I have another notebook with 10mm spacing that, in essence, I use the exact same way.

This not only gives my writing a bit of breathing room, making it easier to read, but also keeps my descenders from letters such as p, q, y, f, j, z and g from colliding with the words below. I find that when I write in cursive in a notebook with 5mm spacing, I usually write on every other line. Not everyone is going to write on every single line. For medium and broad nibs and cursive, I think 6-7mm are my spacing of choice. As expected, the line spacings in the middle sizes worked the best.įor my own writing, I think the 4-5mm range is my favorite for fine nibs, 5mm my favorite for medium nibs when printing, and 7mm my favorite for broad nibs when printing. The larger line spacings didn’t feel comfortable to me with any nib size. The fine nib, on the other hand, actually felt comfortable to use on even the smallest 2mm line spacing. For example, the smaller line spacings are definitely too small for a broad nib and I wouldn’t recommend them with a medium nib. Once you get past all of the different colors, a few things stand out. That ink didn’t agree with the paper, so I switched again.

Here is my test sheet with a variety of writing samples.Īs you can probably tell, I had one pen that ran out in the middle of testing, so I switched to another with a similar nib size. While I usually use broader nibs, I sometimes use a fine nib and find that my writing looks different, so I wondered if maybe line size had something to do with that. Now that I had my sheet, all that was left to do was write! I usually write in a few different styles, so I tried each one, figuring that the spacing that works best for my all-caps print may not work best for cursive. I then digitally cut out a few lines from each sheet and pasted them all into one sheet, along with a note for the line spacing of each set. To create this test sheet, I made individual sheets of each spacing using this Lined PDF Generator. It has line spacings ranging from 2mm up to 10mm so that all of my testing could be done on one sheet of paper. Instead of grabbing a bunch of sheets of paper with different spacings, I decided to create my own test sheet. Using a guide sheet under blank paper lets you use any spacing you prefer.

Lined paper for writing