Pattern drafting grid paper
Centimetre squares with a heavier line every five, on an 11 × 17 sheet — enough working area to draft a bodice block at full size.
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Full-size drafting needs a full-size sheet
Drafting a bodice block, a sleeve head or a trouser front is done at actual size, and none of those fit on Letter. Tabloid at 1 cm squares gives a working area that holds a half-bodice comfortably, and the 5 cm majors let you step off measurements without reaching for a tape between every point.
Why a grid rather than plain pattern paper
Commercial dotted pattern paper carries a one-inch dot grid for precisely this reason: the squares keep the centre front truly vertical and the waistline truly horizontal, and everything else on the block is measured from those two lines. A block drafted on plain paper with a centre front a degree off produces a garment that hangs wrong in a way that is very difficult to diagnose afterwards.
Grainline, seam allowance and the true edge
Draft the block at finished size with no allowance, then add the allowance as a separate outer line — mixing the two is the most common drafting error and it compounds at every seam. Mark the grainline parallel to a grid column so it stays true when you trace onto fabric, and note on each piece whether the edge is cut on the fold.
Joining sheets for a long pattern
A trouser leg or a skirt panel exceeds even tabloid. Print two or three sheets, overlap them so the grid lines coincide exactly, and tape along the join. Because the grid is printed at true size, aligning the squares aligns the sheets — far more reliable than trying to match a single drawn line across a seam that is already slightly stretched by the tape.
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.