Ruled paper (or lined paper) is writing paper printed with lines as a guide for handwriting. The lines often are printed with fine width and in light colour and such paper is sometimes called feint-ruled paper. Additional vertical lines may provide margins, act as tab stops or create a grid for plotting data; for example, graph paper (squared paper or grid paper) is divided into squares by horizontal and vertical lines.
Initially, paper was ruled by hand, sometimes using templates. [1] Scribes could rule their paper using a "hard point," a sharp implement which left embossed lines on the paper without any ink or color, [2] or could use "metal point," an implement which left colored marks on the paper, much like a graphite pencil, though various other metals were used. [3]
On 15 June 1770, English inventor John Tetlow patented a "machine for ruling paper for music and other purposes." [4] A later machine was invented by William Orville Hickok in the mid-19th century. [5]
Lines on ruled paper provide a guide to help users keep their writing or drawing consistent with a predetermined set of rules. The ruling layout is not determined by the paper size but by the purpose, style of handwriting or the language used. Many different line layouts support handwriting, calligraphy, plotting data on graphs, musical notation or help teach students to write in a particular language or script. The following are common examples:
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Regional standards exist for ruling layouts, particularly for academic or government clerical purposes.
Elementary students use (田字格) Tianzige ruled paper, featuring boxes for individual characters. Sometimes each box is subdivided (vertically, horizontally, diagonally) as reference to aid the writer with the relative proportion and placement of character components.
In Taiwan, the Japanese genkō yōshi is the main form of rule used by students writing in Mandarin, where it is called 原稿紙 (pinyin :yuángǎo zhǐ). Students use the thin vertical column to transcribe Bopomofo pronunciation.
In order to foster handwriting discipline, a type of ruling known as Seyès ruling [7] is used on paper in schools. Heavy vertical lines are spaced 8 mm (5⁄16 in) apart, beginning 16 mm (5⁄8 in) from the left-hand edge of the page. Three lighter lines are spaced 2 mm (5⁄64 in) apart between each pair of heavy lines. [8] These sheets of paper are generally known as grands carreaux (large tiles) as opposed to the petits carreaux (small tiles) which are 5 × 5mm. Seyès ruled paper is available in single sheets (copies simples) or joined double sheets (copies doubles), which can be preferred for exams, being easier to handle (a single sheet can be lost, they might be used as a portfolio to store more sheets, etc). Seyès ruled paper is available in A4 size (grand format) and in the very school specific 170 × 220 mm format (petit format).
DIN 16552:1977-04 ("Lines for handwriting") specifies the types of ruled paper to be used by school pupils. [9]
Ruled paper exercise notebooks is available in a variety of semi-standardized formats:
Among others, genkō yōshi (原稿用紙, "manuscript paper") is a kind of paper mainly used for kanji script writing, formed vertically with individual boxes for each Chinese character. There is a thin column to the right of the boxes, for transcribing kana pronunciation. The sizes can vary for ability levels. It is used across the East Asian cultural sphere, for example in Korea for writing proverbs.
New Zealand standard for school stationery, 1984 specifies standards for ruled and unruled paper.
Formats for exercise notebooks are standardised. [10] School exercise books must use 8 mm spacing between the lines. Other ruled paper may use 6 mm, 7 mm, 8 mm and 9 mm spacing. The paper for cursive writing uses pairs of lines 4 mm apart, with 8 mm between the pairs. They may also have angled lines at 65 degrees to vertical to provide additional guidance. The lines can have gray, blue, green or purple color. The vertical margin line must have red or orange color.
A4 Ruled/Ledger Paper: 8 mm line height; 2 cm left margin. Top and bottom margins may vary. Often sold as "college exercise books" or "exam pads".
Ruled paper is available in a variety of semi-standardized formats:
There appears to be no British Standard. However, the line spacing for adult ruled paper is most commonly 8 mm and squared maths paper has a 5 mm grid.
There is specialist handwriting paper available for primary schools ("Education standard Learn to Write Exercise books") and a British Standard BS4448 ("Specification for school exercise books and papers"). You can find ruled paper at 15 mm spacing and squared maths paper at 10 mm spacing.
Anything above primary school tends to use adult ruling.
The codex was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term codex is often used for ancient manuscript books, with handwritten contents. A codex, much like the modern book, is bound by stacking the pages and securing one set of edges by a variety of methods over the centuries, yet in a form analogous to modern bookbinding. Modern books are divided into paperback and those bound with stiff boards, called hardbacks. Elaborate historical bindings are called treasure bindings. At least in the Western world, the main alternative to the paged codex format for a long document was the continuous scroll, which was the dominant form of document in the ancient world. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, in particular the Maya codices and Aztec codices, which are actually long sheets of paper or animal skin folded into pages. In Japan, concertina-style codices called orihon developed during the Heian period (794–1185) were made of paper.
In Western musical notation, the staff (US) or stave (UK) also occasionally referred to as a pentagram is a set of five horizontal lines and four spaces that each represent a different musical pitch or in the case of a percussion staff, different percussion instruments. Appropriate music symbols, depending on the intended effect, are placed on the staff according to their corresponding pitch or function. Musical notes are placed by pitch, percussion notes are placed by instrument, and rests and other symbols are placed by convention.
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spacings have different widths.
Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.
In punctuation, a word divider is a form of glyph which separates written words. In languages which use the Latin, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, as well as other scripts of Europe and West Asia, the word divider is a blank space, or whitespace. This convention is spreading, along with other aspects of European punctuation, to Asia and Africa, where words are usually written without word separation.
A notebook is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking.
Graph paper, coordinate paper, grid paper, or squared paper is writing paper that is printed with fine lines making up a regular grid. The lines are often used as guides for plotting graphs of functions or experimental data and drawing curves. It is commonly found in mathematics and engineering education settings and in laboratory notebooks. Graph paper is available either as loose leaf paper or bound in notebooks.
Standard manuscript format is a formatting style for manuscripts of short stories, novels, poems and other literary works submitted by authors to publishers. Even with the advent of desktop publishing, making it possible for anyone to prepare text that appears professionally typeset, many publishers still require authors to submit manuscripts within their respective guidelines. Although there is no single set of guidelines, the "standard" format describes formatting that is considered to be generally acceptable.
In typesetting, widows and orphans are single lines of text from a paragraph that dangle at the beginning or end of a block of text, or form a very short final line at the end of a paragraph. When split across pages, they occur at either the head or foot of a page or column, unaccompanied by additional lines from the same paragraph. The pairing of the two terms with their definitions has no consistent standard across the industry; some sources use the opposite meanings as others.
A loose leaf is a piece of paper of any kind that is not bound in place, or available on a continuous roll, and may be punched and organized as ring-bound or disc-bound. Loose leaf paper may be sold as free sheets, or made up into notepads, where perforations or glue allow them to be removed easily. "Leaf" in many languages refers to a sheet or page of paper, as in Folio, as in feuille de papier (French), hoja de papel (Spanish), foglio di carta (Italian), and ルーズリーフ.
Digital paper, also known as interactive paper, is patterned paper used in conjunction with a digital pen to create handwritten digital documents. The printed dot pattern uniquely identifies the position coordinates on the paper. The digital pen uses this pattern to store handwriting and upload it to a computer.
In graphic design, page layout is the arrangement of visual elements on a page. It generally involves organizational principles of composition to achieve specific communication objectives.
Many East Asian scripts can be written horizontally or vertically. Chinese, Vietnamese Hán Nôm, Korean, and Japanese scripts can be oriented along either axis, as they consist mainly of disconnected logographic or syllabic units, each occupying a square block of space, thus allowing for flexibility for which direction texts can be written, be it horizontally from left-to-right, horizontally from right-to-left, vertically from top-to-bottom, and even vertically from bottom-to-top.
In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell, or tab.
An exercise book or composition book is a notebook that is used in schools to copy down schoolwork and notes. A student will usually have a different exercise book for each separate lesson or subject.
Genkō yōshi is a type of Japanese paper used for writing. It is printed with squares, typically 200 or 400 per sheet, each square designed to accommodate a single Japanese character or punctuation mark. Genkō yōshi may be used with any type of writing instrument, and with or without a shitajiki.
Japanese punctuation includes various written marks, which differ from those found in European languages, as well as some not used in formal Japanese writing but frequently found in more casual writing, such as exclamation and question marks.
Chinese punctuation has punctuation marks that are derived from both Chinese and Western sources. Although there was a long native tradition of textual annotation to indicate the boundaries of sentences and clauses, the concept of punctuation marks being a mandatory and integral part of the text was only adapted in the written language during the 20th century due to Western influence.
Technical lettering is the process of forming letters, numerals, and other characters in technical drawing. It is used to describe, or provide detailed specifications for, an object. With the goals of legibility and uniformity, styles are standardized and lettering ability has little relationship to normal writing ability. Engineering drawings use a Gothic sans-serif script, formed by a series of short strokes. Lower case letters are rare in most drawings of machines.
An architectural drawing or architect's drawing is a technical drawing of a building that falls within the definition of architecture. Architectural drawings are used by architects and others for a number of purposes: to develop a design idea into a coherent proposal, to communicate ideas and concepts, to convince clients of the merits of a design, to assist a building contractor to construct it based on design intent, as a record of the design and planned development, or to make a record of a building that already exists.
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