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Markdown to PDF for handouts

Hand-outs are documents that exist to be photocopied and forgotten. They should be fast to produce, fast to read, and easy on the printer.

Elia Kuratli
By Elia Kuratli
·2 min read
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What makes a handout work

  • Title at the top, date right below - students need to file it.
  • Three or four sections at most.
  • Plenty of whitespace for note-taking.
  • Printable in greyscale (most school printers).
  • Page numbers on, footer with 'Page X of N'.

Design picks for hand-outs

  • aplle - generous whitespace, very readable.
  • rotion - Notion-style friendly tone, good for workshops.
  • balandir - cleaner / more austere; good for technical content.
  • Avoid gurnroad, newprint - they print poorly in monochrome.

Templates that fit

The Meeting Notes template adapts well to a workshop hand-out: H1 'Workshop Title', then sections for Context, Decisions/Concepts, Action Items / Exercises, Open Questions. Save the config so the next workshop is a 30-second customization.

FAQ

Will it print well in B/W?

Pick a design without a colour accent (balandir, rcrport, ledger) and the print is essentially black on white. For colour-accented designs (linnear, stripeish, gurnroad), the accent renders as a grey when printed B/W - not bad, but check before mass-printing.

Can I add a logo for the school / company?

Yes. Upload it in the Brand section, toggle 'Show logo on every page' on. Greyscale toggle is on by default.

How do I leave space for hand-written notes?

Add empty paragraphs between sections, or use horizontal rules (`---`) which add a small visual gap. For lined note space, you'd need to edit the PDF post-export.

Related

https://md2document.com/markdown-to-pdf-for-handouts/

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