Printable ruler
Print a page of cut-out rulers in inches, centimeters or both. Each strip is 10 inches long, marked to 1/16 inch and 1 mm. Free, with no sign-up or watermark.
Your ruler preview
Letter landscape · 6 strips · 10 in and 25 cm scales
Scaled to fit your screen. Do not measure the preview; print the PDF.
Print it at actual size
- Download the PDF and load matching Letter or A4 paper.
- In the print dialog, choose Actual size or 100%, not Fit or Shrink. Let the dialog print the page in landscape.
- Print one page and lay a real ruler along a strip, or measure with our scale and margin check. The 4-inch and 10 cm marks are easy spans to compare.
- Cut along the dashed lines. Glue the strip to card stock if you want it to stay straight.
If the marks come out short, the print was scaled down. The printing too small guide covers the settings that cause this. A wrong paper size setting can also shrink the page; see A4 vs Letter.
Inch and centimeter scales
With both scales, the inch edge is on top and the centimeter edge is on the bottom, and both start from the same zero line. The inch scale has marks every 1/16 inch; whole inches are numbered from 0 to 10. The centimeter scale has marks every millimeter; whole centimeters are numbered from 0 to 25 on Letter or 0 to 27 on A4.
One inch is exactly 25.4 millimeters, as defined in NIST Handbook 44, Appendix B (checked October 19, 2026), so ten inches are 254 mm. Every mark is placed from that conversion; the PDF uses 72 points per inch.
Using it as a printable tape measure
A printed strip is flat and stiff, so it works like a paper tape measure for flat things such as a page, a photo, a shelf edge or a box. Cut out a strip, hold the zero end at one edge and read the mark at the other. Each strip spans 10 inches, so for longer lengths, measure in steps and add them up. It cannot follow a curve the way a cloth tape can. For a finger, use the printable ring sizer, which has a strip made for wrapping. Print at 100% and check one strip first, as above.
Tape measure chart: reading the inch and millimeter marks
Tape measures and the strips on this page use the same marks. On an inch scale, the longest mark between numbers is the half inch, then the quarter, eighth and sixteenth marks get shorter. To read a length, take the whole inches, then count sixteenth marks past that inch and reduce the fraction (6 sixteenths is 3/8). The chart lists each mark across one inch with its exact millimeter value, from 25.4 mm per inch.
| Marks past an inch | Fraction | Mark size | Decimal inches | Millimeters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.0625 | 1.6 |
| 2 | 1/8 in | Eighth inch | 0.125 | 3.2 |
| 3 | 3/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.1875 | 4.8 |
| 4 | 1/4 in | Quarter inch | 0.25 | 6.3 |
| 5 | 5/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.3125 | 7.9 |
| 6 | 3/8 in | Eighth inch | 0.375 | 9.5 |
| 7 | 7/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.4375 | 11.1 |
| 8 | 1/2 in | Half inch | 0.5 | 12.7 |
| 9 | 9/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.5625 | 14.3 |
| 10 | 5/8 in | Eighth inch | 0.625 | 15.9 |
| 11 | 11/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.6875 | 17.5 |
| 12 | 3/4 in | Quarter inch | 0.75 | 19.0 |
| 13 | 13/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.8125 | 20.6 |
| 14 | 7/8 in | Eighth inch | 0.875 | 22.2 |
| 15 | 15/16 in | Sixteenth inch | 0.9375 | 23.8 |
| 16 | 1 inch | Whole inch | 1. | 25.4 |
On the centimeter scale, the longest mark is each centimeter, the middle mark is 5 mm and the short marks are single millimeters, so 3.7 cm is 37 mm. To convert, multiply inches by 25.4 for millimeters or divide millimeters by 25.4 for inches.
Is this the same as the printer ruler test page?
No. This page gives you rulers to cut out and use. The printer ruler test page is a diagnostic sheet with scales around the page edges, made to check whether your printer prints at true size and feeds paper straight.
How the layout is measured
The PDF is one landscape page: Letter is 279.4 × 215.9 mm and A4 is 297 × 210 mm. Every mark stays at least 10 mm from the paper edge. Each strip is 26 mm tall, with 6 mm between strips, and its zero mark sits 3 mm inside the cut line. PDF dimensions are checked digitally; physical printer output has not been tested.
Paper dimensions follow Microsoft’s paper-size reference, and Actual size printing follows Adobe’s Acrobat page-size instructions. Your choices stay on this device; see privacy and anonymous download measurement. To measure a finger, see the printable ring sizer. For writing or drawing paper, see the lined paper and graph paper generators. More tools are in the printer tools hub.