Printable Loose Leaf Paper for 3-Ring Binders

Printing your own filler paper

Loose leaf, or filler, paper is ruled paper with holes along one edge, made to go in a ring binder and come out again. This page sets the generator up for it: college ruled lines 9/32 in apart, a red margin line, a header line, and three punch guides on the left edge for a US 3-ring binder. The guides are 4¼ in (108 mm) apart center to center, with the middle one at half the page height. That is the US standard: Swingline sells its 3-hole punches with “8 1/2” Centers”, the distance between the outer two holes, which puts each hole 4¼ in from the next.

How to punch the holes

1. Print the PDF at 100% (Actual size). A page scaled to fit moves the guides off the 4¼ in spacing.
2. Stack as many sheets as your punch takes, with a printed side facing up.
3. Push the stack against the punch’s paper guide, set for letter paper, and check that the three printed circles sit under the punch heads. If your punch has no guide, line up the middle circle with the middle punch head.
4. Punch one sheet first and try it on the binder rings before you do the rest.

Matching store-bought filler paper

Store-bought filler paper comes in two sizes: Mead sells its college ruled filler paper both as 8 × 10½ in and as 8½ × 11 in sheets, and Pacon sells its wide ruled filler paper in both sizes too. A home printer uses full US Letter, so printed sheets stand out beyond the smaller ones. To make them flush, trim ¼ in from the top and the bottom and ½ in from the right-hand edge: that keeps the holes centered on the new 10½ in height.

The ruling matches college ruled filler paper, 34 lines on a Letter page including the header line. For wider lines, switch to Wide ruled; for notes without holes, use the college ruled paper page, and for A4 pads with four holes, the A4 lined paper page. Every setting is also on the lined paper generator.

Lines per page at 9/32 in (7.1 mm) spacing

Counted by the generator with this page’s settings: the first line about 1 inch below the top edge (the header line) and a ½-inch bottom margin. Lines that don’t fit whole are left off, and the summary above the preview updates as you change the settings.