Calligraphy practice paper, A4
Four ruled lines and angled slant guides on A4, adjustable to the nib you are actually holding.
Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.
Rule the page in nib widths, not millimeters
This is the piece of calligraphy convention that surprises beginners. The x-height of a hand is specified as a number of nib widths, measured by stepping the nib itself up the page in a little staircase of squares. Foundational hand is four nib widths, italic is five, and the number is part of the definition of the hand rather than a preference. A 3.8 mm nib at five nib widths gives a 19 mm x-height. Set the spacing to match your nib and the letterforms come out correctly proportioned without you thinking about proportion at all.
Slant lines matter more than the horizontals
Consistent slant is what separates writing that looks deliberate from writing that looks unsteady, and it is much harder to hold by eye than a baseline. Angles get quoted two ways, which causes endless confusion. Italic leans only about 5 to 10 degrees off vertical. Copperplate leans much further, roughly 35 degrees off vertical, which is the same thing as the 55 degree angle from the horizontal that most manuals print. Printed slant guides fix the angle for you while your hand learns it. Once the angle is automatic you can drop to a plain ruled sheet, which most people find happens sooner than expected.
Paper for broad-edge nibs on A4
Guide sheets only help if the ink behaves. A broad-edge nib lays down considerably more ink than a fountain pen, so ordinary copier paper feathers and the crisp edge that is the whole point of the nib disappears. Use 100 gsm or heavier, or put the guide sheet underneath a smooth sheet and trace through, which is what most working calligraphers do so no ruled lines appear on the finished piece. The paper weight guide covers which properties actually matter.
Printing it accurately
This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100%, not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.