Screen appears blurry and moves back and forth

Mary writes:

Hi Dennis, question for you. On my email, the print appears blurry and also my page moves back and forth. This does not happen on [my daughter's accounts on this same Mac] and was wondering if there is some way to fix this.

Thanks (I know I need glasses, but this definitely is not that)

Mary

I gave Mary a call and found out that by “page” she meant her entire screen’s image on her MacBook, not any particular window. She also elaborated to say that other text looks blurry too, not just in Mail.

And with that, I knew precisely what was going on.

Mary had inadvertently turned on “Screen Zooming”, a feature that Apple includes to help people read the screen more easily. Screen Zooming enlarges everything that is seen on the screen, cropping off the edges. At the same time, it (slightly) blurs the image.

It’s easy to trigger Zooming by mistake, especially if you’re a frequent user of word-processing applications like Microsoft Word. That’s because Screen Zooming is enabled by typing command+option+8, while the bullet character, •, is enabled by tying option+8.

I directed Mary to the Apple Menu (upper left corner of the screen), then to System Preferences. Once inside System Preferences, she clicked on ‘Universal Access’, then in the ‘Zoom’ section, she clicked the ‘Off’ radio button.

Immediately, her screen returned to a crisp image and her wiggle-issues went away.

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