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If I'm editing a Word document, I'm designing something to be printed. If I set zoom to 100% I expect the screen to display the exact size a paper would.

But I'm designing when I'm in Word, it's not necessary or convenient to do all of my work at 1:1 scaling, that's what the ruler is for.

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This requires that Windows knows about the exact size of the display, but Windows cuts a few corners there so it's unlikely to be as precise as an 8.5x11 piece of paper.

Compounding the problem is that the operating system relies on the monitor reporting its physical size correctly via EDID and for a lot of vendors (most notoriously Dell) this isn't guaranteed either.

Yup. Best way to test it: take a sheet of paper from your printer and put it against your screen; MS Word at 100% zoom should have the document area match the physical paper size.

Just tested this: Not even close to being true (current Word/Office 365 on Windows 10)

Is it word, or the OS scaling (which is where a lot of the current font size sins exist)?

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