Howdy folks,

This may sound like a dumb question, but I've seen "French Ruled" notebooks before and I'm unsure of how they are supposed to be used. Clairefontaine makes them, of course, and they look almost like a tiny spreadsheet layout, but the spaces are too small to really write in. Is there a special use for these I'm unaware of? Do French school children go off to school with these?

Perhaps some Francophiles on the boards can answer these questions, for which I'm really curious about.

Thank you,
David.


P.S. Pendemonium shows a close-up example of "French Rule" on their web page for Clairefontaine, if you scroll down a bit:

http://www.pendemonium.com/stationery.htm#clairefontaine


No affiliation, of course.

[edited for typo]

And how come this new software won't let me capitalize "French" in the title?

AFAIK its just regular writing paper. I'm using it for note taking, writing on every second line. It looks very neat, go and try it!

I just did a test thread and French can be capitalized so I edited the topic title to show both capitals.


Kurt

Thanks Tytyvyllus! I tried it 3 times and it wouldn't stick. Not exactly a NooB; I don't know what was going on with that. I just didn't want to offend anyone's national identity, especially since the French make such lovely paper.

Antigone is correct, it's what the French use as regular notepaper. At certain times of year, especially when kids are starting the school year or coming back from one of the vacations, it's almost impossible to find "regular" ruled paper like we use in North America.

We once asked about it and the sales person said that "only Americans" use lined paper, that the French use the grid paper in school and for them from then on it's "normal" paper. Clearly this person was somewhat prone to over-generalizations but the point remains that for the French the "grid" paper is the norm.

I've also read french kids'd write in purple ink (think I read it somewhere on J. Herbin's HP?) or that they used to write in purple in Napoleon's times... maybe inkysmudges or some french forum member can confirm this?
France looks like a real fun place to go to school at

I don't know what they do these days but I've seen French kid's schoolbooks from the 50s and indeed, they used the deepest purple ink I've ever seen. Of course it may have deepened colour over the years but, wow, nice ink!

Also, FWIW, back in those days they used dip pens. Their handwriting skills were compulsory and was really quite something. From what we've been able to gather public school for the French is a lot more like what North Americans would expect from a private school education: strict, thorough, disciplinarian and, generally it seems, rather traumatic.

These days the school supplies stores carry literally hundreds of different FP styles, most less than $20.

I think it comes that since the third republic, the french school system is mainly governement run ("école publique"), so the paper (and ink) was supplied for and standardized (part of the century long french uniformization effort). The format was probably designed to help pupils to learn to write. It is also called Séyès (maybe the name of the inventor or the minister that imposed it). It is also the same reason why also traditional french school ink has this particular colour. And as every kid in France used it in school they continue to use it later. And passed from generation to generation

Note that school ruling to learn to write is different (but always widely distributed) in Belgium or Germany.

Jmm

Additional information:
The format of the so-called french ruling was patented in 1892 by a book/stationary seller of the city of Pontoise and taken as standard for french schools.

For more information see this document (sorry in french) http://www.inrp.fr/images/musee/pdf/colloque_alphabet.pdf

Jmm

Great info JM, thank you.

Thanks for the link! It has such wonderful historical and contemporary examples of handwriting in it that I saved the document.

Also, I wanted to mention that I recall seeing someone posting examples of how "French ruling" actually is used -- I though it was a posting by our own JJ Harvey -- but I couldn't find it. I'll post a link if I find it...

Doug

It's not uncommon for some shop owners in Paris, particularly those who have specialty boutiques, to include a bit of history about themselves in their shop windows, including their school books!

There's one place in particular that I'm thinking of where his 6th or (8th?) grade schoolbooks have been in the sun long enough that the ink of the grids has almost completely faded away but the writing ink remains strong and colourful. And very nice handwriting it is too, quite like that shown in JM's pdf link.

If the opportunity presents itself I'll take a pic of M. Chaudun's window display and post it here.

edit: spelling.

It's an interesting pattern -- almost like having tab stops on your writing paper.

This is exactly what the vertical lines are used for.


In France, there are rules on how to write an essay, not only about style but also form.


Introduction, Conclusion and main paragraph are supposed to be indented almost at the middle of the page.
Two lines or one line need to be left blank between those 3 parts.
Subparagraphs need to be indented as well.


The horizontal lines are handwriting guides, minuscules (regular letters) must be the size of the space between the first dark blue and the first light blue line. b,d,l,h must stop at the second light blue line, and g,q,j must stop at the second light blue line under the dark blue line.

Majuscules (capital letters) stop at the third light blue line.

Seyes ruling with Herbin either Violette Pensee or Poussiere de Lune was used by children and people until the mid 50's.


At that time, the Bic started to replace fountain pen writing for business purpose, it probably had a lot to do with carbon copies.
In France, most ballpoints, but the yellow and clear Bic, used to be refillable. Parker had a nice market for it's Jotter, the prefered pen/pencil set gift, especially for women.


Waterman Florida Blue and all other erasable blue inks were used in school when the ink eradicator was introduced to the marketplace in the late 60's, early 70's.

In class, we were not allowed to switch from Bic to fountain pen until we were in the 5th grade but I used my first fountain pen in the 4th grade. I could not believe the difference a smooth writing fountain pen with a comfortable girth could make.


My handwriting has always been bigger than the "normal" french handwriting and I always threw the size convention out the window, especially when I had to transcribe a 4 to 6 pages essay, between midnite and 1am, due the next day.

Thanks Anne-Sophie! That's the info I've been looking for. Ok, so what are the spaces at the top and bottom used for? (the ones without horizontal lines). Are they just margins? They make me want to do some kind of chart

I refer to those as "fear" margins.


The top right or left was/is used to mark the essay or test. The margins was/is used for the teacher's comments, all in red or bright ink.

The more comments and editorial signs the lower the grade and the more chance I had to get grounded which meant, no TV, no French Pastries and no allowance but plenty of extra math lessons and chores on my list hence "the fear margin".

LoL


In history lessons we were allowed to use the margin and a double A4 page to make timelines.

I believe the upper margins were used for time and the left margin for events, king's names, inventions, artists and cultural name of the era.

Spreadsheet like documents such as the one above for history was also used in geography, history of litterature or civic studies.


In high school, all mathematical graphs were done on graph paper that looked like velum.

Geometry classes, in the lower grades, were written with square patterned paper from a Rhodia Pad.

We used the square to draw geometric figures and to cut them out to form cubes, cones etc...

Because Rhodia paper was so expensive, I tried to find a cheaper square lined paper, to no avail.

Wow, thank you Anne-Sophie. It's great to get a glimpse at another culture's schooling.

Believe me you only want a glimpse

The good thing about all those rules is that it forms your mind to find a way to break them.

For example, I brought a multicolor ballpoint (similar to one that is available at The Container Store) to class.
It was, of course, strictly forbiden, we were only allowed to write in those ugly thin yellow Bic and in blue.

The teacher almost took it but I talked her out of it by blushing, putting my head down and say I'm sorry.

At lunch, my pen was back home and the very same evening I did my homework with the gorgeous Poussiere de Lune color, a nice bordeaux.

The next day, the teacher was not happy when she was correcting my homework but she could not press the subject too much because burgundy, nor other bright color were, in theory, forbidden.

Red, the teacher correcting color was the forbidden color.

This has been a fascinating thread. Thanks, Anne-Sophie! I know that Clairfontaine makes notebooks that are French ruled, but what about pads or loose paper thus ruled? I haven't seen it on any website. French ruled certainly improves handwriting and creates a very classical-looking regularity.

Wow, Anne-Sophie, I didn't know that nice french stationery came at such a high price. Sounds like hell to me
And I can't believe how different that school system is though its just a bunch of kilometers away from wher I went to school. Has french government never debated about changing the educational system? I know, german pupils are not known to be the best educated kids in the world, but at least they are not the unhappiest

Actually, I am very impressed by the French and German school systems, compared to ours here in the USA. I will never forget visiting a German classroom equivalent to one of junior high school levels. Every student had their orderly pen and pencil case, full of sharp pencils for both writing and drawing and either a Geha or a Pelikan fountain pen. Each also had their neat pile of graph paper. No cries of "I don't have a pencil!" or "Can I have some paper?" that one hears every day in an American classroom. Everyone was prepared.

Anne-Sophie,

Thank you very much for your insights. Your answer was really what I was looking for when I started the thread, except that I wasn't sure that kind of answer existed. It seemed as if there would HAVE TO BE some kind of system to using all those lines.

My hat's off to you!

-David.

What a very interesting thread. I feel it should be an entry on Wikipedia, though I am much too stupid to know how to do such a thing.

I must go to Paris and buy some of this paper. (Perhaps I will become a French Intellectual. No, I think it takes more than that... )

Thank you, Anne-Sophie.

I don't know where you are from, but in the USA, I cannot find any loose paper which is Seyes ruled. You have to make your own with your printer and the template provided in a link given by a fellow FPN member.


http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...p?showtopic=792

I don't know where you are from, but in the USA, I cannot find any loose paper which is Seyes ruled. You have to make your own with your printer and the template provided in a link given by a fellow FPN member.


Thank you so much, Anne-Sophie. I am also in the USA. Thanks to your posts, I have ordered a Clairefontaine notebook French Ruled from Daily Planner (the old Lincoln Stationers) and have already followed your link and printed out several French Ruled loose-leaf sheets. For now, my handwriting has been slowed down by trying to keep all of the correct proportions. With practice, it should become more natural. I love the neatness and regularity that is achieved with this paper! I'm beginning to like it even more than gridded paper. Too bad that neither Clairefontaine nor Rhodia produce a whole pad of this format. Wouldn't it also be something if we could convince Moleskine to bring out a French Ruled notebook or Cahier? Many thanks again for your richly informative posts.

Hello,

As I am French myself and recently working my penmanship back to what it was in primary school, I thought I may jump in and add some explanation on how to use "Séyès" i.e. French ruling.

The main idea as you undestood from what Nibble said before is that you are supposed to base your letters on the bold lines.

Then the thin lines may (must ?) be used as a guidance to form your letters as follows
- Capital letters are supposed to be 3 thin line high and 2 thin lines below for lower loops if any.
- Lower case letters
* main part is supposed to be written between the base bold line and the first thin line up.
* upper loops are to be made up to the third thin line up
* upper strokes are made up to the second thin line up.
* lower loops and lower stokes (as in "p") are made dow to the second thin line down

I understand that reading all this is somewhat difficult so here is what it should look like :




This is just how I was taught penmanship back in the early 80's here in France. And as was said before, "Séyès" ruled paper is still the paper you find the most easily anywhere in the country nowadays !

Hope this helps.

Thats exactly how I learned to write cursive in first grade!

But in german primary schools the ruling changes every year. We have four lines in the first grade (like the séyès ruling, only that all lines are equally bold) with a little more space between the lines:
The second grade copybooks have also four lines per line, only more narrow. In third grade you get to write on two lines:
and in grade four you eventually learn to write on a single line.
Do american and french school kids write on the same ruling all the years?

I might not be the best person to answer for American kids, as my "kids" are adults now.

In the early grades, the paper is turned landscape (sideways) and ruled with a rather wide rule, but I don't have the dimension. Also there is a dotted (or faint) centerline between baselines. It is the height used for body characters with no ascenders, c, e, m, etc. Ascenders and descenders are midway to the appropriate centerline or baseline, by eye, no line for guidance.

Later, they use paper in normal portrait orientation with only baselines ruled. Normally a wide rule is used in elementary grades. In high school and beyond, people would use a narrow or wide rule according to preference, where a narrow rule is about 0.25" or 6 mm. Various wider rules exist, 0.375", 8 mm, or 9 mm, based on brand and country of origin. One popular brand, Ampad, offers three rules, narrow, 1/4"; college 9/32"; and wide, 11/32" (6.3 mm, 7.1 mm, 8.7 mm).

And the left hand of the paper, before the red line, is where the teacher was writing the nasty things she had to say about my bad English...

French ruled note paper is paper that has been subject to Norman conquest.

I have used it until I graduated from high-school, but I really didn't know it was called "Séyès" (maybe I just forgot?), and I didn't know it was called "French ruled" outside of France

The most widely used form of Clairefontaine paper, at least for me, was the "copie double." These are twin sheets, with obviously four pages to write on. I think they were the norm for homeworks and essays. The single sheet papers were meant to go into binders.

Anne-Sophie obviously knows a lot more about the history of pen and paper in French schools, but during my time, we all used the "bleu royal", which I think Waterman calls Florida blue in the U.S. From what I remember, bleu royal simply referred to the well known washable blue, and of course, funky smelling ink eradicators were widely used. I think it was only in high school that we could use ball points, and darker shades of blue ink, such as the blue black. Just plain black ink was considered very grownup, but I think most profs found it ugly and harder on the eyes than blue ink.

Anne-Sophie, et al,
Thank you for THE most interesting thread read in days and days!

Makes me want to hook up with DarkskyZ and do some swapping.







Edited to correct spelling of DarkskyZ

What is DarkskyZ?? Is that a word in the American language, that know one else understands??

That is just me or my nickname to be truly accurate. Even if I am French I truly hope non American people undesrtand me

Thanks for reminding me Stylo.

The pages I wrote my essays on were copies doubles. Since I've always had a big handwriting, I used a lot of paper, as a result, I always bought "generic paper" from departement stores starting almost the day they set up the "back to school" floor.

I did not go on vacation so strolling the ailes full of brand new stationnery stuff was a great pastime.

I don't know if the periods and regions of our living in France are the same, but the only department store I remember that might sell back to school stationary is Prisunic, AKA Prizu. Does that ring a bell? It may not even be around anymore. Well, I just googled it and it seems like it is part of Monoprix (vaguely remember that name too). Did department stores like Lafayette and Printemps sell any stationary type back to school merchandise?

I can't remember where I bought my paper. Perhaps it was sometimes at the supermarket, or more likely stationary stores and small tabac/stationaries. I think I have also used generic papers and notebooks, but at some point I only used Clairefontaine. I admit, I think I was a litle bit of snob when I was younger , at least for a few little things like that

We did have a Monoprix in town but it was a tiny store, not enough room for specialty items.

The other department store was "Les Nouvelles Galleries" (now part of Lafayette), the whole floor basement was used for seasonal items.

In mid August, they had the school stuff all set up.
I would go everyday after my math remedial private tutoring to see if they had already set up. I usually had the floor to myself since most everybody was still on vacation.

As soon as possible I would buy huge bags of plain copies doubles and punched single sheet/copies doubles. I would also load up on generic cartridges.

I usually waited until class started for anything else because I needed to save money in case I needed to buy specialty paper such as grid, drawing, velum or thin paper for math figures (don't know the name) or items such as a special kind of binder, pencil, notebook the teacher would want.

I bought a substancial pencil set in 8th grade and used them way past university. I also bought a nice set of fine line markers.

Thankee for ze explanatione - I only understand French with ze French accent - I am learning to speak ze Americano - but being ze clean living English bastardo I can only understand ze Cockney language in ze impropper way. And I spell in ze cockneeey way too!

From ze Americano, Pomme, Cockneed, English biro chewing pelikano from Londinium -- Peter

[/quote]
Pomme
[/quote]

Pomme being French for Pom...

The use of different types of paper depended also on the teachers. I remember having a teacher obsessed with the 'petites feuilles a grands carreaux' i.e. small sheets with big squares printed on it.

Also some teachers were very very controling and wanted to chose the color of your cahiers/notebook for each subjet.

They were also neat freak and wanted us to buy protege cahier (see description in Clarefontaine catalogue) in the color matching their subjet so at the end of the day, there was a neat pile of cahiers looking the same.

We used the little label holder to write our names.

I didn't like that at all, and keept telling them, when I was in the smaller grades, that I couldn't wait to get bigger so I could choose my own system.


I have never been a fan of notebooks, there is no way to organize pages, if bought them too thin, they lasted a month; if I bought them too thick I had to shlep lot of useless weight.


I lobbied very strongly with my teachers to a shift from cahiers to classeur (notebook to binder).

I think the last straw was when a teacher forced us to buy a very heavy notebook. She made us write two different subjects for the same class from each end of the notebook. I think it was French and one side was for grammar and one was for vocabulary, something like that.
It drove me crazy. Of course we did more grammar than vocabulary, at the end of the year, I was left with a cahier with unused pages right in the middle.
(It was a Clairefontaine notebook, and I was not happy about wasting such expensive paper so when another teacher got the same idea, I started removing the center pages of the notebook and use them as copies doubles (small size)

"The petite feuilles a grand carreaux" they are the size of the classic Clarefontaine notebook.
"Grand feuilles a grand carreaux" are Seyes ruled sheet of A4 paper (roughly letter size)

"Petit carreaux" are grid ruled pages like Rhodia.

A few notes on the Czech (or Czechoslovak, at that time - mid 1980s) education system:

We had to use fountain pens at primary school for the first four years. So using a ballpoint pen later on was experienced as incredible liberty. Many people started loathing fountain pens due to that early experience.

A truly horrible thing I remember from school was that we had to make the margins - left and right - in our notebooks ourselves. That meant measuring them, making holes through the whole notebook with a pin and then drawing them in pencil with a ruler. It took ages to make the margins of all the thick notebooks (maybe 10 or more) at the beginning of the school year! What was worse, I never understood the purpose of those margins - except that we were not allowed to write in them. They were not used for any specific purpose by the teachers. It was all just meaningless suffering! The whole family of the child usually helped to make those margins.

All the notebooks were provided by the state in the early years, later they were prescribed: what size, how many sheets etc. There was not much choice anyway - just one or two state producers of stationery had monopoly over the whole market. No, they did not produce notebooks with margins.

I see this thread is still going.

When I was in 7th grade, I had a super-control freak math teacher. I can't remember whether we had to use ballpoints for his notes, but we had to use red and blue ballpoints for underlining and writing certain headings. There was a whole system of single & double underlining various headings, in red and in blue. I think sometimes the heading had to be red, underlined in blue, and the other way around too. I also remember that when he walked through the aisles and noticed someone who wasn't doing it right, he would just rip the page out of the notebook!

A few years later, I heard he had a terrible car accident, and that he mellowed out after that. Perhaps that put thing in perspective for him.

Strange, I've always had the opposite feeling. To me a binder was something whose pages could be lost and I hated them.
The only thing wrong with the notebooks were those awful "protège-cahiers" (plastic covers) we had to put on them. The transparent ones were kind of OK, but the opaque ones were the ugliest things.



I still do my work on Seyes Clairefontaines. They are a bit larger than the A4 ones you mentionned. I'm not sure this size already existed when I was going to school, but anyway I highly doubt they would have allowed such a non-standard format.

I wonder if your Nouvelles Galeries are the same as mine. I distinctly remember the stationery being on the ground floor (it's currently on the fourth if my memory is correct )

Reisho

Thanks Anne-Sophie! After reading this thread a few weeks ago, I up and ordered 2 spiral and cloth bound notebook by Clairfountaine along with a bottle each of Violeete Pensee and Poussiere de Lune from Pendemonium.

I've been using one of the spiral notebooks extensively this week and have been impressed with it. I like how easy it is to get uniform indenting for notes with the Seyes ruling. Someone noticed yesterday that I wasn't using "normal" paper and asked where I find fountain pens in this day and age.

I haven't had good results with lightfastness for the Violette Pensee, but both are nice colours on the page.

What an interesting thread. I have saved a few bits and bobs to try out.

Cheers people.

Wow, nice insights
Here, we just used a workbook with dotted lines as a guide..maybe thats why my handwriting is horrid

I was always prepared too and usually had extra sheet of paper, my mechanical pencil and a regular one for backup, 2 fountain pens and cartridges, I also brought specialty paper and ruler kit for math and physics class as well as a big set of pencil for science and geography class.

I cannot tell you how often somebody was asking me for this or that because they forgot to bring or buy a particular item. This went on during all my schooling and some classmates were worse than others.
When I needed to stop a moocher in a particular class or grade, I usually "forgot" items myself and would ask of the moocher to return the favor, if the moocher was reluctant she was given a lecture at recess.

Some tried to forget to give me buy my things and one of them stole my better/more expensive Waterman school pen.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you who spent the time to explain Seyes and french ruled paper.

I have been looking for this paper for ages and couldn't remember what it looked like precisely. I learned to write in North Africa with a fountain pen on what I now know to be french ruled paper. My children are learning to write and I can't stand their primary school paper options.

With my mother heading to Europe, I desperately tried to explain to her what the paper looked like. If only I had known! She came back with dozens of German notebooks. I'll be ordering the Clairefontaine notebooks for my sons as they have already expressed an appreciation for the fountain pen ( I had to order those online too....)

did you find the link to the grid paper generator for French ruled that will let you print it at home?