It depends on your definition of "wide." The default left and right margins
are 1.25". The reasoning behind them is fairly simple: on 8.5" paper, those
margins give a 6" text line, which is 72 characters of 10-pt Courier New, a
common measure in typewriter terms. The margins are also reasonable for
(usually short) business letters, which were probably a major focus of early
versions of Word.

That said, anyone who is complaining about a "wide" right margin is not
likely to be referring to the default margin (regardless of how wide you may
consider it) because it is the same as the left margin. If someone is seeing
an *abnormally* wide right margin, the most likely cause is Track Changes
with balloons.

I would also take issue with your statement that U.S. letter is "much
shorter than the universal A4 size." Letter is 11" long, A4 11.69"--or
metrically, 27.94 cm for Letter vs. 29.7 cm for A4.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the newsgroup so
all may benefit.

"Brod" wrote in message
...
The wide margin is the default American size too and not a universal
size..

--
Brod

"Suzanne S. Barnhill" wrote in message
...
If you are tracking changes and have balloons enabled, the wide right
margin
is for the balloons.

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
Word MVP FAQ site: http://word.mvps.org
Email cannot be acknowledged; please post all follow-ups to the
newsgroup
so
all may benefit.

"Brod" wrote in message
u...
Selby,

Just guessing but have you checked your margins? The American default
is
something like 3.5cm for the right margin. Why they do that I do not
know.
Also the page is set by default to the American letter size which is
much
shorter than the universal A4 size.

Check your margins FILE PAGE SETUP and while there check your page
size -
assuming you are not American? If you make any changes make sure you
click
DEFAULT before you leave the dialogue box otherwise you will be back
where
you started.

Also make sure the Multiple Pages are set to NORMAL and not mirrored.
--
Brod

"Selby" wrote in message
...
It appears that there is a large white space on the right side of my
documents. When I go to print layout, 2 pages side by side are
shown.
I
would like to return to a single page, without the large blank space
Your
help is appreciated.