Graph paper, 5 mm

This is what “squared paper” means in most of the world, and a page of it sits beside a torn-out notebook page without looking like a different thing. Two squares to the centimeter also makes halves obvious, which is worth more than it sounds when a child is first asked to draw a line 3.5 cm long.

Five millimeters is a hair under a fifth of an inch — three thousandths of an inch smaller, which is finer than a printer resolves — so a sheet of this does duty as the American quad pad as well. If the work is in inches, though, the quarter-inch sheet is the one to print: the squares there are a unit rather than nearly one.

The rules are drawn as real strokes at real sizes — not a picture of lines, and not a background tint. That matters more than it sounds: browsers drop background graphics when printing unless the reader has gone looking for the setting, so ruled paper made the obvious way looks perfect on screen and comes out of the printer blank. Put a ruler on this one. It is the size it says it is.

This sheet is set for US Letter — 8.5 × 11 inches. Paper size is not a preference here: sent to a printer loaded with something else, the browser shrinks the page to fit, and a ruling that has been shrunk is no longer the size it was chosen for. So there is a second copy of this sheet, ruled identically and measured for A4.