Genko yoshi (原稿用紙) Japanese manuscript paper
Japanese manuscript paper: one character per box, arranged in columns with a narrow gutter between them for furigana.
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One character, one box
Genko yoshi allots exactly one square to each character, whether that is a kanji, a kana, a punctuation mark or a space. This is why Japanese word counts are given in characters rather than words, and why the standard sheet is described as 400 characters — a 20 × 20 grid. Punctuation occupies its own box, with the convention that a full stop is never placed at the top of a column.
What the gutter is for
The narrow channel between columns is where furigana goes — the small kana printed alongside kanji to show pronunciation. Even if you are not writing furigana, the gutter is what makes the page recognisably genko yoshi rather than a plain grid of squares, and it gives the columns visual separation when reading vertically.
Vertical or horizontal
Traditional genko yoshi is written vertically, right to left. Horizontal, left to right, is now equally standard in technical and academic writing. The grid works for both — it is the writer who chooses the direction, not the paper. If you are submitting to a Japanese school or competition, check which they expect.
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.