Dot grid paper to print
A grid of dots instead of lines. Dots guide without boxing anything in, and stop being visible once the page fills up — which is why dotted pages became the bullet journal standard.
To get a PDF: click Print, then choose “Save as PDF”. Untick “Headers and footers”, and check that the scale is set to 100% — that is what makes your squares measure a true 5 mm.
Why dots rather than lines
A grid imposes its structure on whatever you put on it: everything looks filed into boxes. A dot grid gives the same cues — same alignments, same distances — but the eye stops registering them as soon as the page has content. So you can rule a table in one corner, write freely in another and draw across both without the page looking badly filled.
Which spacing
- 5 mm — the spacing of commercial dotted notebooks, and of very nearly every bullet journal layout published elsewhere. Choose this if you are following spreads designed by other people.
- 4 mm — denser, for small handwriting or detailed diagrams.
- 7 and 10 mm — looser and much quieter. For sketching, sketchnoting, or a page that simply has more air in it.
Dots too heavy?
This is the usual failing of dot grid printed at home: dots so large or so dark that they stay visible under the drawing. Dot size follows the line weight setting, so drop to very fine and lighten the colour. A pale grey is plenty — a dot should be findable when you go looking for an alignment, not assertive when you are reading.
Making your own notebook
Thirty pages at once, the Name/Date line off and the hole punch guides on gives you enough to fill a binder or take to a spiral binding. In landscape the same grid carries wide tables and hand-drawn planners. The dot positions hold to the millimetre from one page to the next, which matters once pages face each other in a bound book.
Printing at the right scale
A stated spacing only holds if the print is not resized. In the print dialog, find the Scale setting and put it at 100%: “Fit to page” shrinks the ruling slightly. Untick the browser's headers and footers too, since they push the ruling down the sheet.