College, or medium, ruled paper has a smaller spacing between lines than narrow ruled paper. The college rule paper has a 9/32 rating "spacing, which enables for more lines on a page and is frequently favored by users who have smaller handwriting. Similarly, narrow rule paper has a 1/4 inch margin "the space between lines of text", which limits how many words can fit on a page. College-ruled paper is used mostly for writing notes while narrow-ruled paper is preferred for drafting documents you plan to print.
Ruling paper widths come in 14 inches, 17 inches, and 22 inches. If you don't mind looking at the same information on your paper twice as many words can be fit on a page if you use the wider ruling.
The most common type of paper used by writers is 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper. This paper has a relative thickness of about 50 lb and can hold about 250 words without scrolling. Most paper used by writers is now laser printed so it is very thin. When you write on this kind of paper you need a special pen called a ballpoint pen that does not push the ink through the paper but instead rolls the ink around in the barrel of the pen. When you roll the pen across the page the word will appear dark where you stopped rolling and light where you continued rolling so there is no risk of running out of ink on this kind of paper.
Wide ruled paper, often known as legal ruled paper, has a greater 11/32" spacing between horizontal lines on a page. Wide-ruled paper is typically favoured by users with bigger handwriting, as well as in schools with younger students. This makes writing on a computer more comfortable for most adults and older children. College ruled paper is generally used in offices and other institutions where printing costs money and you don't want to waste ink by having to retype sections of your document that haven't changed.
The type of paper used to print documents affects how they look when finished. If you're printing from Microsoft Word then you should use the printer's default setting for paper size. Most printers can handle sheets up to 8.5 x 14 inches, although some may have limits on the maximum size of sheets they can print on. Printers usually have a button or menu option to change the number of rows of holes per inch. This value can be set anywhere from 10 to 100 or higher. Higher numbers make for finer lines and are useful if you need to print small details or if you plan to handwrite on your documents. Lower numbers are good for printing larger areas of solid color or if you plan to submit your work electronically.
If you're printing from another application then you should also use the default setting.
Narrow ruled paper has a 1/4 in (8/32 in, 6.4 mm) gap between the ruling lines and is preferred by people who have smaller handwriting or who want to fit more lines per page. It is also called "fine" or "diagonal" ruled paper.
Narrow ruled paper is available in various weights; each weight being actually several sheets stitched together with the thinner ones showing through from the other side.
The term "ruled paper" comes from the fact that before printing, pages of handwritten documents were decorated with lines drawn using a ruler to separate one part of the writing from another. In modern times, these lines are usually made using a computer printer. The first printed books used wood blocks with raised characters which were then inked and pressed against thin sheets of paper to print the entire book. Nowadays, most books are printed on sheets of paper that are coated with plastic or metal. As long as you are talking about ordinary books, not journals or newspapers, the term "ruled" should be taken literally and applied only to papers with lines separated by intervals equal to or greater than the width of a standard writing instrument.
Books printed before the advent of mass-manufactured paper often had their pages composed of multiple sheets of parchment or vellum which were then glued together.
Medium ruled (or college ruled) paper has horizontal lines spaced 9/32 in (7.1 mm) apart, with a vertical margin drawn around 11/4 inch (32 mm) from the left-hand border of the page. It is widely used in the United States. In Europe, it is called "French" paper because it was popular among French printers.
The term "college ruled" comes from the fact that these lines were originally printed on rolls of paper about 18 inches (45 cm) long and used by students to take notes during lectures. Today, they are still made from rolls of paper and can be found in note-taking apps for smartphones and tablet computers. There are several types of college ruled lines out there, including half width, full width, quarter width, and decimal width.
Decimal width lines are the most common and look like regular lined paper. They are sold in packs of 50 sheets, with each sheet being 5/8 inch (16 mm) thick. Full width lines are also sold in packs of 50 sheets, but each sheet is 7/8 inch (22 mm) thick. Half width lines are only half as wide as a decimal line, so 5 sheets would be needed to write at one time. They are sold in packs of 25 or 50 sheets.
These are just some examples of how wide college ruled lines can be.
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