Printing guides
Sizes, printing problems and choosing between papers — one specific question per guide.
Grade 1: 2–2.5cm per cell. Grades 2–3: 1.8–2cm. Pen calligraphy: about 1.6cm. On A4 portrait with 10mm margins, 2cm cells give nine per row.
Nine times out of ten it is print scaling, or the printer treating pale thin lines as noise. Check scaling, then print quality, then line width and colour.
Tianzige has one horizontal and one vertical centre line. Mi-Zi-Ge adds both diagonals. Beginners start with Tianzige and move to Mi-Zi-Ge once structure matters.
Three equal bands, about 4mm each and 12mm total — the usual size for primary-school English books. Lower-case letters occupy specific bands.
Middle primary uses 400 cells (20×20); upper primary and exams use 800. One A4 page of 400 cells is the most versatile.
Three zones: notes on the right (about 60% width), cues on the left (20%), summary across the bottom (20% height). Write only on the right; the other two are for review.
A4 210×297mm, B5 176×250mm, 16K 184×260mm, Letter 216×279mm. Chinese exercise books are mostly 16K; A4 is the international default; the US uses Letter.
Each unit has four-line pinyin space above and a Tianzige square below. The tone-marked pinyin is added automatically and aligned with the character.