Why 5 mm dots
Dots give you the structure of graph paper for boxes, tables and calendars while the page stays light, so finished spreads don’t look like homework. 5 mm is the dotted ruling Leuchtturm1917 uses in its notebooks, so pages printed here line up with a journal you may already keep. It also works for handwriting: writing on every row of dots gives 5 mm lines, a little tighter than the 6 mm lines of Leuchtturm1917’s ruled notebooks, and skipping a row gives roomy 1 cm lines.
Planning spreads in dots
Counting in dots makes layouts repeatable. A US Letter page from this generator has 41 dots across, so 40 gaps between them. A monthly calendar with seven day columns, each 5 gaps wide, spans 35 gaps and leaves 5 for the margins. An A5 page has 27 dots across (26 gaps): give each day 3 gaps and the week takes 21, with 5 left for a label column. Sketch the layout once, write the counts in the margin, and every month comes out the same.
Printing for journals and planners
- Paper: ordinary copy paper is fine for pencil and ballpoint. For fountain pens and brush markers use heavier paper; the official Bullet Journal notebook, for comparison, has 120 g/m² pages.
- Holes: for ring or disc planners, raise the margin so punched holes don’t land on dots.
- Color: the page opens in light gray, which stays in the background of your writing. Changing it here doesn’t change the color your other sheets open with.
Want lines instead of dots? The lined paper generator prints college and wide ruled pages, and isometric dot paper arranges dots in triangles for drawing in 3D.
How this page sets up the sheet
- Dot grid, gray dots.
- 5 mm (0.197 in) dots apart, 2 per cm.
It opens in millimetres wherever you are, because that is how this kind of paper is measured. The paper size follows your browser too: Letter in the US, A4 elsewhere. Everything stays editable. Your own page settings, such as margins, are remembered for next time; the grid itself always opens as set up here. To start from a blank setup, use the graph paper generator.