A simple but gorgeous idea by designer sherwood Forlee: die-cut pads of paper, the corners of which can be easily folded over to staplelessly stick them together. I wish someone would actually start selling pads like this.
A little bit of college ruled genius [Yanko Design]
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It’d be even cooler to sell a paper-punch that cut paper corners so they could do this. It’d be a lot cheaper in the long run.
There are MANY “stapleless staplers” for sale:
http://www.google.com/products?q=stapleless+stapler&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&resnum=1&ct=title
http://www.google.com/search?q=Stapless+Stapler&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:it:official&client=firefox-a
I think it was my fourth grade math teacher that tought us how to do this. A fold, A tear, another fold, —> ‘stapled’!
So actually, you can do this perfectly well yourself without needing special paper or a special paper punch. I have students do it all the time when handing in homework.
It falls apart every single time. I’m considering refusing to accept homework that is stapled this way.
The punch works great for thinner sheaves. I have one, and nothing’s ever fallen apart.
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/8b70/
Very neat (and not new), but why the hatred toward staples? I work in an office and they, along with paperclips and Acco binderclips, are the defacto standard. This method doesn’t lend itself to easy removal (or replacement) of inner sheets.
Just three corners away from making it into a Battlestar Galactica prop!
@5, according to you (“It falls apart every single time”) you can’t “do this perfectly well without needing special paper or a punch.” On the other hand, I have used one of the punches – it does work perfectly well. Relatively small stacks hold together very nicely.
I own the staple-free stapler linked in posts 2, 3 and 6 — I find it’s good for up to a five-page stack, max, and if you attempt to overload it will jam horribly in a manner that can only be fixed by disassembling the thing.
I might be interested in a punch that would cut this diagonal slot, but if I’m going to buy a device like that, seriously, why not a stapler?
A die-cut pad would be great though! Might not be able to do more than five pages either, but at least it can’t jam …
This is entirely reminiscent of my Speech & Debate Teacher’s (I’m a HS Senior in ND) “Beulah Staple”, named after his hometown (I’m quite sure this is not where the technique originated, but it is how he passes it on, as a reflection of the similarities between the relative crudeness of both the town of Beulah, ND and its ‘respective’ staple). This low-tech technique involves dog-earing the papers together, tearing the dog-ear at a 45-degree angle, and folding and creasing each half-ear over in opposite directions. It works rather well for something so simple!
~Geophrix
When my students do this sort of thing, I refer to it as “Cornergami”, and I have taken to explicitly forbidding it on my syllabi. Yes it’s fine if you have a small stack of papers of your own that you want to hold together, but if you have 25 assignments that you have to move from place to place, and leaf through to grade… these sorts of “creative” stapling solutions are just maddening.