loose-leaf

Loose leaf paper

The term loose leaf is used in the United States, Canada, and some other countries to describe a piece of notebook paper which isn't actually fixed in a spiral notebook. In some places, like the United Kingdom, the phrase loose leaf refers more to the flexible system of storing loose pages in a binder than to the actual paper.

Typically loose leaf paper has straight blue lines with pink margin lines. This type of paper is normally sold in packs of 100 or 200 sheets and are not necessarily sold loose which means they can be torn out of notebooks with perforations. Loose leaf generally has three holes so that the piece of paper can fit into a three-ringed binder.

Most of the time, loose leaf paper comes in two types, which are either wide ruled or college ruled. These two types vary such that college ruled paper has less space between the blue lines, allowing for more rows of writing. Wide ruled paper is intended for use by grade school children and those with larger handwriting.

History

Looseleaf service is a form of publishing invented by Richard Prentice Ettinger in 1913, founder of Prentice Hall. As a 19-year-old assistant to his Princeton University tax professor he was awarded with the then lucrative task of publishing the professor's book at his own risk. The first print run sold well and he ordered a second print run from an outside printing company. On the very day that this second print run arrived the United States Congress changed the tax law enough that the book was outdated. Faced with this challenge Ettinger came up with the idea of cutting the pages (leafs) loose, replacing the few pages where changes in the tax code had occurred, drilling holes through the pages and putting them into a ring-binder. Even though it was more costly it did have the added benefit that all future changes of the tax code could easily be accommodated by simply exchanging single leafs.

See also

• Ruled paper
• Genkō yōshi
• Graph paper
• Post-it note
• Paper size

Resources

• History of Size
• International standard paper sizes
• Pre-Industrial Papermaking

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