Wide ruled lined paper, 8.7 mm, A4

What this sheet is

A lined ruling at 8.7 mm on A4, a sheet 210 mm across and 297 mm down. The writing area takes 21 steps of 8.7 mm across the page and 31 down it, 651 cells in all, and the ruling draws the horizontals of that grid: 32 rules, each running the full width between the margins.

The spacing is centred in the writing area, so the fraction of a step left over once 31 of them have fitted is divided between the head and the foot rather than left as one wide band along the bottom edge.

Wide ruled, in millimetres

Wide ruled is a name, not a measurement. It is how the paper is sold, and it is the word most people have for this sheet, but the millimetres almost never appear on the packet. A drawing has to have the number, because a line cannot be set from a name. Here that number is 8.7 mm, and the two are the same paper described two ways, so a reader who came looking for one can recognise the other.

That is the whole of the claim. This page does not say what any authority lays down, and it does not say what any school, office or examiner asks for, because it does not know. It knows what the file measures.

Set beside the plain metric sheet the difference is small in the spacing and plain in the count: on the same paper, with the same margins, an 8 mm ruling takes 35 rules and this one takes 32.

Printing it at true size

What goes wrong is rarely the file. It is a print dialogue set to Fit to page, which, handed an A4 sheet to put onto US Letter, scales the page to 94.1% and takes the ruling down with it, so the 8.7 mm spacing arrives as 8.184 mm. A sheet that is no longer wide ruled looks exactly like one that is.

Set the scale to 100%, or Actual size, and refuse any shrink-to-fit offer. Then measure. The bar in the foot margin is drawn to a stated length and carries that length as a label, so a ruler laid along it says plainly whether the print came out true. If it reads short, everything on the sheet is short in the same proportion, and the name on the page no longer describes the paper under it.

What else the bench will set

The spacing steps through the sizes a lined ruling is drawn at, this one among them, and can be given in inches rather than millimetres. The paper can be A4, Letter, Legal or A5, upright or turned. The ink is grey, blue or black. A red margin rule, a name and date band at the head, and the measuring bar are each switched on or off as you like.

The sheet redraws as you go and comes away as a PDF, a PNG or an SVG. It is drawn in your own browser, uploaded nowhere and kept nowhere.