Having been in the market to purchase some looseleaf filler paper, recently…
Is there some standard that defines what is considered “wide ruled,” “narrow ruled” and “college ruled” paper? If so, what is the standard?
“College” seems to always fall between “wide” and “narrow,” but is “college” one consistent measurement?
Also, steno pads are usually marked as being “Gregg ruled.” I assume that this refers, at least in part, to the line down the middle of the page. Are there any other features that define “Gregg?”
And I notice some legal pads are labeled “legal ruled,” while others are marked “college ruled” or “narrow ruled.” What does “legal ruled” mean?
Thanks for any help in unraveling the mysteries of ruling nomenclature.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing better than Engineering paper. Nice, very light greenish-yellow tint that is much better than the offensive bright yellow legal pads, while still being more soothing to look at than stark white paper. Plus, a bold 1 inch x 1 inch grid on the back, with each square subdivided into a fainter 5x5 grid. Being printed on the back, the grid shows through perfectly clear when writing, but is all but invisible when photocopying.
In short, I am of the opinion that Engineering Paper is the best multi-purpose paper there is.
Some ‘science notebooks’ also have grids on the back of each page. Hardbound ‘lab notebooks’ are usually blank on the back of each page. I wish the pages came pre-numbered because you have to number them by hand – you’re not allowed to tear out pages, so they have to be numbered – but I’ve never seen one that was.
Paper for primary-school children is ruled extra-wide with a dotted line halfway between each set of parallel solid lines, or with both red and blue lines. This is to help children learn to write half-height letters and letter-parts. Apparently there are twelve sets of lines per page.
I found various ‘standards’ for college-ruled paper ranging from 25 lines per page to 28 lines per page to 30 lines per page. It looks like there should be a standard, though, because it appears that college-ruled paper is intended to standardize line counts for students’ submissions. Apparently college-ruled paper is a very seriously bad thing for students in the fourth grade and under, because I found many examples of ‘Absolutely NO college-ruled paper will be accepted under any circumstances!’
That’s interesting. When I took my chemistry labs in college, we had to use lab notebooks that came pre-numbered with carbon copies that were not meant to be torn from the notebook. I always thought this insistence was a little funny. Not because I didn’t like pre-numbered pages, but rather the implication that I would somehow circumvent the scientific method by fudging my results in an undergraduate chemistry lab!
Thanks for the answers so far. I can’t get the Ampad link to work, but it looks like a server might be down. I’ll try again later.
I like narrow ruling myself. I used to be able to get this lovely reinforced narrow-ruled filler paper at the stationery store on the corner of my hometown. But the stationery store is no longer there (it’s a Starbucks now) and I’m stuck shopping at Staples, et. al. Staples just doesn’t have a very good selection of your more esoteric stationery supplies.
Speaking of esoteric writing supplies, I’m studying Chinese, and while my handwriting isn’t exactly stellar in English, on occasion it has especial trouble with the rigors of Chinese characters. What I’m looking for is quad-ruled paper with three squares (or so) per inch. Four is just too small; I’m not sure where to find a specialty product like that.
In metric countries, don’t they use a different size paper, too? (A4?) Excalibre: I would recommend just making it yourself. It’s very easy to make any size grid using the drawing functions of MSWord. Then you can just print out as much as you want.
In fact, I just made it for you an emailed it to you as an attachment. Enjoy!
Yup. And what a pain in the ass it is. I deal with guys from France, England and Australia (they report to my boss but work in other countries) and this paper sizing always fouls everything up for me formatting wise.
Joe Random:
I completely agree with you about the engineering paper. That’s all I use too.