Math 696 -- Customizing the LaTeX page layout

Now that you have some experience with LaTeX, you may be wishing that you could overrule some of LaTeX's default design decisions. Perhaps you would like to change the size of the margins, for example. In principle, you have complete control in LaTeX over the appearance of the page. Before you get carried away with customizing the visual design, read Leslie Lamport's warning from the LaTeX manual page 91:

Before changing your document's style, remember that many authors make elementary errors when they try to design their own documents. The only way to avoid these errors is by consulting a trained typographic designer or reading about typographic design. All I can do here is warn you against the very common mistake of making lines that are too wide to read easily--a mistake you won't make if you follow this suggestion: Use lines that contain no more than 75 characters, including punctuation and spaces.

(Imagine how hard it would be to read a newspaper if the lines of text stretched across the whole page!)