Meaning & use
sheet of paper
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Meaning
nouncountable
One thin, flat, usually rectangular piece of paper that is separate from any pad, book, or bundle.
Grammar: Countable: a sheet of paper, two sheets of paper; 'paper' alone is uncountable.
Patterns
- a sheet of paper for something
- write something on a sheet of paper
She tore a sheet of paper out of her notebook and wrote down the address.
Please hand in your answers on a separate sheet of paper.
He folded a single sheet of paper into a small boat.
Word forms
| plural | sheets of paper |
|---|
Common combinations
- a blank sheet of paper
- The exam began with a blank sheet of paper and a single question.
- a clean sheet of paper
- Take a clean sheet of paper and draw a map of your street.
- fold a sheet of paper
- Fold a sheet of paper in half to make a card.
- crumple a sheet of paper
- He crumpled the sheet of paper and tossed it in the bin.
- a sheet of A4 paper
- Print the form on a sheet of A4 paper.
Synonyms and how they differ
- page
- A page is one side of a sheet that belongs to a book or document, whereas a sheet of paper is the loose physical piece.
- leaf
- Leaf is a more formal or technical word for one sheet in a book, with a page on each side, and is rarely used for loose paper.
- slip
- A slip is a small, narrow piece of paper, much smaller than a full sheet.
Word family
Commonly confused: sheet of paper or page?
sheet of paper vs page
A page is one side of a sheet in a book or document. A single sheet of paper has two sides, so it gives you two pages when bound.
Practice
The teacher asked us to write our names at the top of a clean ___ and pass it forward.
Choose one answer.
'Sheet of paper' is the fixed countable phrase for one loose piece. 'Page of paper' is not used this way, and the other options reverse or break the pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “sheet of paper”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.