Ticket maker: numbered tickets to print and cut

What is on a sheet

• Tickets, 10 on a sheet: 2 across and 5 down. On paper each is about 3.6 inches wide and 1.9 inches high (about 9 by 5 centimetres).
• Wide tickets, 5 on a sheet: one under another, each about 7.2 inches wide and 1.9 inches high (about 18 by 5 centimetres).
• Large words, up to 40 characters, with small words above and under, up to 40 characters each. All three can be left out: a ticket can be a number and nothing else.
• A number on every ticket, if you want it, counting up by one from the first number you give (0 to 9999).
• A stub, if you want it: the left third of the ticket, about 1.2 inches wide (2.4 inches on a wide ticket), past a line of dots. It carries the same number as the rest of the ticket.
• Two lines on the stub to write on, if you want them, with the words Name and Phone under them: about 1 inch long (2.5 centimetres), or about 2.2 inches (5.5 centimetres) on a wide ticket.
• Lines of long dashes to cut along. Nothing else: no picture, no date, no name of this site.

How the words are set

• The large words are tried on 1 line and on 2. For 2 lines the page finds the break that makes the wider line as narrow as it can be. It keeps whichever gives the larger letters, and 1 line when they come out the same.
• Letters stop at about three tenths of the ticket’s height. A short word such as Tea does not grow past that.
• Words are not split. One very long word has to fit the width whole, so its letters come out small.
• Small words stay on one line. Long ones are made smaller until they fit.
• Every ticket of a set is the same but for its number.
• A margin of about 4 millimetres is kept clear inside every ticket.

Paper, scissors and numbers

• Each sheet is one page, upright, with a margin of half an inch that home printers leave white. The drawing fits Letter paper and A4.
• Up to 200 tickets at a time: 20 sheets of 10, or 40 sheets of the wide ones. For more, print again and begin at the next number.
• Paper from a home printer has no row of holes. To take a stub off, cut along the dots, or fold there and tear.
• Plain paper is thin. A ticket lasts longer in heavier paper, if your printer takes it.
• The letters are your device’s own plain letters (Arial, Helvetica or the nearest it has), so the shapes can differ a little from one device to another. The page measures them on your device before it sets the size.
• It has been tried in one browser’s print preview (Chromium, saved as PDF), not on paper from a real printer.

What this page does not do

• It does not make a ticket hard to copy. Anyone with a printer can draw the same ticket with the same number. A signature, a stamp or colored paper is something a copy would not have.
• It knows no rule about raffles, door prizes or selling tickets. Such rules differ from place to place, and this page has read none of them.
• It does not remember which numbers were printed. Close the page and everything is gone. Write down the last number if more will be printed later.
• It cannot give one ticket its own words: only the number changes from ticket to ticket.
• It has no pictures, no logos and no colors other than black and white.
• It is not a bus or train ticket, and it has nothing to do with a traffic or parking ticket. For a young person who needs a way home, the guide Young and nowhere to stay tells about a free bus ticket.
• A stub with a name and a phone number on it is a paper about a person. This page never sees what is written by hand, but whoever holds the stubs does.

Every time the page is built, a program checks 16 examples worked by hand. Then it makes up 1,500 sets of tickets, with long and short words, accents, stubs, lines and first numbers of every size, and draws each the way the page draws it. A second reader, written separately, takes every ticket back off the drawing. It checks that the count is the count asked for; that the numbers run in order with none missing and none twice; that a stub carries the number of its own ticket; that every line of words is inside its margin and inside its own room; that two lines do not meet; and that the large words could not be larger. The program uses made-up letter widths; the widths of real letters come from your device, and those were tried in one browser only.