Forms people enjoy filling in

A guide to friendly forms and documents: a few choices that make them clear, calm and easy to read.

Adding components

Choose a component and click Add. It goes at the end of the last row, or in a new row when there is no room. The arrow beside the page shows where.

At the end of another row
Click the page margin to the left of the row. A click on a component opens it to change instead.
In a new row
Click New Row, or a + beside the page, between two rows. Press Escape to cancel. With the keyboard, Tab to a + and press Enter.
Sizes are in points
Every size, width and height is in points, as in Word: 72 points are 1 inch, or 2.54 cm, so a point is about a third of a millimeter. A length shows its inches or centimeters beside it as you type.

The components

The Component list has what people answer in its first column, and what is on the page in its second.

Text field
A box to type an answer in, under its label: one line, or several for a longer answer.
Checkbox
A box to tick, its words beside it: for a yes, or to agree.
Choice
One answer from the options you give, one on each line.
Date, Phone and Email
A box for a date, a phone number or an email address.
Signature
A name typed under a checkbox that says it signs: a signature for a form filled in online.
Address fields
The fields of an address in rows, as the country chosen writes it, in its language: the 44 countries, from Argentina to the United States. Each is a form field, which the browser of whoever fills the form in offers to fill with their own address.

A Text field's Field type makes it a Number, for a quantity. A page with fields is a form, which people fill in online.

Text
A heading or a paragraph. Its lines break at the width of its column.
Table
A row of its own, as wide as the page, which goes on over as many pages as it needs, its header row at the top of each.
Line and Box
A line across its column, or a rectangle, to set parts of the page apart.
Image
A PNG, JPEG or SVG file. For a logo, use the SVG if you have one: it stays sharp at any size.
Space
Blank space between rows, to give parts of the page room.
QR code
A square code that a phone's camera reads: a link, a phone number or any text.
Page break
The rows after it start on a new page.

The document

Page size and orientation
Letter in the US and Canada, A4 almost everywhere else. The document is laid out again on the new pages.
Title
What a PDF viewer shows in its title bar, and a screen reader reads first. Save offers it as the name of the file.
Language
The language a screen reader reads the document in, and its dates are printed in.
Dates
As the language writes them, 11/14/2026 in American English, or year first, 2026-11-14, which reads the same in every country: for a form whose people write their dates in different ways. The answers keep the year first either way.

Fonts

IBM Plex Sans
For most forms and documents: clear on paper and on screen.
Source Serif 4
For letters, certificates and long text.
JetBrains Mono
For codes, serial numbers and figures that line up.

One or two fonts keep a form calm and professional.

Regular
For paragraphs.
Bold
For headings and totals. SemiBold is a little lighter.
Italic
For short notes.

Text and headings

The dropdown beside Text says what a text is: a paragraph, or a heading, which names what comes under it, so that people with a screen reader can jump to it. It changes nothing you see; the font and the size do that.

Heading 1
The title of the document.
Heading 2
Its parts.
Heading 3
The parts of a part. Go one level at a time, from 1 to 2 to 3.
Page numbers
In a text of the header or the footer, Page {page} of {pages} shows as Page 2 of 5 on the second of five pages. A form numbers its pages by itself.

Text sizes

Sizes are in points: 72 points are 1 inch, or 25.4 mm.

10 to 12
The text of letters, invoices and reports; 11 or 12 for text read at length.
10 or 11
Tables and the lines of an address; 10 for a wide table.
14 to 18
Headings; 20 to 28 for the title of a document.
7 or 8
Fine print.

A notice or a form that anyone may read is easiest at 12 or more, and printed text reads best at 9 points and up.

Form fields

Label font
SemiBold sets the label apart from the answer. Click the square beside the style to change the label's color.
Answer font
The font of what people fill in. Blue answers look like a pen and stand apart from the form. Click the square beside the style to change their color.
Address fields
The font you choose is the answers'; the labels use its SemiBold.
Label size
The size of the label. What people type is a point larger, 12 under a label of 11, and follows the label as you change it, until you choose an Answer size of your own. A checkbox's text and the options of a choice are the label's size.
Answer size
The size of what people type and of a typed signature. The box grows with it, so what is typed always fits.

Width and indent

100%
The whole row: a heading, a paragraph, a table.
50% + 50%
Two side by side, like two signatures.
33% three times
Three across, like City, Province and Postal code.
67% + 33%
A description beside an amount.
Indent
Room on the left of a column, so that it starts further right: a paragraph on the right half of the page, say. The indent and the columns of a row add up to 100% at most, so for a bigger indent make the width smaller first.

When a component doesn't fit beside the others, Add starts a new row.

Add to the page
Where the rows of the document go, one under the other.
Add to the header
At the top of every page, as a letterhead: a logo, the name of the company, a line under them.
Add to the footer
At the foot of every page: an address, a note, a line over them.

Images

Photos
JPEG. A large photo is made smaller when you choose it, to 2000 pixels on its longer side, still sharper than a printer prints, and turned upright.
Logos and drawings
SVG, which stays sharp at any size; or PNG, for a screenshot, or a logo with a transparent background.
Photos from an iPhone
An iPhone saves its photos as HEIC, which a PDF can't hold, so save the photo as a JPEG first: on a Mac, open it in Preview and choose File, Export, JPEG; on Windows, open it in Photos and choose Save as, JPEG. Or on the iPhone, in Settings, Photos, set Transfer to Mac or PC to Automatic, and photos copied to a computer arrive as JPEGs.

Give an image a description that says what it shows, such as "The company logo", for people who use a screen reader. Leave it empty for a decoration, which a screen reader skips.

Alignment

Left
For most text and every paragraph: each line starts where the last one did, so the eye finds it at once.
Center
For a title or the heading of a certificate, a line or two.
Right
For amounts and totals, whose digits line up, and for what goes at the right of a page, such as the date of a letter.

In a table, each column has its own alignment: set it in the table's window.

Line spacing

1
For most text: letters, invoices, notes.
1.15 or 1.25
For long passages and wide columns, which the eye follows more easily with more room between the lines.
1.5 or more
For readers who need more room between lines.

Colors

Text
Black for the text itself; a color for a heading or a word or two.
Background
A light tint, to set a part of the page apart.
Lines
Gray for a line that divides the page, black for lines to write on, and a heading's color for a line under it.
Boxes
A border or a light background, one of the two.

One or two colors besides black keep a form calm and professional.

Say it in words as well as in color: write Overdue beside an amount in red, so that it reads in black and white and to everyone.

Line width

0.5
A thin line, between the items of a list or under small text.
1
Most lines: lines that divide the page, lines to write on, the border of a box.
2 or 3
A line that stands out: under a title, or around a total.

Boxes and space

Height
40 to 64 points for a place to sign or to write a date by hand; 4 or 8 for a band of color over a heading or at the foot of a page. A box holds nothing: for text in a frame, give the text a border; for text on a color, use a table, whose cells have backgrounds.
Corner radius 0
Square corners: most boxes, and every box beside a table.
4 or 6
Softly rounded: a place to sign, a band of color, a panel.
8 to 12
Clearly rounded: a label or a badge. Half the box's height makes its ends round, like a pill.
A border around a text
Border width and Corner radius under Text: the border is very dark gray, with a little room inside it. For a note or a total to stand out, a border around one paragraph is enough.
Space
Empty room between rows, from half a line to two and a half; a line is about a line of text at 11 or 12 points.

QR codes

What a QR code holds
A web address, starting https://; a phone number, as tel:+15550100000; an email address, as mailto:name@example.com; or any text. The code keeps its size, so the shorter the text, the bigger its squares: short web addresses scan best.
How big a QR code is
As wide as its column, with the blank space a phone needs around it. About a tenth as wide as it is far from the phone: a quarter of the page for a sheet in the hand; wider for a poster. A long text gets a wider column, so that its squares are big enough to scan.

Undo

Undo takes back the last change, one step at a time: Ctrl+Z, or ⌘Z on a Mac. After New or a template, Undo brings your document back. Its steps last while the editor is open; after a reload your document is still there, ready to work on.

Keeping your files

Chrome and Edge ask where to save each file; Firefox and Safari save to their downloads folder, unless you set them to ask: "Always ask you where to save files" in Firefox's settings, "Ask for each download" in Safari's. If Firefox opens each PDF as it saves it, choose Save File for "Portable Document Format (PDF)" under Applications in its settings. One folder of your own keeps your forms, their responses and your key together and easy to find, for example a folder PDFjet Forms in Documents, with three folders in it:

Forms
The forms you made. Open one here to change it, or to send it again.
Responses
A folder for each form, such as Client intake, for the filled PDFs that come back. Collect responses reads them all from there at once.
Key
Your key file, private-key.json, if your forms encrypt their answers. Move it here as soon as it is saved.

Keep a second copy of your key file away from this computer, on a USB drive or attached to an entry in your password manager. The key is the only way to open encrypted answers, and only you have it: we never see it, so we cannot send it again. To give it to someone who reads the answers with you, hand it over on a USB drive or share it through a password manager. Anyone with the file can read the answers, and so can anyone with a response saved as a regular PDF: keep those in Responses too.

On a shared computer

Your document, your Plus key and your key for encrypted answers are kept in this browser, so that nothing is lost when you close it. On a computer that isn't yours, save your key file first, with Back up your key… in Email: it is how you open the answers still on their way. Then clear this site's data in the browser when you're done: it removes your draft and your keys. Your saved PDFs are wherever you saved them.

The words used here are explained in Words we use.