Thinking on Paper

Above is the back of the card band wrapped around a new Leuchtturm1917 A5 ruled notebook in mint green. As well as the band, the book encloses a leaflet with some information about the Leuchtturm range; a sheet with half a dozen stickers on it for “labelling the title and spine of your […] book when you want to archive it” and “a “thank you very much for purchasing” card. I’ve been using Leuchtturm notebooks for the last decade and end up getting a new one every year or so. I like the quality of the paper & the binding; and I appreciate the high page-count; I’m less keen, however, on the narrow ruling they use.

One application where ISO-216 strikes me as unsatisfactory is that of notebook sizes. I find A4 unwieldy for use around the home; while A5, though not a bad size, is smaller than I prefer. Leuchtturm of course offer an intermediate range in B5 size which I should try – so far I haven’t, as these are less widely-available in the UK than their A4 and A5 lines. The old British Quarto sizes are ideal for me, and I’ve had some luck obtaining thick, wider-ruled vintage 7” x 9" books, though there one is at the mercy of what may or may not turn up on eBay every once in a long while. I’ve tried Stamford notebooks which are lovely, if expensive. They do a ‘Crown Quarto’ size which is just right for me. Their ruling, moreover, is wider and more to my liking than Leuchtturm’s. Their page-counts, on the other hand, are less generous. If Stamford offered a double-thickness ruled Crown Quarto book I’d gladly pay a premium for it.

When I’m working I prefer the extra room afforded by an A4 notebook. The Collins Ideal 6448 A4 book has been my choice for that purpose in recent years. It has good-enough quality paper, wide ruling and a generous 384 pages. It takes me nearly a year to fill one. It’s true (to an extent) for me that “writing by hand is thinking on paper”. Making handwritten notes has worked as an aide-mémoire since my school days. And I’ve scribbled my way to the solution of many a workplace puzzle. In my case, the benefits of writing by hand tend to be short-to-medium term – as a sort of extension of my thought-space. Trying to search back through my work notebooks for older information is often an unfruitful exercise in frustration: in such cases the searchability of electronic text wins out almost every time.