Letter tracing worksheets, for A4

The three steps on each line are the whole point of the sheet, and they are meant to be done in order. A child who traces a letter twenty times has practiced following a line; a child who traces it once and then writes it from nothing has practiced writing the letter. The empty space at the end of every group is where the actual learning happens, and it is why this page is worth more than a page of dotted letters twice the length.

Capitals and small letters sit together rather than on separate pages, because they are one letter with two shapes and a child meets them that way in every book they open. It also makes the difference visible: b and d are a genuine problem at this age, and having Bb and Dd on the same sheet is a better answer than practicing each of them alone a week apart.

The rules are drawn as real strokes at real sizes, and what is written is set to them: the tallest thing on a line stands on the baseline and reaches the top line, whether that is an ascender, a capital or a numeral. The type size is worked out from the ruling and from the font’s own measured proportions rather than picked to look about right. Put a ruler on it. The ruling is the size it says it is.

Every group on this page runs the same three steps: a solid model to look at, a dotted letter to trace over, and an empty space where nobody is helping. That last one is the part that teaches — tracing practices following a line, and writing from nothing practices writing. A sheet of nothing but dotted letters is a sheet a child can finish without ever having made a letter themselves.

How far along that progression a sheet sits is a setting rather than a different worksheet. The dotted model can be dashed, hollow, gray or left off entirely; the number of repeats moves between one and eight; and every ruling in the shop — the five handwriting sizes, the three notebook rules, squares, dots and triangles — works with any of them.

This sheet is set for A4 — 210 × 297 mm. Paper size is not a preference on a handwriting sheet: 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 US Letter.