Cornell notes template, ruled 8 mm, A4

What this sheet is

The page is in three parts. A cue column 2.5 inches wide runs down the left-hand side. The notes field takes whatever width is left to the right of it. A summary band 2 inches deep sits across the foot, closed off by a rule that crosses the full width of the writing area. Only the notes field is ruled, at 8 mm. On A4, 210 mm by 297, the sheet draws 29 lines in all: the cue rule, the summary rule, and the writing lines between them.

Those writing lines are counted down from the top of the writing area rather than centred in it, so the leftover fraction of a line gathers in one place, in the gap immediately above the summary rule, instead of being split between the head and the foot of the field. The two divisions are drawn first and the ruling fits itself around them.

Printing it at true size

The one thing that reliably goes wrong is the print dialogue. Send this A4 sheet to a printer holding Letter with the dialogue set to Fit to page and it is scaled to 94.1%, and everything on it scales together: the 8 mm ruling, the summary band and the 2.5-inch cue column alike. Nothing looks wrong on the paper afterwards, because every part of the sheet is wrong by the same fraction.

Set the dialogue to 100%, or Actual size, and set the paper to the size the sheet was drawn for. Then check the result rather than trusting it. There is a bar in the foot margin drawn 50 mm long and labelled as such, so a ruler settles the question in a second. At 94.1% it comes back at about 47 mm.

What else the bench will set

The sheet above is a starting position, not a fixed file. The spacing of the notes ruling can be changed; the paper can be A4, Letter, Legal or A5; the sheet can be turned to landscape; the ink can be grey, blue or black. The extras add a red margin rule, name-and-date lines at the head, and the measuring bar, which can be switched off once a printer has been trusted. The file comes out as PDF, PNG or SVG, drawn in the browser as the settings change and sent nowhere.

Two of those want thinking about on this ruling in particular. The margin rule is drawn outside the writing area, so on a Cornell sheet it lands to the left of the cue column and leaves a narrow strip that nothing uses. And landscape keeps the summary band at 2 inches on a sheet only 210 mm tall, so the band takes a far larger share of the page than it does upright.

Why the cue column is measured in inches

The two divisions are set in inches, 2.5 for the cue column and 2 for the summary band, and they stay in inches on every paper size the bench offers, because the method is specified that way rather than as a fraction of the sheet. That is a deliberate choice and it has a visible consequence.

An A4 sheet and a Letter sheet get exactly the same cue column and exactly the same summary band. What changes between them is the notes field. Letter is 215.9 mm across where A4 is 210, so the notes field comes out 5.9 mm wider on Letter. A4 is 297 mm tall where Letter is 279.4, so the notes field comes out 17.6 mm deeper on A4. Neither sheet is a scaled copy of the other, and that is the point of specifying the divisions in inches: a column you write in is a width, and a width does not shrink because the paper did.