Make a card: type the words, print one sheet, fold it twice

How to fold it

• Print on one side of one sheet, upright. Lay it face up with the large front words at the lower right, the right way up.
• Cut along the long dashes around the outside if you want the edges of the card to meet evenly. Printers do not all leave the same white margin, so an uncut sheet can fold a little off.
• Fold the top half back, away from you, along the dotted line across the middle. The upside-down words are now on the far side.
• Fold the left half back, away from you, along the dotted line down the middle.
• The front now faces you and the card opens like a book. The message is on the right-hand page, the right way up.

What is on the card

• The front: up to 40 characters in thick letters, on 1 line or 2, with one small line of up to 60 characters under them, and a border if you want one.
• Inside, on the right-hand page: a first line of up to 40 characters, what you want to say in up to 300 characters, and a last line of up to 40 characters.
• Inside, on the left-hand page: up to 150 characters, or nothing.
• The back: one small line of up to 60 characters near the bottom, or nothing.
• Lines to write on, if you tick it and type no message: 5 thin lines where the message would be.
• Nothing else: no picture, no color, no name of this site.

How the words are set

• Every kind of words has its own band on its own panel and is set in the middle of it. Leave a box empty and its band stays empty; nothing else moves.
• The front words are tried on 1 line and on 2. The page keeps whichever gives the larger letters, and 1 line when they come out the same.
• The message takes the fewest lines it fits on, from 1 to 8, each line holding as many words as its width takes. The words for the left-hand page take 1 to 6 lines.
• Words are not split and nothing is cut off its panel. A line that is too wide is made smaller until it fits, so one very long word comes out small.
• New lines you type in the message are not kept. The page breaks the lines itself, and every line is set in the middle.
• No words come closer than about a quarter of an inch to a fold or to the line to cut on.

Paper and printing

• The drawing is about 7.2 inches wide and 9.6 inches high (about 18 by 24 centimetres), with a margin of half an inch that home printers leave white. It fits Letter paper and A4.
• Folded, the card is about 3.6 by 4.8 inches (about 9 by 12 centimetres). This page does not know the sizes of envelopes; measure yours before you count on one.
• One card is one sheet, printed on one side only. Nothing is printed on the other side of the paper, and it ends up hidden inside the folds.
• Plain paper is thin. Folded twice it is four sheets thick, which helps a card stand; heavier paper feels better if your printer takes it.
• The letters are your device’s own (Georgia or Times for the ones with small feet, Arial or Helvetica for the plain ones, or the nearest it has), so the shapes can differ a little from one device to another. The page measures them on your device before it sets the size.
• It has been tried in one browser’s print preview (Chromium, saved as PDF), not on paper from a real printer, and no person has folded one yet.

What this page does not do

• It does not write the words for you. The example is only an example, and a few plain words of your own are worth more to the person who opens it.
• It does not read the words: it cannot tell whether a name is spelled the way its owner spells it. Read the sheet over before you fold it.
• It makes one card at a time. For the same card for several people, print the sheet again; for a different name on each, change the first line and print again.
• It has no pictures, no colors and no ready-made verses.
• It cannot send a card to anyone, by post or on a screen. It makes a sheet of paper, or a PDF that stays with you.
• It keeps nothing: close the page and the words are gone.

Every time the page is built, a program checks 16 examples worked by hand. Then it makes up 1,200 cards, with long and short words, accents, very long words and empty boxes, and draws each the way the page draws it. A second reader, written separately, takes every line back off the drawing. It checks that the words on each panel are the words typed for it; that the front is at the lower right and the back at the lower left, the right way up, and the two inside pages across the top, turned half way round; that every line is inside its own band and in the middle of it; that two lines do not meet; that no line reaches a fold; and that no line could be larger. The program uses made-up letter widths; the widths of real letters come from your device, and those were tried in one browser only. A program cannot fold paper: the order of the folds was worked out by hand.