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The not so simple answer is maybe but I would not advise it. It depends on a large number of factors.

To explain, each printer has certain paper stock requirements for best results (such as the weight, size, brightness, smoothness, and more) and using paper that does not meet one (or more) of those specifications can lead to issues such as poor printing, paper jams, or even damage to the printer itself. It also depends on the type of printer that you intend to use with the notebook paper.


Back years ago when I was in high school, there was a time when I had run out of continuous feed paper for my dot matrix (now usually referred to as impact) printer, so I used single sheets of notebook paper (making sure to keep the 3-ring perforations beyond the travel limits of the printhead) to get what I needed printed out until I could get to the store. This worked okay because the dot matrix printers were very forgiving, just like typewriters. However, nowadays with inkjet and laser printers, things have changed.


Inkjet printers, as most people know, use liquid ink to print to the paper and as they are designed to print on certain types of stock, they know how much ink can be absorbed and still produce a decent image. Notebook paper falls out of that standard since it is so thin and light by comparison. The standard bond that inkjets expect is between 19 and 24 pounds. Notebook typically is around 12 pounds. This means that there is less paper to absorb the ink and, therefore, can lead to smearing as it passes through each successive part of the paper path which can lead to a wet ink mess when additional pages pass through. It also means that the finished result could look more like a Rorschach card than what you wanted.


Laser printers on the other hand use dry toner powder to create the print image (as anyone who has ever spilled toner on their clothes knows). The printing process works by charging the paper with a positive static charge (just as the image drum is so charged but more weakly) and the toner is given a negative charge. The image drum passes through the toner cartridge and then spins around to meet the paper at which point the higher charge attracts the toner from the drum and transfers it to the printed page. Now the problem here is that all this depends on certain properties of the paper ssuch as the amount of charge that the paper will be able to accept and the thinner bond of notebook paper may not be able to accept enough to transfer the image. This leads to an "after-image" remaining on the drum that gets scraped off into a waste container to prepare the drum for the next image. Since it has not transferred much (if any) of the image, that means that the precious (and moderately expensive) toner has gone to waste. It also means that if you continue to try to use notebook paper, the smallish waste container will fill up to capacity before the toner cartridge is used up and could lead to other issues such as spilled toner inside the printer or "echoes" of the previous print job on subsequent pages or even various random splotch marks on the pages.


Add to this another issue which is processing by the fusing assembly. This part (sometimes called simply the fuser) is the hot part typically in the back of the printer that melts the toner powder and bonds it to the paper. Just like the image drum, it expects certain standards of paper to pass through it for optimal printing. When something as thin as notebook paper passes through, a number of things can happen: the paper could get too hot and scorch (turn brown) or it could curl and not feed out of its exit correctly and not pass to the output roller assembly properly, in either case causing a paper jam.


On top of this, it could be that the paper won't even be picked up correctly at the start of the entire process. If it is picked up, it might be fully fed, causing the paper to feed askew, slip into the path of the paper feed gears, or tear bits off so as to leave them behind in the printer causing sensor problems or other issues not easily resolved by the owner.


So, after all this, if you want to use notebook paper, you can but I would be wary of making that decision lightly. It's probably better to save your notebook paper for your pencils and pens.

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10y ago

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