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Continuous stationery (UK) or continuous form paper (US) is
paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...
which is designed for use with
dot-matrix A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is al ...
and
line printer A line printer prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line. Most early line printers were impact printers. Line printers are mostly associated with unit record equipment and the early days of digital computing, but the ...
s with appropriate paper-feed mechanisms. Other names include ''fan-fold paper'', ''sprocket-feed paper'', ''burst paper'', ''lineflow'' (New Zealand), ''tractor-feed paper'', and ''pin-feed paper''. It can be single-ply (usually
woodfree uncoated paper Woodfree uncoated paper (WFU), uncoated woodfree paper (UWF) or uncoated fine papers are manufactured using wood that has been processed into a chemical pulp that removes the lignin from the wood fibers and may also contain 5–25% fillers. Both s ...
) or multi-ply (either with
carbon paper Carbon paper (originally carbonic paper) consists of sheets of paper which create one or more copies simultaneously with the creation of an original document when inscribed by a typewriter or ballpoint pen. History In 1801, Pellegrino Turri, ...
between the paper layers, or multiple layers of
carbonless copy paper Carbonless copy paper (CCP), non-carbon copy paper, or NCR paper (No Carbon Required, taken from the initials of its creator, National Cash Register) is a type of coated paper designed to transfer information written on the front onto sheets beneat ...
), often described as
multipart stationery Multipart or multi-part stationery is paper that is blank, or preprinted as a form to be completed, comprising a stack of several copies, either on carbonless paper or plain paper interleaved with carbon paper. The stationery may be bound into book ...
or forms. Continuous stationery is often used when the final print medium is less critical in terms of the appearance at the edges, and when continuously connected individual sheets are not inconvenient for the application. Individual sheets can be separated at the perforation (leaving a slight serration), and sheets also have edges with punched holes, which also can be removed at the perforation (one typical format).


Shape and form

Most continuous form
paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...
is punched longitudinally along both edges with regularly spaced engagement holes that engage with
sprocket A sprocket, sprocket-wheel or chainwheel is a profiled wheel with teeth that mesh with a chain, track or other perforated or indented material. The name 'sprocket' applies generally to any wheel upon which radial projections engage a chain passi ...
wheels or toothed belts on the "tractor" which move the paper through the printer. It is usually
perforated A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes collectively are called a ''perforation''. The process of creating perforations is called perfor ...
transversely with a line of closely spaced holes or slits which form a tear edge that allows it to be torn neatly into separate pages after printing; when fed through the printer the paper is simply a continuous sheet. After printing the separated sheets can be held in binders by using the sprocket holes when simply required as a record. Alternatively some types of continuous form paper also have longitudinal perforations along each edge inside the engagement holes, allowing the strips with sprocket holes to be torn off the printed page. The tear perforations may be short slits, which leave noticeable serrations when torn apart, acceptable for many business documents such as invoices or basic data (such as computer code). Where better appearance is necessary the perforations can be much finer, leaving an almost perfectly smooth edge (microperforations, microperf for short). Continuous form paper of all types remains in production, although largely supplanted with the introduction of fast laser printers with single-sheet feed. Continuous stationery printed on a suitable printer is typically cheaper than laser printing although the output is of lower quality. If an impact printer is used multiple simultaneous copies can be printed on multipart forms. Many laser printers can print on both sides of the paper (duplex printing), which is not possible with continuous stationery. Standard perforations are 5/32 inch in diameter (3.96875mm, sometimes called 4mm) and are spaced at 1/2 inch center-to-center. Tear-off horizontal perforations at page top/bottom are exactly in-between standard perforations, at whatever regular interval is used for that particular paper. When the perforated edges of the paper are manufactured so that they tear off the pages in strips, those strips are known as "perfory."


Common types

The highest grade of continuous form paper uses a heavy bond weight similar to typing paper. Perforations are very small and close together, referred to as microperforations or microperf, to allow the sheets to be separated and the sprocket hole strip ("perfory," see "Shape and Form" section) torn off leaving a very smooth edge almost as if
guillotine A guillotine is an apparatus designed for efficiently carrying out executions by beheading. The device consists of a tall, upright frame with a weighted and angled blade suspended at the top. The condemned person is secured with stocks at th ...
-cut. The cheapest grade of continuous form paper is often preprinted with bars of light green lines across its width, to facilitate following a line of information across the page, a type commonly referred to as '' green bar'', ''music '' or ''music-ruled'' paper. It is a very lightweight bond, usually without slit perforations to remove the engagement hole strips. Common sizes: * 241mm x 279mm (9.5in x 11in) * 381mm x 279mm (15in x 11in)


Printing, separation and binding


Printing

Printing on continuous forms was at one time the basis for many business operations, not the least of which the direct mail industry.
Reader's Digest ''Reader's Digest'' is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in midtown Manhattan. The magazine was founded in 1922 by DeWitt Wallace and his wi ...
and
Publisher's Clearing House Publishers Clearing House (PCH) is a direct marketing company that markets merchandise and magazine subscriptions with sweepstakes and prize-based games. It was founded in 1953 by Harold Mertz to replace door-to-door magazine subscription sales ...
relied heavily on these forms to promote their products (most often via sweepstakes), issue billing, address form letter correspondence, and manage their own business data needs. Continuous form paper is used in some of the fastest types of printing systems, some of which print text at a rate of 20,000 lpm (lines per minute). This will produce about 400 pages per minute, using about 8-11 large boxes of paper for every hour of printing (affected by character density, and other details such as paper weight). Direct mail, as an industry overall, has been accused of being environmentally unfriendly, due to a high percentage of the mail being discarded without being read.


Decollator

A decollator separates multi-part continuous form paper into separate stacks of one-part continuous form paper and may also remove the carbon paper.


Burster

A burster is a machine that separates one-part continuous form paper into separate, individual, sheets along the transverse perforations. A burster was typically used with printed continuous form paper applications such as mass-mail advertising, invoices, and account statements. The machine has two sets of rollers; the first (infeed) runs at a given speed, the second (outfeed) located a specific distance away, running at a higher speed. The first form is gripped by the infeed roller and moves under the second roller. Due to the higher speed, the forms is stretched taut, forcing the perforation against a knife, thus separating the form from the continuous form. The continuous form paper then advances into the feed rollers to burst the next sheet. Bursting is often a high-speed process that allows the continuous form paper to feed in at a steady rate, with burst pages either stacked or fed into a single-sheet conveyance to the next paper processing stage. Burster equipment and paper manufactures had to generate perforation specifications so that the paper perforations reliably separated under the force of pulling the sheets apart and not tear down into the printed part of the sheet. Large continuous documents might not be split into separate sheets. By continuously folding two single sided printed sheets back-to-back and binding together a stack of continuous form paper along one of the folded edges, it is possible to flip through the stack like a book of double-sided printed pages. With this technique, the stack is normally flipped top to bottom or bottom to top rather than side to side.


History

This paper type was developed for use with autographic registers around 1910, was later adopted by
tabulating machine The tabulating machine was an electromechanical machine designed to assist in summarizing information stored on punched cards. Invented by Herman Hollerith, the machine was developed to help process data for the 1890 U.S. Census. Later models w ...
s beginning in the 1920s, and its use grew with the introduction of commercial computers in the 1950s. IBM cards, preprinted, optionally numbered and pre-punched, were available as continuous form cards and were used for checks and other documents. Continuous form paper became widely used and well known to the general public in the 1980s due to the development of
microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
s and inexpensive
dot-matrix A dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images. Most types of modern technology use dot matrices for display of information, including mobile phones, televisions, and printers. The system is al ...
consumer printers. Continuous form paper began to disappear from the consumer market in the 1990s as
desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
, and
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
document generation became more popular and widespread. Consumers were willing to pay more to get a
laser printer Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics (and moderate-quality photographs) by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively-charged cylinder called a "drum" to d ...
or
inkjet printer Inkjet printing is a type of computer printing that recreates a digital image by propelling droplets of ink onto paper and plastic substrates. Inkjet printers were the most commonly used type of printer in 2008, and range from small inexpensi ...
that could produce near-typeset-quality documents. These printers accept standard size cut sheets (letter, legal or A4) of paper and do not require continuous form paper. Continuous form paper continues to be used in specialty commercial and industrial markets and, as of 2021, is still available from large retailers of
office supplies Office supplies are consumables and equipment regularly used in offices by businesses and other organizations, by individuals engaged in written communications, recordkeeping or bookkeeping, janitorial and cleaning, and for storage of supplies o ...
such as
OfficeMax OfficeMax is an American office supplies retailer founded in 1988. It is now a subsidiary of The ODP Corporation, which is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. As of December 2012, OfficeMax operated 941 stores in 47 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S ...
and Staples.


See also

*
Film perforations Film perforations, also known as perfs and sprocket holes, are the holes placed in the film stock during manufacturing and used for transporting (by sprockets and claws) and steadying (by pin registration) the film. Films may have different types ...


Notes and references

* The Free Online Dictionary of Computing


External links


Related info at the Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing

Photo of a decollator in operation

Photo of a decollator and a burster
{{Paper products Paper products Stationery Computer printers