Old graph paper

Is this how all engineering paper is (or pads)? Took a quick look on Amazon and only one had the same or similar pattern.

What's a good brand?

Dot grids are nice too. They're a good compromise between blank pages and graph paper: http://rhodiapads.com/collections_dot_everything.php

> so when scanned it isn't visible

I don't much see the point, these days; presuming you work in black, you can filter out the grids and guides of any light color (green, blue, etc.) just by scanning in color, picking out a color-curve that exists in black but not in the guides (e.g. red) and turning off the others.

Before digital image editing, some scanners and cameras were set up to automatically perform an equivalent to these steps by using a lens to filter out the blue channel, thus allowing graphic designers to sketch in blue "non-repro" pencil, ink on top of their sketch, and then have the sketch-lines disappear in the scan. But today, any random color can be your "non-repro" color if you have a copy of Photoshop Elements.

As a college freshman, my physics professor took me aside and said that I'd never pass the course unless I could read my own handwriting. He pointed to several mistakes in my work that were obvious transcription errors from one line to the next.

He sent me to the college bookstore with a shopping list that included a pad of engineering paper and some mechanical pencils.

I'm sure that the psychological motivation was as important as the actual hardware, but my handwriting and my grades did improve after that.

I'm a dedicated engineering pad user myself, but I've never felt the need to scan the results, so I can't speak to that.

The reason I use it is that the grid just doesn't overwhelm the content in the way that it is with standard graph paper. Grid lines should always be muted -- the principle applies to graph paper as much as it does to charts.

Also you didn't mention it, but engineering pads also have the ten row grouping mentioned in the article.

High school wasn't all fun, but one of the definite low points was breaking out one of your new notebooks and discovering that you accidentally bought a ten-pack of wide-rule notebooks.

I, uh, guess I was a nerd.

I've been going through a lot of Khan Academy mathematics courses lately.

Oh, oh, how I wish I could have used graph paper for my math scratch paper in school. Writing out my work neatly is pretty much imperative for working through to the correct answer. I have a tendency to mis-transcribe from one step to another, and keeping everything neat helps with that.

Graph paper lets me line everything up not just horizontally but vertically, step by step, making it super obvious when I've accidentally, say, flipped a sign or missed a coefficient. All my math teachers in school insisted on wide rule, though...

Graph paper is also great for making tidy indented lists/outlines. I took notes on an iPad with Notability for about a year, and the graph papers made it very easy to keep notes organized when stuff scrolls off the screen.

These days, I am really impressed with the notebooks made by Vela Workings, they are at least as nice as Moleskine's offerings but at slightly better prices. Their E2 Engineer Research Notebook is my current favorite, and the N2 is a close second.

http://www.velaworkings.com/shop.html

Its very much not hard to find triangular graph paper today. It may be hard to walk into a brick-and-mortar retail store and find it (though I wouldn't be surprised if campus bookstores in places where it was used in courses carried it), but its quite easy to find online, both printable and pre-printed.

So there's really no real reason anyone should be relying on "badly photocopied versions of an ancient sheet of triangular graph paper" (that's not saying that there aren't people doing it, just that there's no good reason for them to be doing it.)

If you rotate the triangular grid, you get an isometric grid, which is nice for sketching 3d models

I use the VELA lay-flat softcovers, and am super happy.

Looks nice.

I'm currently working my way through a Whitelines spiral bound graph paper notebook that I'm pretty pleased with.

This was my thought - the main use for me was D&D!

Impressively they even have Smith charts, for a graphical representation of RF transmission lines.

For a closely related good time hit images.google.com and try nomogram and nomograph for various paper and pencil based calculators.

I spent many an hour wargaming on hex grids in the olden days.

(edited to add: Oh my. I suppose its inevitable people would print on demand hex notebooks: http://www.lulu.com/shop/jed-mcclure/albatross-dungeon-noteb... )

Here's one that offers fewer graph papers, but allows for customizable grid size: http://gridzzly.com

Please include http:// when you post URLs.

Or start very long lines with four spaces.

I learned to write on Seyès grid paper (exactly like this: https://wonderpens.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/how-to-use-seyes...).

There's a lot more than square grid. Though all my note books are 5x5mm grid papers these days (and usually square: http://rhodiapads.com/collections_orange_le_carre.php)

Maybe. I used them through college some 20 years ago prefered the same for years afterwards but have switched to yellow legal pads for temp scratch surface and https://workflowy.com/ for note taking. Not sure why, but I like the yellow.