Dot grid paper, 5 mm

What this sheet is

A dot grid for A4, 210 mm by 297 mm, at a 5 mm spacing. There are no ruled lines on this sheet at all: the line count is zero. What it draws instead is a single dot at every intersection of a 5 mm grid. That grid is thirty-eight cells across and fifty-five down, 2,090 in all, and because a dot sits at each intersection rather than inside each cell there is one more dot than cell in each direction, thirty-nine across by fifty-six down. That is 2,184 dots on the page.

The grid covers 190 mm of the 210 mm width and 275 mm of the 297 mm height, and it is centred in the writing area. The fraction of a cell left over once the whole ones have been counted is halved and split between the two margins rather than collecting against one edge, so the first dot in a row and the last one sit the same distance in from their respective edges.

What the ruling is for

A dot grid gives a structure to align to that mostly disappears once something has been drawn or written over it. That is the whole of it, and it is not what ruled paper does. A ruled line runs the full width of the sheet whether or not anything sits on it, so it stays part of whatever ends up on the page: it underlines the writing, it cuts across the drawing, it is still there in the finished thing.

A dot marks a point and nothing else. It is enough to keep a line of handwriting level, to keep the columns of a table parallel, to keep a box square and to space a diagram evenly, and once the box and the table and the handwriting are on the page the dots read as faint texture behind the work rather than as marks in it. One sheet can carry written work, a table and a drawing at once, in any orientation, because the ruling has not committed to a direction the way lines have.

Printing it at true size

Set the print dialogue to 100%, or Actual size, and turn page scaling off. Left on Fit to page it rescales the sheet to the paper in the tray: A4 onto US Letter prints at 94.1%, which takes the 5 mm spacing to 4.7 mm, and Letter onto A4 prints at 97.3%, which leaves it at 4.86 mm.

A dot sheet is the hardest of the rulings to catch this on by eye. There are no lines to sight along and nothing running the full width of the page to compare against, so a grid three tenths of a millimetre out simply looks like a dot grid. Measure it instead. A bar is printed in the foot margin with its length stated beside it; lay a ruler along that bar, and if the two agree the dots are 5 mm apart.

What else the bench will set

The spacing is the main control, wider for lettering and quick layout, tighter where a drawing needs the resolution. The paper can be changed to A5 at 148 by 210 mm, US Letter at 215.9 by 279.4 or Legal at 215.9 by 355.6, and the sheet set upright or landscape. The ink matters more here than on a lined sheet, because the dots are meant to sit under the work rather than beside it, and taking the ink down a step is usually the difference between a grid that can be ignored and one that cannot. A margin rule down the left and a name-and-date line at the head can be added where the sheet has to be filed.