On the line
I don’t like writing on ruled paper. I would if I have to, but I despise them.
The feeling has haunted me for a long time, but I haven't been able to put a finger on it until two years ago. I thought I hated those spiral bound notebook because the paper quality was so terrible that even pencils ghost through to the other side, the covers invariably falls off before the three months mark, the metal spiral deforms into a knot of wire that tears the pages as I turn them, and by the end of the semester the notebook would be shedding pages daily. But I also feel my heart drop when I find a beautifully bound notebook and felt the smooth thick pages between my fingers, only to look at it and see the rows and rows of lines tearing across the pristine surface.
This aversion to lines can probably be traced back to my elementary days in Vietnam learning the Copperplate cursive font. The two-millimeter lined paper we were forced to use was to make sure every stroke had the proper position, length, and slant. Anything out of place was punished with a strike on the hand. I eventually got over my distaste for plastic rulers like the ones that used to leave red marks on my hands, but lines still strike me as suffocating.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school in America that I realized there was more than one way to write. When I asked my ESL teacher if the stroke in the middle of the letter Z was shorter than or equal to the top and bottom strokes, she said it was up to me, I could even leave it out if I want. “Up to me”? “If I want”? I was allowed to write however I wanted! I took advantage of that freedom to the extreme. My handwriting was illegible. It was a messy assortment of print and cursive during the years when I was experimenting to my heart’s desire.
But even with this newfound freedom, I can't escape the years of training forced upon me when I was little. When writing on a ruled sheet of paper, I still feel the urge to follow the lines that tell me to put my pen just above the straight blue mark and make evenly spaced rows of words that all look the same. I forced myself to write out of the line to break out of the habit, but they still bother me. The letters needed to just graze the top of the line drawn on the paper. They just had to.
But what if I want to print a big title, make a little side note, or accommodate a hefty calculus equation? Not everything can fit in the fixed space between two economically mass-printed lines that don’t seem to care what I have to say. They just stubbornly hold their ground as if they are the most important thing on the page and I had to write around them. My handwriting has to change to adapt to the situation, but the lines can’t accommodate change. I need the flexibility to more accurately represent the thoughts in my head. My thoughts are not linear. They are not merely a trail of words. They interconnect in ways that words alone can’t describe. Writing on a blank canvas gives me the liberty to visualize those thoughts.
Without those lines, I am truly free. My words go where I put my pen. I can doodle, draw graphs, sketch diagrams, or squiggle arrows wherever I want. I can write in any direction, with no blue marks cutting through my words as if to remind me I’m out of line. There is no margin, no boundary telling me I can’t write on the other side of the line even though there is clearly space there.
So I reuse the backs of handouts and steal the one-sided office paper from the unclaimed papers bin in the library. I'm saving trees and my sanity at the same time.
The feeling has haunted me for a long time, but I haven't been able to put a finger on it until two years ago. I thought I hated those spiral bound notebook because the paper quality was so terrible that even pencils ghost through to the other side, the covers invariably falls off before the three months mark, the metal spiral deforms into a knot of wire that tears the pages as I turn them, and by the end of the semester the notebook would be shedding pages daily. But I also feel my heart drop when I find a beautifully bound notebook and felt the smooth thick pages between my fingers, only to look at it and see the rows and rows of lines tearing across the pristine surface.
This aversion to lines can probably be traced back to my elementary days in Vietnam learning the Copperplate cursive font. The two-millimeter lined paper we were forced to use was to make sure every stroke had the proper position, length, and slant. Anything out of place was punished with a strike on the hand. I eventually got over my distaste for plastic rulers like the ones that used to leave red marks on my hands, but lines still strike me as suffocating.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school in America that I realized there was more than one way to write. When I asked my ESL teacher if the stroke in the middle of the letter Z was shorter than or equal to the top and bottom strokes, she said it was up to me, I could even leave it out if I want. “Up to me”? “If I want”? I was allowed to write however I wanted! I took advantage of that freedom to the extreme. My handwriting was illegible. It was a messy assortment of print and cursive during the years when I was experimenting to my heart’s desire.
But even with this newfound freedom, I can't escape the years of training forced upon me when I was little. When writing on a ruled sheet of paper, I still feel the urge to follow the lines that tell me to put my pen just above the straight blue mark and make evenly spaced rows of words that all look the same. I forced myself to write out of the line to break out of the habit, but they still bother me. The letters needed to just graze the top of the line drawn on the paper. They just had to.
But what if I want to print a big title, make a little side note, or accommodate a hefty calculus equation? Not everything can fit in the fixed space between two economically mass-printed lines that don’t seem to care what I have to say. They just stubbornly hold their ground as if they are the most important thing on the page and I had to write around them. My handwriting has to change to adapt to the situation, but the lines can’t accommodate change. I need the flexibility to more accurately represent the thoughts in my head. My thoughts are not linear. They are not merely a trail of words. They interconnect in ways that words alone can’t describe. Writing on a blank canvas gives me the liberty to visualize those thoughts.
Without those lines, I am truly free. My words go where I put my pen. I can doodle, draw graphs, sketch diagrams, or squiggle arrows wherever I want. I can write in any direction, with no blue marks cutting through my words as if to remind me I’m out of line. There is no margin, no boundary telling me I can’t write on the other side of the line even though there is clearly space there.
So I reuse the backs of handouts and steal the one-sided office paper from the unclaimed papers bin in the library. I'm saving trees and my sanity at the same time.
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