Free Genkō Yōshi Manuscript Paper Maker (原稿用紙 / 作文纸)

Worked example

Choose "Try a sample" with the default settings (Japanese rules, vertical, 20×20). The text box fills with a short school essay of 88 characters, the title 夏休みの思い出 and the name 山田花子. The page reports "Fits on 1 sheet of 400 squares" and "88 characters · 7 lines · 7 of 20 lines used on the last sheet". The 7 lines are the title (indented two squares), the name (right-aligned, with one empty square after it) and five lines of essay. At the end of the first essay line the 。 that would have started the next line is set small in the corner of the last square instead, as school rules require. The button reads "Download PDF (1 sheet)" and saves 夏休みの思い出-20x20.pdf; on the default US Letter paper that page is landscape and each square is about 9.0 mm wide.

Which settings to use, and the limits

• Choose Direction and Rules separately. "Direction" is "Vertical (縦書き)" or "Horizontal (横书)", and "Rules" is "Japanese" or "Chinese". Japanese rules indent each paragraph by one square (none if it starts with 「, 『 or an opening bracket), leave a blank square after ！ or ？ when the sentence goes on, indent the title by two squares and right-align the name. Chinese rules indent by two squares and centre the title. English pages start on Vertical and Japanese, and Chinese pages start on Horizontal and Chinese.
• Pick the sheet size, then read the sheet count. Under "Squares per line × lines" choose 20×20 (400), 20×10 (200), 20×15 (300) or 20×25 (500). The headline then says how many sheets of that size the text fills, for example "Fills 2 sheets of 400 squares", and the line below gives characters, lines and how many lines the last sheet uses. The count is by lines, not characters: a short last line still takes a whole line, and the title, the name and every blank line between paragraphs count too.
• Match the paper to your printer. "Paper" offers A4, B4, B5 and US Letter, and English pages start on US Letter. The PDF page is that paper size, and the sheet turns to landscape when that makes the squares larger. The vertical 20×20 sheet is a landscape page with squares of about 8.8 mm on A4, 9.0 mm on US Letter and 11.1 mm on B4. Squares never grow past 12 mm. Print at 100% ("Actual size") so the squares keep the size the layout gave them.
• Leave the text empty for blank sheets. With "Your text (leave empty for blank paper)" empty, a "Sheets" box appears and sets how many blank sheets the PDF has, from 1 to 20. Vertical 20×20 and 20×10 sheets get the centre 柱 with its fishtail marks. Horizontal sheets get count marks 100, 200 and so on beside every fifth row of 20 squares. The squares per line and lines are printed at the bottom right of each sheet, and a page number at the bottom left when there is more than one.
• Choose a font and a line colour, and know what loads. "Font" offers Textbook (Klee One), Regular script (楷书) and Running script (行书), and "Line colour" offers Brown, Green, Blue and Grey. Your text is not uploaded, but the font files are fetched from our font host the first time they are needed. The preview switches to them once they load, and the PDF waits up to 20 seconds before it falls back to a font on your device. Title takes up to 40 characters and Name up to 30.
• Know how the text is placed in the squares. Each new line in your text starts a new paragraph. Half-width (ASCII) letters and digits go two to a square and full-width characters one. Closing punctuation such as 。 、 or 」 that would start a line hangs small in the last square of the line before, and an opening bracket never ends a line. In vertical text the long vowel mark, dashes and brackets are turned 90 degrees, and small kana and punctuation are nudged toward the corner of the square. A full-width space gives one blank square; regular spaces also give one, and several in a row count once.

Common problems and how to fix them

It says "The PDF could not be made. Reload the page and try again."

Something failed while the PDF was being built, for example the PDF library not loading or the browser failing to draw the character images. Reload the page, enter the text again and press the button once more. If it keeps happening with a long text, make the PDF in two parts by using half of the text each time.

The characters are in a plain font on my device, not the handwriting style I chose.

The handwriting fonts are loaded from our font host when they are first needed. If that request is blocked or slow, the text is drawn in a font on your device. Check your connection, reload the page and wait for the preview to show the chosen font before you press the download button. The PDF waits up to 20 seconds for the fonts and then goes ahead without them. Choosing a different "Font" also works if one face failed to load.

It says "Fills 2 sheets of 400 squares" for a text I expected to fit on one.

The count is by lines. The title and name lines count, every blank line between paragraphs takes a whole line, and Japanese rules add a one-square indent to each paragraph. For example 401 characters need 21 lines on a 20-square line, so they fill 2 sheets with 1 line on the last one. Remove blank lines between paragraphs, shorten the title, or choose 20×25 (500), which holds 25 lines per sheet.

A 。 or 、 sits small in the corner of the last square, or a square at the end of a line is left empty.

This follows the school rules for squared paper. Closing punctuation cannot start a line, so it hangs in the last square of the line before, and an opening bracket cannot end a line, so the square is left blank and the bracket moves to the next line. There is no switch to turn these rules off. A blank square after ！ or ？ appears only with "Japanese" under "Rules", so choose "Chinese" if you do not want it, bearing in mind that this also changes the indent to two squares.

Printed on A4, the grid is off-centre or the squares are smaller than expected.

English pages start on US Letter, so the PDF page is Letter size. Set "Paper" to A4, B4 or B5 to match your printer, then download again. Print at 100% ("Actual size") instead of "Fit to page", which shrinks the grid. The vertical 20×20 and 20×25 sheets are landscape pages, so turn on automatic rotation or choose landscape in the print dialog. 20×10 and 20×15 stay portrait on A4.

How it compares

A word processor keeps your text editable, while this tool gives you a print-ready PDF. What it adds is the school layout: it sets your text into squares by the Japanese or Chinese rules, counts the sheets, and prints blank sheets too. Its limits are real. The PDF holds the characters as pictures, so you cannot select, search or edit them. There are three fonts. The vertical layout turns or nudges a fixed set of characters instead of using a font's own vertical forms, and it applies the rules described above rather than every rule a teacher might set. Check the preview before printing, and keep your text in your own editor for later changes.