Printable Handwriting practice
Four-line guides — baseline, midline, ascender and descender.
Runs entirely in this tab. Nothing is uploaded.
Paper
Orientation
Letter height
10 mm
Space between bands
10 mm
Dashed midline
Print at 100% — “fit to page” rescales the sheet and a 5 mm grid stops being 5 mm. Every template already keeps clear of the margin no printer can reach.
Building your sheet…
About this handwriting practice
Drawn as vector geometry at real-world dimensions, so it prints at exactly the size shown on A4, A5, A3, US Letter, US Legal. Print at 100% rather than “fit to page” — that setting rescales the sheet and the measurements stop being the measurements.
You can change:
- Letter height — 6 to 20 mm, 10 mm by default
- Space between bands — 4 to 20 mm, 10 mm by default
- Dashed midline — on or off
Free, unwatermarked and yours to use for anything, including in a classroom or in something you sell.
Frequently asked questions
What are the four lines for?+
From the top: the ascender line that tall letters like l and h reach, the midline that x-height letters like a and o stop at, the baseline that everything sits on, and the descender line that the tails of g and y drop to. The baseline is drawn darkest because it is the one a child is being taught to write along.
What letter height should I set for a given age?+
Letter height here is the ascender-to-baseline band, and the x-height comes out at half of it, which is the proportion nearly every primary handwriting scheme teaches. 10mm is the default and suits roughly ages 6 to 8. Go up towards 15 to 20mm for a first year of writing, and down towards 6 to 8mm as handwriting settles.
Why is the midline dashed rather than solid?+
It is the usual convention, and it carries a meaning: solid lines are lines you write on, the dashed one is a height to reach up to. If your scheme uses four solid lines, turn the dashed midline off.
More printables to go with handwriting practice
- Multiplication gridBlank or filled times-table square, up to 12 or 20.
- Seating chartA desk grid to fill in with names, in even rows or pushed together in pairs.
- Name tagsCut-out name badges, or fold-over tents that stand on a desk.
- Grade bookNumbered assignment columns against a class list, with an optional total.
- Exit ticketsA page of cut-apart slips for the end of a lesson, with a prompt and ruled space.
- Ten framesSquare ten frames for early number work, with a box to write the numeral.
Or see all 16 printable templates.