Talk:Ruled paper

how about some common examples of how many lines per college ruled paper -- i.e. between nn and nn or often 66 lines (??)

Papers from other parts of the world

We need a section on papers from non-Western countries. Chinese paper is different and so is Japanese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.146.30.6 (talk) 21:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

History of Lined Paper

Ruled lines were originally handwriting guides. How did early scribes keep their handwriting straight? When did printed lined paper first appear?

--Steve (talk) 01:26, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I believe one practice with vellum was to score the surface with a blunt point, leaving an impressed, rather than a drawn, line. I can't remember where I read that. But I've also heard that scribes would draw guidelines lightly in lead pencil (not the graphite pencils we have today, but literally a sharpened stick of the metal lead). Another thing was that they marked the ends of the lines with pin-pricks.

And what kind of writing papers did people use in the 18th and 19th centuries? I can't picture them marking up their own sheets in pencil like mediaeval scribes. Perhaps if they didn't have pre-printed lined paper, they might have used a lined card underneath a plain sheet (similar to the slope cards I used in primary school)?

A paleographer or archivist might be able to produce some reliable sources and expand on these antecedents, but I'm afraid I don't know where to start.

It would also be great to know when the first pre-printed lined papers were produced.

Pelagic (talk) 15:59, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

2B/2A grade school writing tablet?

In my younger years, during the late 1970's and early 80s, the 2A/2B (or was it 2B/2A?) tablet was required by the grade school I went to for writing. It single thick blue lines with pairs of thin blue lines between them. The cover was in red and blue with a stupid looking clown holding a drum. I just tried to find these on the web and came up with exactly nothing. Do schools no longer use these tablets? I found the manuscript ruled tablets we had to use for cursive writing practice in 1st grade and up (made of the absolute worst brown recycled paper the pencils would cut through and which would shred if a Pink Pearl eraser was in the same room) but not a blip on the ubiquitous 2A/2B ruled writing tablet. Bizzybody (talk) 07:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Scope of article

Should we treat lined writing paper as a separate sibling to graph paper, or graph paper as a type of ruled paper?

Both are constructed of lines printed on paper, and you could interpret "lined paper" or "ruled paper" literally to mean any paper with lines on it. But the function of the two is very different: writing [versus] Error: {{Lang}}: unrecognized language tag: latn (help) graphing.

I suspect the confusion comes from the use of grid or quad paper for both functions. It would be useful to distinguish the term graph paper for graphing from general-purpose grid paper.

In the current version of the ruled paper article, the lead paragraphs are clearly about the horizontally-ruled writing papers, but the General types section digresses to cover log-log and musical rulings.

I'll have a go at restructuring the article to make it less confusing. If you have any thoughts on this, please comment below.

Pelagic (talk) 15:12, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

fiducial

The very concept of ruled paper is an application of a fiducial grid as an aid.

WP has an article "fiducial marker" but no adequate disambiguation for fiducial line, fiducial point, fiducial edge, fiducial cross, fiducial grid, Fiducial_marker

The vertical red margin on some foolscap is a fiducial line

The horizonal red line as first line on a lined or ruled index card is a fiducial

When no fiducial lines are required, an index card may be left blank

Law-ruled paper places the vertical red fiducial where ??

For historical interest, see entries in the Diaries of Samuel Pepys on paying for the ruling of paper.

99.251.239.140 (talk) 11:32, 13 May 2016 (UTC)