A few days ago, the missus shoved some sheets of paper in my face and demanded, “Why are Web pages printing big all of a sudden?”

Sure enough, all the print on all the pages was comically oversize–and largely useless, as much of the actual Web page was cut off on the right side.

So I fired up Firefox and clicked File, Print Preview. Basically, I wanted to see if the preview matched the actual output. Sure enough, it did, and here’s why: The Scale setting had somehow gotten bumped to 150%.

I changed it back to the almost-always-preferable setting Shrink to Fit, and presto: Normal print size restored.

There’s a very similar setting in Microsoft Internet Explorer, so if you’re encountering weirdly sized text on your printed Web pages, make sure your “scales” are set properly.