Penmanship paper, 15.9 mm three-line ruling

What this sheet is

A penmanship ruling set at 15.9 mm, drawn on A4, which is 210 mm across and 297 mm down. The writing area measures 11 steps of 15.9 mm across the page and 17 down it, 187 cells in all, and the ruling puts 24 lines on the sheet in groups of three: a solid headline, a dotted midline, a solid baseline.

The groups are centred in the writing area, so whatever depth is left once the last complete group has fitted is divided between the head and the foot. A half-drawn group at the bottom of the page is worse than a slightly deeper margin, so the sheet takes the margin.

How the three lines are set

The 15.9 mm is the writing space: the distance from the headline down to the baseline, which is the room a letter has to stand in. The dotted midline sits exactly halfway between the two. Below the baseline comes a descender space, and that space is equal to the whole writing space again, which is why paper ruled this way looks so open next to a plain lined sheet.

So the gaps going down the page repeat in threes: half, half, whole. Headline to midline is half the spacing, midline to baseline is the other half, and baseline to the next headline is a full spacing of clear paper for the tails of letters to drop into.

The midline is dotted rather than solid, and that is deliberate. A solid line reads as somewhere to write; a dotted one reads as somewhere to aim. It marks a height to reach, not a line to sit on, and drawn solid it would compete with the baseline, which is the line that actually holds the writing.

Printing it at true size

A print dialogue set to Fit to page scales an A4 sheet onto US Letter at 94.1%, and the ruling scales with it, so the 15.9 mm writing space arrives as 14.958 mm. The descender space shrinks in the same proportion, because it is defined as equal to the writing space rather than fixed on its own.

An open ruling makes that harder to catch, not easier. There is no close grid on the page to compare against, and a sheet that has lost a fraction of its height still looks like generous paper. Set the scale to 100%, or Actual size, and measure the bar in the foot margin, which is drawn to a stated length and labelled with that length. If a ruler makes it short, the sheet was scaled and every space on it is short by the same fraction.

What else the bench will set

The spacing steps through the sizes this ruling is drawn at, and each one brings its own descender space with it, since the descender follows from the writing space rather than being set separately. The measurement can be given in inches instead of millimetres. The paper can be A4, Letter, Legal or A5, upright or turned. The ink is grey, blue or black. A red margin rule and a name and date band can be added at the head, and the measuring bar switched off once the print has been checked.

The sheet is drawn in your own browser, redraws as each control is set, and comes away as a PDF, a PNG or an SVG. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.