passport renewal form printing question
 

could not find this answered in any other thread and did not want to be hammered by the $3/minute Rip-Off Britain phone enquiry charge so hopefully someone can help me out here...

I'm renewing a UK passport through the DC embassy, had photos taken when I was last in London and all seems clear enough but when I print the form C1 from the passport site on my B&W laser printer it looks like a dog's dinner.

For a start the darn thing is on A4 paper (for a U.S.-specific form I find this bizarre) so I have to resize for letter-size. Secondly, none of the pretty flesh-colored boxes and their numbers really show up too well in pale grey. My fear is that the darn application will be thrown back at me because the form is printed the wrong size/wrong size paper/in B&W.

Need I worry?

One other quick question... in the "please initial here" boxes on each page I assume you're supposed to do a signature-style initial, not actually print your initials (like at the very top of the form). Correct?

Thanks.

Re: passport renewal form printing question
 

I wouldn't worry too much. I get the impression that they're pretty helpful and laid back rather than trying to find a reason to be awkward. It's not like the UK passport office where everything's scanned by computer.

I sent in the form on letter paper in black and white, with a photo that didn't quite meet their spec, and the new passport was back practically by return of mail.

I think the initials are meant to indicate that any information you've written on a page is covered by the same signed declaration you make at the end. I'm sure either signed initials or printed would do.

Re: passport renewal form printing question
 

I printed that out the other day and it prints perfectly - are you sure you don't have your printer set to A4?

Yep, never really understood the intial thing instead of just asking for a signature, but I guess its a room and effort thing. Its effectively you signing each page, so initial as you see fit.

Re: passport renewal form printing question
 

It prints OK if I set the PDF to "resize to fit page" but then there's two white margins down each side due to the resulting shrinkage. I did finally manage to get a better grayscale rendering, however, so at least I can now see the numbers for each section and the signature box at the end.

Time to get a new printer perhaps!

Re: passport renewal form printing question
 

I guess you mean the Page Scaling option - I'm not at home but when I go to print now it defaults to "Reduce to Printer Margin". I guess it may have left white margins down the side, not sure. Looking at the small preview it looks like it does. This is fine though.