Cornell notes template, A5
The Cornell layout scaled to A5, cue column, note area and summary block, sized for a pocket notebook or a half-page binder.
Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.
The layout only works if you use the cue column
Cornell notes are a three-part structure: a narrow cue column on the left, the main note area on the right, and a summary block across the bottom. The method depends on filling the cue column after the lecture, with questions your notes answer, and the summary later still. Most people who say the system did not work for them ruled the page correctly and then used it as ordinary lined paper. The ruling is not the method; it is a prompt for the method.
A5 forces useful compression
A5 gives you roughly half the note area of A4, which sounds like a disadvantage and often is not. The constraint pushes you toward recording structure and keywords rather than transcribing sentences, which is what the method is asking for anyway. Where A5 genuinely struggles is anything requiring worked examples, mathematics, chemistry, engineering, where you need room to show the steps. Use A4 for those.
Line spacing on the smaller page
The 7 mm ruling here is slightly tighter than the 8 mm on the A4 sheet, which keeps a usable number of lines on the shorter page. If your handwriting does not fit 7 mm comfortably, widen it rather than writing smaller, notes you cannot read back at speed have failed at their only job, and the review pass is where the method does its work.
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.