Number tracing sheets

Ten digits on a ruled page. The example held in stock is titled Number tracing, 0 to 9, Infant, 9mm: an A4 page, 210 by 297mm, with eight writing bands at the Infant ruling of 9mm. As a PDF it is 14,672 bytes, the heaviest of the three paper sheets, and it is issued as PNG and as SVG as well.

0 to 9 in 17 strokes

The model row sets 0123456789 and is drawn as 17 strokes, with 17 start dots marking where each of them begins. The two rows beneath repeat the digits dotted, to be gone over, and account for 34 strokes. The sheet comes to 51 strokes in all, out of the 472 drawn across the nine sheets on the site. The digits are not set from a typeface. They are drawn from geometry as a stroke alphabet, and that is the only reason a sheet can show a starting point and an order rather than just a shape.

0, 2, 3 and 7 are drawn in one stroke; 1, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9 take more than one

The band

Each band is 31.5mm deep and carries four rules: the ascender line, the x-height line below it, dashed, then the baseline, then the descender line. The x-height, 9mm on this example, governs the lot. A lowercase letter stands one x-height tall and a capital two, and every other measurement on the page follows from that one. Under the writing the band keeps air, so a descender does not land on the ascender of the line below it. Ruling drawn without that gap looks tidier and fails as soon as a descending stroke is written into it. The guides control will reduce the band to three of the four rules, or to the baseline alone.

two x-heights, the same as a capital

The fade

The eight rows are planned as a model row, then two dotted rows, then five empty ruled rows: three rows written, five left clear. The written rows fade in that order and no further, so what is printed at the top of the page is a full model and what is printed under it is the same set dotted.

Ruled to the foot

Five of the eight rows carry no digits and are ruled all the same. The page is ruled to its foot whether or not letters are printed on the last lines, which is the difference between paper and an illustration of paper.

Print only, in black

The controls here are size, rows, fade, guides, start dots, paper and landscape. There is no script control on this sheet: the press draws 66 glyphs in its print hand and 30 in its cursive hand, and the numbers are offered in print. The ruling is black. Handwriting paper is conventionally ruled in blue with a red dashed midline, but a sheet whose guide lines vanish on a mono printer is a sheet with no guide lines, so the x-height line is marked out by being dashed rather than by colour. The millimetre size is only true where the printer is set to actual size; scaling to fit the page takes the ruling with it.