Over the holiday period we fixed the guideline generator For those of you who have not used it yet, this application will rule up paper for you. You don’t have to waste valuable practice time ruling up yourself. You simply enter the values for the ascender, body height, descender and space between these lines. The guideline generator will then create the lines and all you have to do is print the page Give it a go! Guideline Generator

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First of all apologies the Guideline Generator has disappeared from our website We have been really surprised at the number of emails and phone we have received asking where it has gone.At the end of November, we had a major technical issue with the website, resulting in ordering being unavailable for a few hours.This problem was resolved in part by wiping the website and uploading the entire site again. Everything is back to normal – except the Guideline Generator, which requires a bit of work (new path names etc) before we can upload it again. This will be fixed, but not until early in the New Year as we have to concentrate all our efforts on processing all the Christmas orders.We will post here when the Guideline Generator becomes available again.

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As discussed in the Ruling Up post, accuracy is important. But of course, ruling up accurately can also take a long time. If you only have a spare 30 minutes or so to do some practicing, you don’t want to spend most of that time ruling-up This is when our Guidline Generator can help Simply select the distances between the lines and hit click the create button. Then once one page has been generated you can print it from within your browser. When printing your paper tell your browser to print just the first page (“Print Pages 1-1″). You can set the Copies to the number of sheets you require.Visit the Guidline Generator

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I don’t know anybody that likes ruling up. As previously mentioned the X-Height Calculator and consequently the business, started from not enjoying ruling the paper. (see starting scribblers post for more background on the business).However, from observations in the classroom, many students have made ruling up hard work. These tips may help:Accuracy is most important. Time taken to accurately rule up will save a great deal of frustration later on. Ruling up needs to be accurate and consistent. I have seen people produce roughs and then rule up the final piece inaccurately. This caused their writing to be slightly smaller, creating a line of text not as long as their rough, which meant the text was no longer centrered.How many people try and rule-up a small x-height using a blunt pencil? Blunt pencils cause two problems. Firstly, the marks you make on the paper will be thick – first opportunity for an inaccuracy to occur. Secondly, the lines themselves are thick. With a large x-height you can get away with it but not with a small x-height.Choice of pencils. I like to use a softer pencil (B or 2B). Many calligraphers prefer a harder pencil (4H or harder). I’m not sure if the grade of the pencil lead is important? What does matter is how hard you press the pencil on the paper to produce the guidelines. With a softer pencil you can get away with more pressure than you can using a hard pencil. Too much pressure with a hard pencil will permanently mark the paper even after erasing the pencil lines.Sharp pencil. Use a sharp pencil for finer lines. Or alternatively you could use an Automatic Pencil, with a lead thickness of 0.5mm or even 0.3mm.

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Conventionally, when a calligrapher uses an edged-pen for writing, the nib size and number of nib widths determine the body height of the letters. The height is generally known as the x-height, because it is the height of the letter x. To measure the x-height the nib edge is kept vertical whilst accurately making horizontal steps starting at the write-line. Each script has a certain weight, i.e. 5 nib-widths for Italic minuscules. So the x-height for Italic Minuscules would be the distance from the write-line to the top of the 5th step.Designed for use with the William Mitchell Square-Cut Round Hand Pens the X-height Calculator makes the above measuring procedure unnecessary.The X-height Calculator replaces the need of making horizontal steps on the paper. Once you have chosen the nib size, simply pull the slider out until required number of nib widths (NW) appears in the NW window. Identify the chosen nib size and read off the x-height value.Example:To find the x-height for 5 nib widths of a size 3 nib, pull the slider out until the number 5 appears in the NW window. Look down the list of nib sizes until you see the number 3. The corresponding value in the x-height window is 6.0Therefore 5nw of a No.3 nib is 6.0mmIf you prefer working in Inches then apply the same method, but use the other side of the X-Height Calculator. (5nw of a No.3 = ¼”)Buy it!

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