Submitting handwritten work
One file, in order, under the size limit, readable by someone who is not you. Four requirements, and every one of them fails for people every year.
Guides
Working with PDFs, properly
40 guides across eight topics, written by four named people and tested against real documents. No article here exists to occupy a search result.
Exam papers as PDFsPast papers, mark schemes and the folder they live in.5 guides
Studying from PDFsTurning documents into revision you will actually do.5 guides
Reading PDFs on any deviceWhy PDFs read badly on screens, and how to fix it.5 guides
How PDF files actually workWhat is inside the file, and why it matters.5 guides
Printing PDFs properlyScaling, duplex, booklets and the fit-to-page trap.5 guides
Scanning handwritten workPhotographing paper so a marker can actually read it.5 guides
PDF privacy and securityEncryption, permissions, redaction and metadata.5 guides
When a PDF misbehavesDiagnosing the file rather than guessing at it.5 guides
Guides, page 2
Searching inside a PDF
Search works on characters in the text layer. Everything that goes wrong with it comes from that sentence, including searching across a whole folder at once.
The text layer
The single most useful distinction in the whole format. Either the file contains characters or it contains a photograph of characters, and everything follows from which.
Why handwriting recognition fails
On printed text, recognition is close to solved. On handwriting it produces plausible guesses, and a plausible guess attached to a mathematical answer is worse than no text at all.
Encryption and permissions
One is cryptography and it holds. The other is a request that any reader is free to ignore. Most PDF security advice treats them as one feature with a strength dial.
Revising from a tablet
A tablet is the best PDF reading device there is, and almost nobody sets one up correctly. Three changes make it genuinely comfortable.
Reading a PDF on a phone
An A4 page on a phone screen is about a third of the size it was designed to be. There are three workable responses and one that wastes an hour.
PDF metadata
Title, author, the software that made it, and sometimes the path it was saved from. None of it is on any page, and nothing you do to the pages touches it.
Photographing a page properly
Thirty seconds of technique beats any amount of processing afterwards. Two things go wrong, both before the shutter, and both are free to fix.
What a PDF reveals
Your account name, the software you use, when you made it and sometimes where on your disk it lived. None of it is on any page and all of it travels with the file.
What exam paper filenames mean
9709_s23_qp_12.pdf is not gibberish. Every segment carries information, and ten minutes learning the pattern stops you opening the wrong document for the rest of your course.
What is actually inside a PDF
Not a document. A list of pages, each holding drawing instructions, plus an index saying where everything lives. Five minutes here explains a year of PDF problems.