Per-page initials boxes and date fields sized for handwriting

Why this block is harder than it looks

These are the only boxes in a document sized for a pen rather than for type, and they are almost always drawn too small, because they are designed by looking at them on a screen where nobody is writing in them. The second difficulty is that an initials box has to appear on every page, which means it belongs in the page margin, and page margin content is subject to a different and smaller set of layout rules than the body.

The decisions that make it work

Reasons rather than a description of the code. Each of these is a choice that has a wrong answer, and the wrong answer is usually the default.

• Size for handwriting: 10mm of height and 25mm of width is a workable minimum for initials, and a date needs about 40mm.
• Put per-page initials in a page margin box so they repeat automatically, rather than trying to inject them into the flow of every page.
• Draw an open box or a baseline rule, not a filled tint. People write on white and a tinted box gets left empty.
• Label it once, small, outside the box. A label inside the box is written over.
• Where the date is to be handwritten, do not pre-print a format mask with slashes. It constrains the handwriting into an unreadable shape and different people fill masks differently.
• Keep the box clear of the trim area and of anything the printer cannot reach, since these are frequently printed on cheap devices with generous unprintable margins.

The fragment

Markup and the CSS it needs, and nothing else. It expects a document that already has a page rule and a base stylesheet, so paste it into one rather than opening it on its own.

<style>
  @page {
    size: A4;
    margin: 25mm 20mm 30mm;

    @bottom-right {
      /* repeats on every page without touching the flow */
      content: element(initials);
    }
  }

  .initials-box {
    position: running(initials);
    text-align: right;
    font-size: 7pt;
    color: #666;
  }
  .initials-box .label {
    display: block;
    margin-bottom: 1.5mm;
    letter-spacing: 0.06em;
    text-transform: uppercase;
  }
  .initials-box .box {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 25mm;
    height: 10mm;                 /* sized for a pen, not for type */
    border: 0.5pt solid #999;
  }
</style>

<div class="initials-box">
  <span class="label">Initials</span>
  <span class="box"></span>
</div>

What breaks when it is built the obvious way

Making the box the height of a line of text. It looks proportionate on screen and it is about a third of the height a person needs, so the initials overflow it and the document looks like it was filled in badly rather than designed badly.

How to prove it survived pagination

Print a page and initial it with a real pen, then have somebody with larger handwriting do the same. If either set of initials touches the border, the box is too small. Then confirm the box appears on every page including the last.

Where it sits in a finished document

This page is one block. The document it belongs to has a page rule, a base stylesheet, a header and everything else around it, and repeating all of that here would make thirty pages that say the same thing. The tenancy agreement template is a complete file with this block already in it, so take that and change the fragment rather than assembling one from parts. The property doing most of the work here is covered on its own page, with the support caveats that belong there rather than here.

Frequently asked

Other parts of a document

The blocks that sit next to this one, and one from the next group along so you are not sealed inside a single kind of problem.