Do you really have to use college ruled paper when you’re in college?

Jack Russillo
3 min readApr 23, 2015

As far as I know… Nope.

But I’m just a college freshman — what do I know?

I’m sure that there used to be a rule, or at least an unwritten one, about how college students should only turn in assignments on college ruled paper.

Why? So they can’t get away with writing in larger spaces and narrower margins? More words can fit on a college ruled piece of paper than on a wide ruled piece of paper so a single page assignment would essentially be shorter if written on a wide ruled piece of paper.

I get it now! Students back in the day were lazy!

But wait, college students are still pretty damn lazy. And our society is adapting to their laziness, too.

Now, instead of being lazy and writing less by turning in a paper on wide ruled paper instead of college ruled paper, students are turning in papers on college ruled paper instead of of typing of their essays!

More words fit on a typed piece of paper — especially if you use a small font and single space everything — than on a piece of college ruled paper. Given the option, I’ve turned in a couple papers that were hand-written instead of typed and I probably saved myself a few minutes simply because I didn’t have to write as much.

So, then why was college ruled paper even invented? I have no clue. I’m sure there’s some rule somewhere that says that a certain legal document has to be transcribed on a regulated piece of paper. Maybe there’s not.

Either way, I turned in an assignment last week on wide ruled paper instead of on college ruled paper and received no consequences. In fact, I received 100% on that assignment.

So, where all this hubbub about college ruled paper came from, I have no idea. But, what I do know is that my experiences thus far in college have no indication that college ruled paper is actually required for assignments.

I rest my case.

My very boring, pretty damn pointless, case.

The Rating: 26/100

Pro: It helps to keep us pesky college kids in line!

Con: I don’t really understand why there has to be different line length regulations and titles. It’s pretty persnickety.

About me:

My name is Jack Russillo and I’m a college freshman who just moved to the big city (Seattle) from a small town in the middle of nowhere. Every day I rate something on a scale of 1 to 100.

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Jack Russillo

A Pacific Northwest archipelagan exploring the outdoors and spreading culturally-respectful and sustainable perspectives on the preservation of natural spaces.