A PDF can contain a five-millimetre grid and still print with smaller squares. The usual reason is a print setting that resizes the page to fit a printer’s available area. For ordinary notes this may be harmless, but measured diagrams need a more deliberate setup.
Match the file to the paper
First select the same paper size in the generator and in your printer settings. A4 is 210 × 297 mm. US Letter is 215.9 × 279.4 mm. A5 is 148 × 210 mm. These sizes have different proportions, so switching between them can trigger scaling or clipping.
Download the PDF and open it in a PDF viewer. A browser print dialog can also work, but the labels and available controls vary. Use portrait orientation for these templates. Each file contains one page.
Find the scaling control
Look for “Actual Size,” “100%” or a custom scale value of 100. Avoid “Fit” or “Shrink to printable area” when exact spacing matters. If you print directly from the website, switch browser headers and footers off so the page URL and date do not appear on the sheet.
The templates leave a 12 mm margin around their content. This provides space near the edge, but printers differ. If a line is clipped, check the device’s printable area before shrinking the entire design.
Make one test print
Print a single sheet and measure several intervals with a ruler. On a five-millimetre grid, ten intervals should span 50 mm. Measuring several squares makes small changes easier to see. Check both horizontally and vertically.
If the result is too small, revisit paper size and scaling in both the application and the printer driver. A driver setting may resize a file even when the application appears to use actual size. Keep the successful settings for the next print job.
Choose contrast for your printer
Sage and Slate are softer colours for everyday notes. Ink is darker and may be easier to see on a basic monochrome printer. Test the colour before printing many copies, especially for dot grid sheets where each mark is small.
Use the PDF when you want a fixed print layout. Use the SVG when you need to open the design in a compatible vector editor; resizing it in that editor also changes the physical spacing. The on-screen preview is scaled to fit your device and is not a ruler.
Make your graph paper ↗