Calling a stencil "beating" dotted paper makes it sound like one wins over the other, but you're really just swapping tools for a different job. Dotted notebooks are made for people who want to freehand their layout and use the dots as light guides, not for tracing straight lines every day. Nothing wrong with your stencil trick if speed and neat rows matter most to you, and 5 traced lines does sound way faster. Just don't toss the dotted book in a drawer thinking it lost the fight, because those dots still work great for charts, boxes, and spacing stuff by eye. A stencil gives you fixed spacing whether you want it or not, so you trade some freedom for speed. Both have a place depending on what the page needs.