For practical purposes, documents have always had a "gap" between the edge of a piece of paper and where the text in the document starts. This gap is called the margin. In a word processor, it is a standard to have margins on all four sides of the page, typically between 1" and 1.5", depending on the default settings. These, however, can be altered. In most word processors, going to the File|Page Setup menu will give the user the ability to change the margins. Here is what the Page Setup looks like in Word 97.