Italic calligraphy paper: 4-line guides with diagonal slant lines for consistent letterform angle.

Free italic calligraphy practice paper. 4-line guides with 5° slant lines for keeping consistent letter angle.

Calligraphy Practice Paper | Free Printable Italic PDF

Calligraphy Practice Paper (Italic)

Classical italic uses a 5-nib-width x-height. Meaning if your nib is 2 mm wide, your x-height should be 10 mm. On our paper the x-height region is about 8 mm, suiting a 1.5 mm nib. For thicker nibs, scale up the row by hand or use a larger paper size.

Match nib width to x-height

Beginners over-focus on letter height and ignore slant; the slant is what makes italic look like italic. Run pure slant exercises (just straight angled strokes) for several pages before attempting letterforms.

Practice slant before proportion

The slant lines aren't decoration. They're the alignment guides for vertical strokes in your letters. The stem of 'l', the downstroke of 'a', the spine of 'd': every one of those should fall on a slant line. If they don't, you're not at 5°.

Use one stroke per slant line

Other calligraphy hands (Foundational, Uncial, Blackletter) use different slants and proportions. Foundational is upright (0° slant), Blackletter is 0° but with much tighter x-height ratios. Don't use italic guides for non-italic scripts.