Text to PDF

About Text to PDF

How Does Text to PDF Conversion Work?

The tool uses jsPDF, an open-source JavaScript library, to build the PDF directly in your browser. When you click the download button, it creates a new PDF document at the dimensions you selected, sets the font size, then walks through your text line by line. Each line is measured against the available page width (total width minus margins on both sides), and long lines are wrapped automatically. When the text exceeds the printable height of a page, a new page is inserted. Blank lines in your input are preserved as paragraph spacing, so the structure of your original text carries through.

Worked example: Say you paste 2,000 words of meeting notes and select A4, 12pt font, with normal (20mm) margins. The printable width is 210 - 40 = 170mm. At 12pt, each line holds roughly 85 characters. jsPDF wraps lines at word boundaries, producing about 45 lines per page. At roughly 10 words per line, that gives about 450 words per page - so 2,000 words will produce a 4 or 5-page PDF, depending on paragraph spacing.

Page Size Reference

The tool supports three page sizes. A4 is the international standard used in most countries, defined by ISO 216 (established in 1975). US Letter is the default in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and several Latin American countries. Legal is a taller US format used for contracts and court filings.

Size	Dimensions (mm)	Dimensions (inches)	Where It's Standard
A4	210 x 297	8.27 x 11.69	Most countries outside North America (ISO 216)
US Letter	215.9 x 279.4	8.5 x 11	US, Canada, Mexico, Philippines
US Legal	215.9 x 355.6	8.5 x 14	Legal documents, contracts (US)

A4 is slightly narrower and taller than Letter. If you are printing a document for someone in another country, pick the size that matches their local standard to avoid cropping or scaling issues.

Font Size and Lines Per Page

Font size has the biggest effect on how much text fits on each page. Smaller fonts pack more content but are harder to read. Larger fonts improve readability but use more pages. Here is a rough guide for A4 with normal (20mm) margins:

Font Size	Lines Per Page	Words Per Page	Best For
8pt	~70	~700	Dense reference material, code printouts
10pt	~55	~550	Compact documents, email archives
12pt	~45	~450	Standard documents, meeting notes, letters
14pt	~38	~380	Presentations, easy reading
18pt	~30	~250	Large print, accessibility
24pt	~22	~180	Posters, title pages, visually impaired readers

Most printed business documents use 10-12pt. For large-print documents intended for people with low vision, 18pt is the widely accepted minimum. A 16pt font is sometimes used when space is limited, but 18pt or larger is the standard recommendation for accessibility.

Margin Settings Explained

Margins control the blank space between your text and the edge of the page. The tool offers four presets:

Preset	Size	Printable Width (A4)	When to Use
Narrow	10mm	190mm	Maximum text per page, screen-only documents
Medium	15mm	180mm	Balanced look with more content
Normal	20mm	170mm	Standard for most printed documents
Wide	25mm	160mm	Documents that will be hole-punched or bound

Normal (20mm) margins are a safe default. If the document will be printed and placed in a ring binder, go with wide margins to keep text clear of the holes. For screen-only PDFs where you want to fit as much text as possible, narrow margins work well.

Why Use PDF Instead of Plain Text?

PDF (Portable Document Format) was created by Adobe in 1993 and became an ISO standard in 2008 (ISO 32000-1). The format is designed so that documents look identical regardless of the device, operating system, or software used to view them. According to Smallpdf, over 2.5 trillion PDF files exist worldwide, with roughly 290 billion new PDFs created each year. Around 98% of businesses use PDF as their default format for external document sharing.

Plain text files (.txt) have no formatting at all - no page layout, no font control, no consistent appearance across viewers. Converting text to PDF gives it a fixed page layout that prints predictably and looks professional when shared. The resulting files are small (typically 10-50 KB for a few pages of text), widely supported, and easy to archive.

Text to PDF vs Other Document Formats

Format	Formatting	Universal Viewing	File Size	Editable
Plain text (.txt)	None	Any text editor	Smallest	Yes
Text to PDF (this tool)	Page layout, font size, margins	Any PDF reader	Small (10-50 KB)	No
Markdown to PDF	Headings, bold, italic, code, lists	Any PDF reader	Small	No
Word document (.docx)	Full rich text, images, tables	Needs Word or compatible app	Medium	Yes
HTML	Full web formatting	Any browser	Small	Yes

Use this tool when you have plain, unformatted text and just need it in a PDF wrapper. If your text includes Markdown formatting (headings, bold, lists), the Markdown to PDF converter will render those properly. To go the other direction and pull text out of an existing PDF, use the PDF to Text extractor.

Common Use Cases

Scenario	Recommended Settings	Why
Meeting notes for distribution	A4/Letter, 12pt, normal margins	Standard, professional appearance
Archiving email threads	A4, 10pt, narrow margins	Fits more content per page, saves paper
Cover letter or formal letter	A4/Letter, 12pt, wide margins	Clean layout with breathing room
Large print for accessibility	A4, 18-24pt, normal margins	ADA-compliant readability
Code or log file printout	A4, 8-10pt, narrow margins	Maximises characters per line
Printing class notes or recipes	A4/Letter, 11-12pt, normal margins	Easy to read at arm's length

How Big Will the PDF File Be?

Text-only PDFs are very small. A single page of text with embedded font data typically weighs 10-100 KB, depending on font complexity and compression. A 5-page document with nothing but text and standard fonts usually comes in under 50 KB. For comparison, a Word document with the same content might be 15-30 KB, and a plain .txt file with no formatting is the smallest of all (around 2 KB per page of text).

Document Length	Approximate PDF Size (text only)	Pages at 12pt, A4
500 words	~15 KB	1-2 pages
2,000 words	~25-40 KB	4-5 pages
5,000 words	~50-80 KB	11-12 pages
10,000 words	~80-120 KB	22-23 pages

These sizes are small enough to email as attachments without worrying about file size limits. Most email providers allow attachments up to 25 MB, so even a very long text-to-PDF conversion will be well within that limit.

Limitations to Be Aware Of

This tool converts plain text only. It does not support:

• Rich formatting - no bold, italic, headings, or bullet points. For formatted text, use the Markdown to PDF converter instead.
• Images or tables - the PDF will contain text only. For documents with mixed content, a word processor or HTML-to-PDF tool is more appropriate.
• Custom fonts - the tool uses Helvetica, one of the 14 standard PDF fonts guaranteed to be available in every PDF reader. This keeps file sizes small and ensures consistent rendering everywhere.
• Right-to-left languages - Arabic, Hebrew, and other RTL scripts require specialised font shaping that the standard PDF fonts do not support.
• Tagged PDF structure - the output is not a tagged PDF (PDF/UA), which means it may not meet WCAG 2.1 accessibility requirements for screen readers. For accessible documents, use a dedicated document editor that supports PDF tagging.

For most everyday uses - archiving notes, printing emails, sharing text documents - these limitations do not matter. The tool is designed to be fast and simple for the most common case: turning unformatted text into a clean, downloadable PDF.

Tips for Better Results

• Check your line breaks first. If the source text has hard line breaks in the middle of sentences (common when copying from emails or terminals), it can produce awkward short lines in the PDF. Remove unwanted line breaks before converting.
• Use blank lines for paragraphs. The converter preserves blank lines as paragraph spacing. A single newline starts a new line; a double newline creates a visible gap between paragraphs.
• Preview the word count. The tool shows a live word and character count. Use the font size table above to estimate how many pages your document will be before generating.
• Pick the right page size for your audience. If the recipient is in Europe, Asia, or Africa, use A4. If they are in the US, Canada, or Mexico, use Letter.
• Try different font sizes. If your document is too long, drop to 10pt to fit more per page. If readability is the priority, bump up to 14pt or higher.
• Remove trailing whitespace. Extra spaces at the end of lines can cause uneven margins. Most text editors have a "trim trailing whitespace" option.

Need to combine several PDFs into one file after converting? The Merge PDF tool handles that. If you want to count words in your text before converting, the Word Counter gives a detailed breakdown including reading time and sentence count.

Sources

• Smallpdf - PDF Statistics and Usage in 2025
• Wikipedia - Portable Document Format
• Wikipedia - Paper Size (ISO 216 and US Letter)
• PDF Association - ISO 32000-2 (PDF 2.0)
• jsPDF - Client-side PDF Generation Library