For What Is French Ruled Notepaper Used?

[Anne-Sophie]

I agree with you Atlas, it is a matter of choice.

 

One of the greatest assets of FPN is that we have people from all over the world. As a result, we learn something new everyday and get more choices of pen and pen related stuff to discover, want and use.

 

This is why, I have a pen related stuff budget.

Otherwise, the other half would see a fountain pen related expense on the credit card bill everyday.

 

the other half

:embarrassed_smile: me

Edited January 9, 2009 by Anne-Sophie

[sunnyone]

I grew up in Ghana. While I didn't go to the government schools, I think my school had similar standards with regards to writing. Both systems followed the British education system. I remember for each subject per term, we received two notebooks. One was marked "Classwork" and the other "Homework". These notebooks were rule-lined notebooks with two staples down the middle to bind them. The cover was a thicker stock paper that said something like "Ghana Schools" on it. The Homework book was were we did our home assignments and we turned in the whole notebook for correction. Classwork was for notes taken during class. Oh yes, we also had a small "Assignment" book in which everyday we would copy the homework assignments for every class in it. We were also issued a pencil and ruler by the school. The school also loaned us the textbooks which we were required to wrap in paper before use. We returned the books to the school at the end of the year.

 

I grew up with the same system. I completely forgot about all that. And we always showed up ready - pencils, pens, rulers, compass, pencil case, all the triangles and things for trig, etc.

 

[petravana]

I grew up in Ghana. While I didn't go to the government schools, I think my school had similar standards with regards to writing. Both systems followed the British education system. I remember for each subject per term, we received two notebooks. One was marked "Classwork" and the other "Homework". These notebooks were rule-lined notebooks with two staples down the middle to bind them. The cover was a thicker stock paper that said something like "Ghana Schools" on it. The Homework book was were we did our home assignments and we turned in the whole notebook for correction. Classwork was for notes taken during class. Oh yes, we also had a small "Assignment" book in which everyday we would copy the homework assignments for every class in it. We were also issued a pencil and ruler by the school. The school also loaned us the textbooks which we were required to wrap in paper before use. We returned the books to the school at the end of the year.

 

I grew up with the same system. I completely forgot about all that. And we always showed up ready - pencils, pens, rulers, compass, pencil case, all the triangles and things for trig, etc.

 

 

Brings back memories. I still have my compass set, but can't find the pencil case we had at the time. It looked like the Libelle 10 pen zipped case with room for fountain pen, cartridges, eraser and 10 Caran d'Ache colored pencils. All this was stowed in a leather "cartable" with pockets on the front that held them perfectly.

[Richard Groff]

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

 

It is funny... I was reading this older thread the other day and noticed the discussion about purple ink in French schools. I happened to be watching the Yves Robert movie "La Glorie de mon Père" (from the Pagnol novel) and in one scene it shows the schoolteacher-father pouring ink into the students inkwells. You can clearly see the ink is purple. The movie is set in 1900. I wouldn't have noticed unless I had been thinking of it.

 

Also, a number of years ago I happened to be living in Paris when my girlfriend's mother passed away. We were cleaning out her attic and I came across a bunch of old school kids' notebooks. All the writing was in purple, but I thought it was just someone's favorite color or something. American kids can write in pretty much any color they want but red, so I didn't think about it at the time. That only took 15 years to figure out.

[Souldrifter]

I picked up some loose leaf sheets of French ruled Clairefontaine paper for use with my penmanship books. Here's hoping it helps.

 

I have a French ruled CF notebook I use for work at times, though I'm torn between that, my Apica Winlex, and my FieldNotes books for that purpose. So much paper, so little time.

[dizzypen]

What a fabulous topic. So fabulous that it deserves a bump despite that fact that it was created over 2 years ago. Invaluable!

[voop]

Anne-Sophie et. al., while I live in France now, I grew up in the scandinavian schooling system in the 70es....let's just say that the system was a lot more "liberal" there and then than what you describe -- and I now understand why all my contemporary French friends and colleagues are so traumatized.

 

No wonder they call it "formation" and not "education", ehh?

 

In seriousness, very instructive and interesting thread - thanks to those teaching this expat how his adopted country works....

[GouletPens]

Thanks for the bump, Dizzy! This is a great thread. I've actually had quite a bit of interest in the Seyès (French ruled) paper, particularly in the loose sheets (which are no longer being imported by Exaclair into the US). I had so much interested that it sparked the whole Big Clairefontaine French Order (on this other FPN thread) so I can get it to my loyal Clairefontaine lovers.

 

I was on the phone with Christine Nusse, the president of Exaclair, asking her about the Seyès paper (she calls it Seyès, not French rule). She is from France and her family helped start Clairefontaine, so I figured she'd be a good one to ask! Basically, the point of the lines are really for French children to help them learn their proper letter sizes and margins. The vertical lines are a way of 'indenting' for outlining paragraphs, and the horizontal lines are there to gauge the height of your letters. There are 4 lines per 'box', typically capitalized letters are the full height of the box, and lowercase letters are 2 lines high (half the box). She said that adults in France almost never use Seyès paper. It would be the equivalent of American adults writing on paper with alternating solid and dashed lines, it's really there for practice.

 

But hey, I think it's interesting and plenty of people love to use the Seyès paper. So I give the people what they want!

[kushbaby]

She said that adults in France almost never use Seyès paper.

 

Ah, yes, but I refuse to grow up. :ph34r:

[Kathelyne]

She said that adults in France almost never use Seyès paper. It would be the equivalent of American adults writing on paper with alternating solid and dashed lines, it's really there for practice.

 

 

 

Interesting, when my sister was in france (aged 16) she used french ruled paper for school and that is well past the age where I grew up that people would use lined paper with the central dashed line (which you stopped about age 6, possibly as old as 7 if I remember correctly). Is it something used in all school levels still (just not proper adults, ie those who have left school), or is it now really just little children?

[encre]

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

 

I would take Anne-Sophie's experiences with a grain of salt, those are her experiences and they do not represent the experiences of every French pupil and I dare say are highly dramatized, with some flair I might add.

 

 

I used Waterman blue in a Parker, before that it was a pencil.

 

I had a loaded pencil case full of different writing instruments and I don't recall having issues with teachers- or anyone else having a problem either. Thus I can only summarize that the French education system is not diabolically inflexible and varies from school to school to a certain extent like it does in every country.

 

 

For reference I grew up & studied in the 16eme and then St Mandée.

Edited January 22, 2010 by encre

[GouletPens]

She said that adults in France almost never use Seyès paper. It would be the equivalent of American adults writing on paper with alternating solid and dashed lines, it's really there for practice.

 

 

 

Interesting, when my sister was in france (aged 16) she used french ruled paper for school and that is well past the age where I grew up that people would use lined paper with the central dashed line (which you stopped about age 6, possibly as old as 7 if I remember correctly). Is it something used in all school levels still (just not proper adults, ie those who have left school), or is it now really just little children?

I'm not exactly sure what the age cutoff is, if there is one. I grew up in the US, not France....

[chookie]

I love this thread! Thanks for the handwriting guidelines. I use French ruled notebooks to take notes during my children's music lessons. The extra horizontal lines allow me to jot music passages quickly, and the grid-like format allows me to create practice charts.

 

Best wishes

[kushbaby]

I love this thread! Thanks for the handwriting guidelines. I use French ruled notebooks to take notes during my children's music lessons. The extra horizontal lines allow me to jot music passages quickly, and the grid-like format allows me to create practice charts.

 

Best wishes

 

Ooooohhh!!! I LOVE this application! I'm going to try that!

 

[iridium7777]

i realize this post is old as dirt, but for some reason it's active so i thought i'd add.

 

i totally forgot about making the margins until i've read what you wrote. we had to make the margins in red, and they were simply used as guides not to be crossed. i think they were 2cm away from the edge of the paper.

 

we had to use fountain pens past 4th grade, pretty much through-out the whole school system, no pencils no ball point pens.

 

all the notebooks were the same and on the name you would put your name, school, class information. for math, the notebooks were the same but had grid ruled, and we still had to make the margins.

 

can't remember what color ink we were supposed to use, i think blue/black was ok, red was an absolute no-no because that was the color the teacher used.

 

we also had to keep a "diary", more like a date planner, which was also a standard notebook. you'd write out your daily courses for the whole week, there would be a section for where you can write the homework assignments and also another column for where the teachers would write your grades/comments.

 

usually once a week the main teacher would collect all the grades for all of your courses for the class and would read them out loud, you'd mark your grades in your diary and then she'd go around and sign it -- this you were supposed to show to your parents indicating your progress.

 

just like in ghana we were also given all the necessary books for the year by the school and had to return them at the year's end. and yes, we also wrapped them in paper/newspaper to protect them.

 

this was in ukraine in early 80's.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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!

 

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.

Edited February 1, 2010 by iridium7777

[kdnavrat]

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.

 

 

Sucker that I am, I did the same thing - love the VP ink from Herbin. Haven't tried the Poussiere yet. And am expecting my French ruled notebooks today! Great topic, thanks for all the information!

[Anne-Sophie]

Let me clarify that my primary school experience was a while ago, in a private establishment with teachers who were sticklers for rules and uniformity.

 

I liked it because it was a girl only school.

 

After using Seyes ruled cahiers=notebooks (primary school), I used A5 (Junior size) Seyes loose leaf in a A5 binder, I quickly moved to A4 (Letter size) because I have a large handwriting.

 

I used Seyes ruled copies doubles=2 pages letter size printed together side by side (A3), for essays in Senior high school and notes in college.

 

Copies double are also extremely handy to make timelines. Egyptians pharaos, French Kings and geologic eras were all fitted in timelines one time or another.

 

I highly recommend it for exams, or any time one is in need of good sized a visual reminder.

[maladat]

May I ask, what sort of pens did you and other students use in school in France? My wife studied French and loves France and I have purchased some Seyes ruled Clairefontaine notebooks and J. Herbin Violet Pensee ink for her and would like to get a pen along with them.

 

Thank you!

 

(J’ai étudié aussi le Français, mais je ne le parle pas si bien qu’elle et je n’ai pas passé tant de temps à France. Merci beaucoup!)

Edited March 11, 2010 by maladat

[xles]

Oh my, what an interesting and informative thread this was!

 

I feel a bit compelled to share my experiences growing up with the Swedish educational system.

All throughout primary school we used these boring A5 sized staple bound notebooks with the standard 7mm ruling. Pen was strictly forbidden for some reason, everything was done in pencil. Up to I think, third grade, maybe fourth, we had these special notebooks to practise handwriting in. Up to this day I still can't figure out how they were intended to be used. 5mm ruling, with every third line a little thicker than the other two. I was one of those kids that couldn't wait for the more scientific classes, as we got to use the 5mm grid graph paper, and thus I got to write a bit smaller. Same boring staple bound A5 notebooks (but you know, green instead of blue cover..).

When exam time came around however, we got these lovely A4 double fold sheets (four pages) that made even less sense to me than the handwriting practise notebooks. You see, they for some reason decided that it was a good idea to put 20mm (approximately) ruling on those sheets. Just imagine how it looks when your handwriting is one tenth the height of the line.

 

In secondary school (and now university), the only thing that changed was that we had to buy our own paper, which for me defaulted to A4 spiral bound 7mm ruled, 5mm grid, and still everything in pencil. However, now at the university, I got myself a fountain pen from a friend (dumpster find at a construction site, just needed some cleaning and ink). And I haven't hated myself about not bothering to learning proper handwriting more than now.

 

So, back to basics! Does anyone know where one could get a hold of Seyés paper in Sweden? Or the entire Clairefontaine/J. Herbin catalogues for that matter.

[79spitfire]

Very interesting thread. I think I need to locate some of this French ruled practice paper, as my handwriting skills are in need of a "tune up" very badly. I went to California public schools when I was young and they seemed to emphasize everything but good handwriting skills. Those first papers made out of the recycled brown paper were very bad and made writing with a pencil mandatory and difficult as they seemed to have small bits of wood (or something) embedded in them, that would catch the pencils tip and guide it somewhere else. Later the "college" ruled papers were required, but the exact spacing of the ruling seemed up to the paper manufacture. When in high school I realized my handwriting was un-acceptable. I began practicing calligraphy,(with a fountain pen) which helped me get control and make my writing legible. I've come full circle and am using fountain pens again as they are easier on my hands.

 

:embarrassed_smile: