, fold it, and check that the inside is the right way up and nothing is cut off at the edges. Then print the rest.

If your printer cannot print both sides by itself, print the first side of every sheet, then turn the stack over along its short edge and feed it back in for the second side. Which way up it goes back in depends on the printer, so mark one sheet in pencil and try it first. Fed the wrong way, the inside prints upside down or on the wrong side of the sheet.

Bleed and trim marks

A file made for a print shop often has bleed: the colors and photographs run about an eighth of an inch past the edge of the finished page. It also has trim marks, fine lines at the corners that show where to cut. The shop prints it on a larger sheet and trims it to size, so the color runs cleanly to the edge instead of stopping at a thin white line.

A file for a home printer needs neither. It is laid out to fit a letter sheet with a narrow margin, because most home printers cannot print right to the edge of the paper. Print the file made for the machine in front of you. A print-shop file printed at home would print its trim marks too, and either lose part of its edges or shrink to fit.

If you make the program here, it is a letter bifold, and every purchase includes both files: a print-shop PDF with bleed and trim marks, and a home-printer PDF. For what to bring and ask when you take the file to be printed, see where to print funeral programs.