Plain Lab · notebook

Handwriting Insert

Fourteen practice rows to the page, each one a pair of solid rules with a dashed line at the midpoint marking where a lowercase letter sits.

Specification

Trim: 127 × 177.8 mm · 5 × 7 in
Pages: 128
Leaves: 64
Sheets: 32
Signatures: 4 × 32pp
Spine: 7.32 mm
Paper: white
Ruling: handwriting
Ruling pitch: 10.58 mm · 30.00 pt
Rows per page: 14

Each row on this page is really three lines. A solid rule marks the baseline every letter sits on. Another solid rule above it marks the height a capital reaches. A dashed line runs between them at the midpoint, marking where the body of a lowercase letter should stop. Fourteen of these rows fit the page at this pitch.

The larger A5 block using the same three-line ruling runs to sixteen rows instead. The dashed middle line does the actual work. Most people copying letters watch the baseline and ignore everything above it. That is how a page of practice ends up with letters sitting at uneven heights, even when every one of them touches the same bottom rule. I did not know what the dashed line was for the first time I used a ruling like this, and used it as a baseline instead, upside down.

A guide like this is meant to be outgrown. Once a hand holds its own height and slant without checking the dashed line, the ruling has done its job. The row still prints underneath whatever gets written on it, either way.

What is inside

Notes: 125pp; A three-line practice ruling, baseline, dashed midline and capline, fourteen rows to the page.

The film

Page by page

A vertical film from our own bench — this page contacts nobody's server to play it, and downloads nothing until you press play.

A vertical film, 27 seconds: the ruling page and the figures printed on its last leaf. Synthesised ambient bed, no dialogue — captions in three languages.