word document appears square, rulers show 8.5x11, prints elongated

In Word 2003, the view of "white space" is toggled by clicking on the space between pages. In Word 2007 and above, a double-click is required. Either can happen inadvertently, though the double-click is a little less likely.

Would the screen resolution have anything to do with how it is printed? Because I had wondered that, but the things I am printing are images that I am copying and pasting directly, and as I said, they look right when I put them on the doc, but the doc itself is not right...

I have also checked into the track changes area, and as far as I can tell, none of it is checked...especially as this is now a brand new Office program, so you would think that when I open a brand new document in it, it would come up properly...this is why I now think there is something with the computer itself interpreting the ruler that has gone haywire...new office program, new printer, registry cleaned, still the same problem...and these things are supposed to make life easier...hmmm...

Thank you for the reply...I don't think that's the problem, as when I print, the images do fill the whole page, but because the page on the screen is square, when it actually prints on the proper size, somehow the computer is compensating and making everything longer to fill the page like it shows on the screen...we just loaded word 2010, and I can't seem to find preview on the darn thing, but the page looks the same in this version as it did in my old one, and I have tried to open straight word documents in Publisher and the same thing happens, but not when I open other types of documents in publisher...and it doesn't seem to matter what size page I change to, it makes it all screwy, it's just that I use letter most, so that's where I noticed it, but when I transferred the info and adjusted to a smaller size paper, the same thing happened,  the page proportions on the screen didn't match what the rulers said...for example, on letter, though the vertical ruler is actually showing 11 inches, it looks to be more like nine.

I am finding it very frustrating as I do a lot of printing of images and it's making all the people in the images look like they should be in Barnum and Bailey!