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Printable Pica Ruler

I randomly decided I wanted a pica ruler, so I made one. This ruler is a six-sided triangle ruler with inches, decimal inches, centimeters, picas, agates, and points.

Legal size paper is probably accessible for enough people, right?

Download the PDF Here.

lettersized Pica ruler PDF

*Edit: Ruler Updated. Numbering should be correct now.

** Updated now with a letter sized ruler!

Also, if you are having password problems, use Acrobat to open, not Illustrator

  1. 2011/06/24 at 2:33 pm

    This is utterly fantastic. Thank you!

  2. Kate Hunter
    2011/10/28 at 11:19 am

    Just what I needed, when I needed it! Thanks so much.

  3. Grant Roberts
    2011/11/04 at 8:19 pm

    There is an error. Look at 52 picas. That should be 54, and increments of 6 thereafter. One of my students caught that. Other than that it is a great tool.

    • Canvai
      2011/11/04 at 9:13 pm

      Thanks!!! Will fix as soon as I get a chance!

  4. Corinne Hardt
    2012/08/01 at 5:58 pm

    This would be even greater if I could open your PDF! It is password protected.

    • Canvai
      2012/08/02 at 6:10 am

      I just tried it and it seems fine. here is the direct link.

      Click to access pica_ruler.pdf

      someone also noted i did some math wrong on one of the units and I haven’t gotten around to changing it yet. So there’s that too.

  5. 2012/09/17 at 9:54 pm

    We printed the scale in longitudinal mode using 11×17 paper. Scale very good. We corrected the scale notation for 9″, 10″, 11″ and 12″. (Pica’s).

    • Canvai
      2012/09/17 at 10:25 pm

      Thank You.
      Someone pointed out the notation error. I have the original file archived so I havn’t had a chance to fix it yet. I really must get on it.

  6. Rob
    2013/10/07 at 5:12 pm

    Excellent. After spending two decades providing news publishing solutions, I have several retired pica poles hanging in my home office. A decade later while at a client site today, someone needed to verify the point size in a PDF file – your 6-side solution was just what I needed to print and do the verfication! Thank you.

  7. 2014/01/17 at 9:31 pm

    This is extremely helpful atm. Thank you!

  8. Barrett
    2014/04/29 at 8:19 pm

    Thank you very much:)

  9. 2015/03/03 at 3:28 pm

    Some minor issues: pica and inches are not exact. 6 pica DO NOT perfectly translated into 1 INCH. You also may want to STRONGLY BOLD to print this ruler with LEGAL size paper. MAYBE EVEN put the text “PRINT USING LEGAL SIZE PAPER” in an are outside of your digital ruler in your PDF file. I had so many student comparing their print out to my metal line gauge and stating it wasn’t correct.

  10. 2015/03/03 at 3:30 pm

    Some minor issues: pica and inches are not exact. 6 pica DO NOT perfectly translated into 1 INCH. You also may want to STRONGLY BOLD to print this ruler with LEGAL size paper. MAYBE EVEN put the text “PRINT USING LEGAL SIZE PAPER” in an area outside of your digital rulers in your PDF file. I had so many students comparing their print out to my metal line gauge and stating it wasn’t correct.

    • Canvai
      2015/03/04 at 6:12 am

      That is a wonderful suggestion!. In fact, I was printing a copy of this earlier in the year and had forgotten completely that I designed it for Legal size paper! I will also look at the alignment issues you talked about. Thanks! I should probably also make a smaller one for Letter size

  1. 2016/10/06 at 1:05 am

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