Graph paper, A5

Five-millimetre squares on A5 — the ruling of the standard European squared exercise book, and of most notebooks sold as squared or quadrille.

Open in the generator →

Opens with these settings already loaded. Change anything you like, then download as PDF, PNG or SVG.

Refills for a notebook that ran out

Printing your own A5 squared paper is worth doing for two situations in particular: adding pages to a notebook that has run out of the right ruling, and slipping a squared sheet into an otherwise lined or blank journal for a single diagram. Because the PDF prints at true size, the added sheet matches the printed ones already in the book rather than being subtly off.

Two to an A4 sheet, nothing wasted

A5 is exactly half of A4, so two A5 pages print side by side on one A4 sheet at 100% and separate with a single straight cut. No scaling, no offcut, no margin of error. This is the cheapest way to produce a stack of forty, and unlike printing A5 onto Letter it leaves no awkward strip of blank paper along one edge.

Squares or dots at this size

On a small page the grid claims proportionally more of your attention than it does on A4. If you are writing rather than plotting, dots at the same 5 mm pitch give identical alignment with far less visual weight. Keep squares when you need to measure or count cells; switch to dots when the grid exists only to keep handwriting straight and even.

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.