[dan-robertson]

For a slightly contrarian opinion: I just use printer-paper (for a laser printer). It works fine with ballpoint or fountain pens (some notebook papers don’t work well with fountain pens and people think they need special expensive paper). Obviously it doesn’t come in a neat book. I just used plastic document sleeves for the first level of organisation (one could then view more than two pages at once too) and box files for the second, though it wasn’t very necessary. I don’t have much to write and record these days.

I currently use paper for free-form drawings or diagrams for work as photographing a paper drawing is the most efficient process I currently have for getting such diagrams into emails/our wiki.

[woolion]

I'm a big fan of Feng Zhu, and he often recalls asking his class "how many of you have a Moleskine notebook? Almost all raise hands. How many of you have filled them? And almost nobody raise their hands. So, just take a stack of printer paper, staple it, and that will be your notebook". With great paper comes great expectations, and that prevents you from using it. I was gifted a Moleskine notebook, tried to make a drawing on one page, it was pretty bad, and I never opened it again. I got the cheapest work notebook, and I actually filled it with great city drawings during my travels, interspersed with some ideas about probabilistic descriptive complexity and other stuff I was working on.

[kixiQu]

I also use laser paper for my fountain pen scratch stuff! The premium laser stuff has a nice enough surface, but it's quite thick/heavy once you get multiple sheets together. The benefit for the special expensive paper is that you can have the same nice usable writing surface, but many, many, many more sheets in something thin and light enough to carry around (as in a notebook) or mail (as in letter paper). One big difference between Japanese and non-Asian paper cultures that I've found is that there's much less loyalty in Japan to the [brick-like codex aesthetic], so there's more design consideration placed into keeping things convenient to carry around -- textbooks split into thin volumes, notebooks tending toward copybook length even when of luxurious quality, etc. (Also may have something to do with diff. writing system facilitating info density on pages, etc. but that would need more expertise to weigh in on) If you're working at a desk, all that doesn't matter, and it sounds like you have a great system for your setup.

[brick-like codex aesthetic]: https://www.nerdforge.academy/fantasy-bookbinding-course , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_Wor...

[feffe]

My experience with laser printer paper is that it does not work well with most fountain pen inks. Although I acknowledge that there may be some that do, there are lots of paper manufacturers after all.. I've found plenty of cheap spiral bound notepad paper that does work well though. You just have to try it out and see what works. Paper can't be to absorbent or the ink will spread out.

[dan-robertson]

I find most laser printer paper is not particularly absorbent. But it may depend on how fine we prefer to write compared to each other.

[dubya]

I mostly agree. I use cheap paper at home, but my work recently switched suppliers and the new stuff is fine for printing, but bleeds terribly with liquid ink pens. Comes in plain white wrapper so I'm assuming it's pretty cheap.