Published: Nov 23, 2019 by Jeremy
Callendar advises practicing with double-ruled paper to start in “The Two Sizes of Character”. Now you can print your own! Download the template here.
The template is also linked from that section of the Manual.
This is definitely intended as “beginner’s” paper. It’s Pitman-ruled (meaning, 1/2 inch per line) with a generous inter-line spacing of 1/4 inch. The specimens seem to follow a similar inter-line spacing, but their line height is definitely less than the 1/2 inch here.
You’ll find there are actually more than two rules: I have added 1/8-inch quarter-lines as a guide when writing the short characters N, M, T, D, R, L, and W, as well as a top-of-line rule. It looks much busier than Callendar’s double-ruled paper, but it’s also a big help in getting the proportions right when writing.
One surprise as I made this was that, for all the Manual directs you to make the larger character three times the length of the shorter character in pairs like S/P, T/D, A/O, etc., in practice, Callendar clearly only wrote the larger characters double the length of the shorter, if that - sometimes T and D seem to be only say 1/8 inch vs 3/8 inch wide. For myself, I plan to do as he did, not as he said.