2-up, 4-up, 6-up or 9-up: Which Is Best? A Guide to Text Size

Published: Oct 19, 2026 | Updated: Oct 19, 2026 | About (Japanese)

Key points

The more pages you put on a sheet, the smaller each page becomes. Here is a guide to choosing.

Shrink guide

For a portrait A4 original with "Normal" margin, the approximate scale is shown below, with what 12 pt text becomes.

With portrait pages, going beyond 6 per sheet barely changes the page size. Landscape slides (such as 4:3) at 4-up come out at about 36%.

First do a test print of a few pages with 4-up. If it is hard to read, go to 2-up.

Originals with large text (16 pt or more) stay readable even at 4-up. Try various settings in Combine PDF Pages onto One Sheet.

Reading small text for long periods is tiring. For documents you will read at length, choose a more generous setting.

Compress PDF: Shrink a PDF to fit under a size you choose, for upload limits.
Rotate & Reorder PDF Pages: Fix sideways pages, change the page order, or remove pages.
Merge PDFs: Combine several PDF files into one, in the order you choose.

If this guide helped, a small tip would mean a lot.