A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, Textile, rags, poaceae, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre e ...

pages that are often

ruled ''Ruled'' is the fifth full-length LP by The Giraffes. Drums, bass and principal guitar tracks recorded at The Bunker in Brooklyn, NY. Vocals and additional guitars recorded at Strangeweather in Brooklyn, NY. Mixed at Studio G in Brooklyn, NY ...

and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing,

drawing Drawing is a visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface. The instruments used to make a drawing are pencils, crayons, pens with inks, brushes with paints, or combinations of these, and in more mod ...

, or scrapbooking.

History

Early history

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, notebooks were often made by hand at home by drawing on them into gatherings that were then bound at a later date. The pages were blank and every notekeeper had to make ruled lines across the paper. Making and keeping notebooks was such an important information-management technique that children learned its skills in school.

Legal pad

According to a legend, Thomas W. Holley of

Holyoke, Massachusetts Holyoke is a city in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States, that lies between the western bank of the Connecticut River and the Mount Tom Range. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 38,238. Located north of Springfield ...

, invented the legal pad around the year 1888 when he innovated the idea to collect all the sortings, various sorts of sub-standard paper scraps from various factories, and stitch them together in order to sell them as pads at an affordable and fair price. In about 1900, the latter then evolved into the modern, traditionally yellow legal pad when a local judge requested for a margin to be drawn on the left side of the paper. This was the first legal pad. The only technical requirement for this type of stationery to be considered a true "legal pad" is that it must have margins of 1.25 inches (3.17 centimeters) from the left edge. Here, the margin, also known as down lines, is room used to write notes or comments. Legal pads usually have a gum binding at the top instead of a spiral or stitched binding. In 1902, J.A. Birchall of