A spindle (or colloquially, a spike) is an upright spike used to temporarily hold papers. "Spindling" or "spiking" is the act of spearing an item onto the spike. A spindle was often used in restaurants to hold orders from the waitstaff to the kitchen. Depending on what sort of records were on a spindle, a string could be put through the holes to bundle the papers together, and the bundle stored. The

journalistic Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the "news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (profes ...

term to "spike" an article refers to one that ends up spindled on an editor's desk rather than forwarded for publication, typically for reasons other than mere

copyedit Copy editing (also known as copyediting and manuscript editing) is the process of revising written material ( copy) to improve readability and fitness, as well as ensuring that text is free of grammatical and factual errors. ''The Chicago Manual o ...

s. Spindling was the middle of three stern prohibitions in the famous injunction historically printed on

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

documents to be processed by computer: "Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate".

References

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