Calligraphy · Roman Capitals on A2 · Portrait

About this template

A calligraphic guide sheet for Roman capital practice: cap-height and baseline divisions tuned to the classical Trajan-column letter proportions, with vertical guidelines every 8 mm to help align letterforms. See also: A short reading list on technical drawing standards can help you put any of these grids in their historical and standards-based context.

Best used for

• Roman capital practice
• Inscription and signage layout
• Foundation calligraphy teaching
• Stone-carving letter mock-ups

Why A2 in portrait

Architectural pin-up size - large enough for a complete floor plan at 1:100, still pinnable to a studio wall without sagging. The portrait orientation gives you 420 mm of horizontal run and 594 mm of vertical, which suits tall subjects - elevations, sections, single-column drawings - where the eye reads top-to-bottom. Trim and bleed allowances on consumer printers will normally remove a 5 mm strip from each edge; this grid is generated to remain measurable even after that trim, with no critical content placed inside the printer-margin band.

Standards and lineage

Letter geometry matches the canonical Trajan-column proportions documented by Edward M. Catich in "The Origin of the Serif" (1968). The A2 sheet itself follows ISO 216, and the title-block conventions assumed by this template come from ISO 5457:1999 - the international standard governing how technical drawings are framed, dated, and signed. Background reading: See our scale-and-projection guides for a deeper dive on how all the standards in this lineage interact in practice.

A short history of this grid

Roman capitals were perfected on the Trajan column inscription in 113 AD; Edward Johnston revived their formal study in the early 20th century at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.

Printing notes

For accurate output, print at 100 % scale - never "fit to page", which silently shrinks the sheet by 4–6 % and breaks every measured cell. Use a laser printer if the grid will be traced over with ink, since inkjet inks bleed through technical pen and pencil. If your printer cannot handle the full A2 sheet, scale the SVG to the next-smaller paper size before printing - every GridCraft grid is delivered as vector artwork so it scales cleanly. The downloaded SVG carries the physical sheet dimensions in millimetres, so a compliant print driver should print at 1:1 by default. Our how-to-print guide walks through the calibration test in 30 seconds.

Designer's note

Specialty grids reward the discipline of choosing the right sheet for the right drawing. A Calligraphy · Roman Capitals on A2 is not a one-size-fits-all sheet - it's a calibrated tool for a specific class of problem. Use it where the page suits the drawing; reach for a different sheet when it doesn't. The catalogue is large precisely so you don't have to compromise on the projection, scale or sheet size.