Print Settings in Deckle

Control the print-specific details that make a paperback feel professionally typeset (margins, running headers, page numbers, and clean text flow), all applied to your PDF export.

What You Can Do

• Fine-tune top, bottom, inner (spine), and outer margins individually, with a warning if your inner margin is too tight for your page count.
• Turn on bleed for full-bleed images or design elements that need to run to the edge of the page.
• Add a running header with several built-in content patterns (book title, chapter title, author name) or fully custom text for the left and right pages.
• Choose where page numbers sit: outside edge, center, or inside edge (spine side).
• Turn on widow and orphan control so a paragraph never ends with just one line stranded at the top or bottom of a page.

How to Change Print Settings

1. Open Styles and select the Print category.
2. Under Margins, adjust top/bottom/inner/outer as needed. Inner and outer are already set from your trim size, but can be overridden here.
3. Under Running header, turn it on and choose a content pattern, or set custom text.
4. Under Footer, turn on page numbers and choose their position.
5. Under Text flow, turn on widow and orphan control if you want it.

Margins Are Derived From Trim Size, But Overridable

Your inner, outer, top, and bottom margins are already set to values matched to your trim size (from the Typography category). Print settings let you override any of them individually if you have a reason to. If your inner margin gets too tight for your page count, Deckle warns you before it becomes a real binding problem.

A Couple of Things Worth Knowing

💡 Running header content patterns are built around verso/recto conventions (left-hand vs. right-hand pages), e.g. book title on the left page, chapter title on the right, matching traditional print book layout rather than showing the same text on every page by default.

💡 Widow and orphan control has an adjustable minimum line count (2-4 lines). The higher you set it, the more aggressively Deckle avoids leaving a short line stranded alone.

💡 Bleed only matters if you have full-bleed images or design elements. Most text-only novels don't need it turned on.