Lined Paper
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Wide ruled lines
Or take one that is already made
Ruled sheets at the standard sizes, each one a single page. The measurement is printed at the foot, so a reprint can be checked against a ruler.
College ruled lined paper, full page7.14 mm between rules, a quarter inch from the sidesDownload PDF ↓
Wide ruled lined paper8.73 mm between rulesDownload PDF ↓
College ruled lined paper7.14 mm between rulesDownload PDF ↓
Narrow ruled lined paper6.35 mm between rulesDownload PDF ↓Every sheet here is free to print as often as you like. If one saved you time, the tip jar is on Ko-fi.
Ruled paper is sold by trade name rather than by measurement, which is unhelpful when you need to match what a child already has. The trade names are really fractions of an inch: wide ruled is eleven thirty-seconds, or 8.73 mm, and is what elementary schools use. College ruled is nine thirty-seconds, 7.14 mm. Narrow ruled is a quarter inch, 6.35 mm, and suits small handwriting or anyone who wants more lines on a page.
Each sheet carries the left margin rule at an inch and a quarter, where ruled paper puts it, drawn twice as thick as the lines but in a paler gray, so it reads as a margin rather than as another line to write on.
College ruled also comes as a full page, the sheet shown first. Its 37 lines are 203.2 mm long and stop a quarter inch from each side of the paper, where the lines of the standard sheets are 182 mm long and stop about 17 mm in, and its margin rule moves out with them, still an inch and a quarter from where the lines begin.
The practical use is running out mid-assignment, but these are also worth having for handwriting practice, where the ruling should match the book rather than whatever is in the printer tray. Each ruling is a single page, so print one, lay it against the book, and then print the stack.
Print as many as you want. No sign-up, no watermark, and nothing on the page but the rules, the margin and a small note of the spacing at the foot.
How much writing fits on one side of wide, college and narrow ruled paper
One side of the wide ruled sheet gives 27 lines of writing, the college ruled sheet 34 and the narrow ruled sheet 38, so the same instruction to write a page asks for about 40 percent more lines on narrow ruled than on wide. That is worth deciding before a class starts, because a page of narrow ruled from one child and a page of wide ruled from another are not the same piece of work. For a set length, print everyone the same ruling, or give the length in lines rather than pages: twenty lines is twenty lines on any of the three.
On the three standard sheets the lines run across the whole printable width, 182 mm long and starting about 17 mm in from each edge of the paper. There is no blank band at the top for a heading: the first rule sits between about 20 and 23 mm below the top of the page, depending on the ruling, so a name and date go on the first line. The margin rule stands an inch and a quarter, 31.75 mm, to the right of where the lines begin, which puts it about 49 mm from the left edge of the paper and leaves roughly 150 mm of writing width to its right, the same on all three rulings. The full page college ruled sheet runs its 37 lines 203.2 mm, to a quarter inch from each side, with the first about 9 mm below the top of the page. Its margin rule is the same inch and a quarter from where the lines begin, which puts it 38.1 mm from the left edge of the paper with about 171 mm of writing width to its right, and the page holds 36 lines of writing to the standard college ruled sheet's 34.
How to match wide, college or narrow ruled paper to a notebook
To match lined paper to a notebook, measure across ten spaces of the notebook rather than one: ten spaces of wide ruled come to 87.3 mm, college ruled to 71.4 mm and narrow ruled to 63.5 mm. A single space is too small to measure well, but over ten the three rulings are clearly apart. A book that measures 80 mm over ten spaces has 8 mm lines, which none of these three matches exactly; wide ruled is the nearer, at less than three quarters of a millimeter more per line. Over a full page those small differences add up, which is why the measurement is worth taking.
The spacing also sets the size of the handwriting. A common guide on single-ruled paper is for small letters such as a, c and e to fill about half the space, with tall letters such as b, d and l reaching most of the way to the line above. That makes small letters roughly 4.4 mm tall on wide ruled, 3.6 mm on college ruled and 3.2 mm on narrow ruled, so narrow ruled asks for handwriting about three quarters the size of wide. A child moving down a ruling needs time to shrink their letters, not just a new sheet.
Common questions
Where is the margin rule, and why is it a different color?
The margin rule stands an inch and a quarter in from where the lines begin on the left, which is where ruled paper conventionally puts it. The preview on this page tints it warm, but the printed sheet keeps it gray, a shade paler than the lines at every one of the three rule weights the maker offers, from faint to strong.
Does the ruling matter for handwriting practice?
Yes, more than the paper does, because the gap between rules sets how big the letters are. Even the smallest step between these sheets, from college to narrow ruled, takes a ninth off the height of every letter, so practice on one ruling and schoolwork on the other pull in different directions. Print the ruling of the book the child actually writes in, and treat the paper itself as an afterthought.
Can I print this lined paper on A4?
Yes, at 100% the whole ruling of the three standard sheets fits on A4: their lines are 182 mm long and A4 is 210 mm wide, and the ruled area is shorter than an A4 page as well. The sheets are drawn on US Letter, which is about 18 mm shorter than A4, so nothing is cut off and the spare length shows as blank paper at the top or foot, depending on how the printer places the page. The full page sheet is the exception: its lines are 203.2 mm long, which on A4 leaves about 3.4 mm at each side at best, closer than many printers reach, so for A4 print the standard college ruled sheet. The spacing between lines stays exactly as stated, which is the part that matters when matching a book.
Want to know when new printables go up?
New printables when they go up, mostly seasonal, a few times a year.