College ruled paper
Print at 100%. In the print dialog choose Actual size (or Scale: 100), not Fit to page. Then hold a ruler to the line at the bottom of the sheet.
How to print at actual size, dialog by dialog
- Chrome and Edge: open More settings, find Scale, and pick Actual size if it is listed. If it is not, pick Custom and type 100. Avoid Fit to printable area and Fit to paper.
- Firefox: untick Fit to page width, then set Scale to 100.
- Safari and Preview on a Mac: set Scale to 100%, not Scale to Fit.
- Adobe Acrobat and Reader: under Page Sizing, choose Actual size. The file already asks for it.
- iPhone and iPad: the print sheet has no scale setting. Print, then measure the line.
- Android: this depends on the printer app. Turn off any Fit to page option, then measure the line.
- Any browser: pick the file that matches the paper in your printer. A US Letter file on A4 paper, or the reverse, gets shrunk to fit.
College ruled paper, also called medium ruled, has its lines 9/32 inch apart, about 7.1 mm, and a red margin line down the left side, 1 1/4 inches in from the edge. This page starts from that sheet. A US Letter page with half inch margins holds 35 of its lines, where wide ruled holds 28, so it suits smaller handwriting and long notes.
For A4 paper it switches to 7 mm, the metric ruling closest to 9/32 inch, and moves the margin line to 32 mm: 38 lines inside 12 mm margins. You can still change the color, the margins or the ruling above before printing.
College ruled lined paper, measured
This college ruled lined paper is drawn from its measurements, not traced from a scanned notebook. Every line is placed at its own distance from the first one, a whole number of 9/32 inch steps, so no rounding error piles up toward the bottom of the page. On Letter the 35 lines take up a ruled area 7.5 by 9.56 inches, centered between the top and bottom margins, with the calibration line in a strip below it.
The red margin line is drawn a little heavier than the ruled lines. A page margin of 1 1/4 inches or more (32 mm on A4) would cover it, so the generator drops it and shows a note saying so. To print lines alone, uncheck Margin line.
Gray is the default color. Black copies better, and Non-photo blue is a pale blue that many scanners and copiers do not pick up, so a scan shows only your writing.
College ruled notebook paper
Notebook paper is the everyday name for this sheet. Loose-leaf notebook paper in the US is usually college or wide ruled with a margin line on the left. Printable college ruled paper from this page uses the same 9/32 inch spacing and the margin line at 1 1/4 inches, so this printable notebook paper can go in a binder beside store-bought filler.
College, wide or narrow ruled
| Ruling | Space between lines | Lines on US Letter |
|---|---|---|
| Narrow ruled | 1/4 inch (6.35 mm) | 39 |
| College ruled | 9/32 inch (7.14 mm) | 35 |
| Wide ruled | 11/32 inch (8.73 mm) | 28 |
The counts are for a Letter page with half inch margins, as drawn here. On A4 the page offers 6, 7 and 8 mm in their place: 44, 38 and 33 lines at a 12 mm margin.
- Wide ruled paper: the 11/32 inch ruling, with the same margin line.
- Lined paper in any ruling: narrow ruled, metric rulings, or a spacing of your own.
- Handwriting paper: three-line rows with a dashed midline, for letter practice.
Print it at 100%, not fit to page
Print dialogs shrink pages a little so nothing is cut off. On college ruled paper the shrink is easy to miss: lines meant to be 7.14 mm apart land under 7 mm, and the sheet no longer matches a notebook page.
So when you print, choose Actual size, or set Scale to 100. The file asks viewers not to scale it, and Adobe Acrobat and Reader follow that request. Chrome's built-in PDF viewer, which opens most downloads, does not, so in Chrome or Edge open More settings and set Scale to Actual size, or to Custom and 100 if Actual size is not listed. The steps for other browsers and phones are in the list under the download buttons.
Print the Letter file on Letter paper and the A4 file on A4. A file printed on the other size gets shrunk to fit even at 100%.
Check your print with the calibration line
The line at the bottom of every sheet is exactly 4 inches long on inch sheets and exactly 10 cm long on metric sheets. Lay a ruler along it with zero at the left end; the small ticks mark every half inch or every centimeter.
| The 4 in line measures | The 10 cm line measures | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 4 in, within about 1/32 in | 100 mm, within about 0.5 mm | Printed at actual size. |
| about 3 7/8 in (3.89 in) | about 97.3 mm | A US Letter file was shrunk to fit A4 paper. |
| about 3 3/4 in (3.76 in) | about 94.1 mm | An A4 file was shrunk to fit US Letter paper. |
| about 3.8 to 3.9 in | about 95 to 97 mm | Fit to printable area or Fit to page was on. |
| about 4 1/16 to 4 1/8 in | about 102 to 103 mm | Borderless printing enlarged the page. |
If the line is short, every space between lines shrank by the same ratio. A 3.89 inch reading puts the 9/32 inch lines about 0.274 inch apart, and over the 34 spaces of a Letter sheet that adds up to about a quarter inch. On an A4 sheet whose 10 cm line reads 94.1 mm, the 7 mm lines came out about 6.6 mm apart.
PDF or PNG
Print from the PDF: it is vector, at the exact page size, and asks the viewer not to scale it. The PNG is the same sheet at 300 pixels per inch, for a note app that takes an image as the page behind your writing, and image viewers often fit it to the paper. Both ready-made college ruled PDFs, Letter and A4, sit under the download buttons.
What this page does not do
Nothing is uploaded, and there is no account. The page has no way to see your printer or its settings; the calibration line is how you check the result. The preview shows the sheet at whatever size your screen draws it, so measure the print, not the screen.
Frequently asked questions
How far apart are the lines on college ruled paper?
9/32 inch, or about 7.1 mm, from one line to the next. That is between narrow ruled at 1/4 inch and wide ruled at 11/32 inch.
How many lines are on a sheet of college ruled paper?
That depends on the margins. With half inch margins, as drawn here, a US Letter sheet holds 35 lines, and with 1/4 inch margins it holds 36. An A4 sheet at 7 mm with 12 mm margins holds 38. The summary under the preview gives the count for whatever you set.
Is college ruled or wide ruled better?
Neither is better; they suit different writing. College ruled fits 35 lines on a Letter page against 28 for wide ruled, so more writing fits on a sheet. If your letters keep touching the line above, wide ruled gives them more room.
What is the A4 version of college ruled paper?
A4 has no exact match. 9/32 inch is 7.14 mm, and this page uses 7 mm on A4, a common exercise book ruling. For the exact US spacing on A4 paper, choose Millimeters and type 7.14 into Line spacing: that gives 37 lines at a 12 mm margin.
Is this college ruled paper free to print?
Yes. There is no account and nothing to install: code in your browser draws the sheet, and the only data sent anywhere is an anonymous count of page views and downloads, described on the privacy page.