Landscape orientation is wider than it is tall — the shape of a widescreen film or a horizontal photo. Portrait orientation is taller than it is wide — the shape of a standard printed page or a phone held upright. Set a document to landscape when a wide table won't fit; leave it portrait for ordinary text.
The core difference
These two words describe the orientation of a rectangle: which side is longer. In landscape, the horizontal side is longer. In portrait, the vertical side is longer. The same sheet of A4 paper is 210mm x 297mm in portrait and 297mm x 210mm in landscape — nothing changes but which way round you turn it.
The names come from painting convention: wide canvases suit scenery, tall canvases suit a standing or seated person. That association is what makes the terms easy to remember.
How each is used
- Portrait — letters, reports, CVs, novels, phone screens in normal use, Instagram Stories, most printed documents.
- Landscape — spreadsheets with many columns, presentation slides, film and television, YouTube video, wide charts and floor plans.
In practice: "I had to switch the invoice to landscape so the final column would fit." "Please film it in landscape — vertical video gets cropped on the projector."
The memory trick
Picture the paintings. A landscape — fields, a horizon, a coastline — is a wide view, so landscape is the wide one. A portrait of a person is head-and-shoulders, taller than it is wide. If you still hesitate, remember that a person standing up is tall: portrait is upright.
The practical test
Ask which measurement is bigger. If width exceeds height, it is landscape. If height exceeds width, it is portrait. A 1920 x 1080 video is landscape; a 1080 x 1920 video is portrait. A perfect square is neither, and is usually just called square — some software labels it portrait by default, so check rather than assume.
Where people get caught out
The most common problem is not the vocabulary but the settings. Changing orientation in a word processor applies to the whole document unless you insert a section break first — so a report that needs one landscape page for a table needs a break before and after that page, with the orientation applied only to that section.
The second trap is print versus screen. A slide deck is landscape by default, but printing handouts often flips them to portrait, shrinking each slide. Set the print orientation deliberately rather than accepting the default.
A note on cameras and phones: phones shoot portrait when held upright and landscape when turned sideways, and most video platforms still expect landscape for full-screen playback. Social feeds are the exception — vertical formats fill more of a phone screen, which is why portrait video has become standard there.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is A4 portrait or landscape by default?
Portrait. A4 is 210mm wide by 297mm tall as standard. Turning it sideways gives landscape A4 at 297mm x 210mm — the same sheet, rotated.
How do I make just one page landscape in Word?
Insert a section break before and after that page, then apply landscape orientation to that section only. Without the breaks, the change applies to the entire document.
Should video be filmed in portrait or landscape?
Landscape for anything watched on a television, monitor or projector, since it matches the screen shape. Portrait suits vertical-first feeds such as Stories, Reels and TikTok, where it fills the phone screen.