5 mm graph paper, A4

Five-millimetre squares on A4 — the standard exercise-book ruling across the UK, Europe and most of Asia.

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What 5 mm squared paper is used for

This is the ruling school maths books use almost everywhere outside the United States. One square per digit, two squares per line of handwriting. It is also the default for graph sketching in physics and chemistry, where a 5 mm grid with heavier centimetre lines lets you read coordinates without a ruler.

Adding centimetre lines

Switch on major lines every 5 squares and you get the classic 1 mm / 5 mm / 10 mm hierarchy found on printed graph pads. The heavier lines make it far easier to count along an axis, and they cost nothing in ink because they are only every fifth line.

Line weight for pencil versus pen

If you are working in pencil, keep the lines light — a mid-grey at 0.4 pt sits behind graphite nicely. For ink, especially fountain pen, go lighter still; wet ink spreads slightly and a dark grid competes with it. Only darken the lines if the sheet is going to be photocopied, since copiers tend to drop the faintest greys entirely.

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.