Notebooks used for drawing and scrapbooking are usually blank. A page perforated for a disc-bound binding system contains a row of teeth along the side edge of the page that grip onto the outside raised perimeter of individual discs. Disc-bound notebooks remove the open or closed operation by modifying the pages themselves. In the closed position, the pages are kept in order. In the open position, the pages can be removed and rearranged. Ring-bound and rod-bound notebooks secure their contents by threading perforated pages around straight or curved prongs. In each of these systems, the pages are modified with perforations that facilitate the specific binding mechanism's ability to secure them. Variations of notebooks that allow pages to be added, removed, and replaced are bound by rings, rods, or discs. Some styles of sewn bindings allow pages to open flat, while others cause the pages to drape. Hard-bound notebooks include a sewn spine, and the pages are not easily removed. Spiral-bound pages can be torn out, but frequently leave thin scraggly strips from the small amount of paper that is within the spiral, as well as an uneven rip along the top of the torn-out page. Other bound notebooks are available that use glue to hold the pages together this process is 'padding.' Today, it is common for pages in such notebooks to include a thin line of perforations that make it easier to tear out the page. It is frequently cheaper to purchase notebooks that are spiral-bound, meaning that a spiral of wire is looped through large perforations at the top or side of the page. As a solution, he glued together a stack of halved sheets of paper, supported by a sheet of cardboard, creating what he called the 'Silver City Writing Tablet'. Birchall of Birchalls, a Launceston, Tasmania, Australia-based stationery shop, decided that the cumbersome method of selling writing paper in folded stacks of 'quires' (four sheets of paper or parchment folded to form eight leaves) was inefficient. Legal pads usually have a gum binding at the top instead of a spiral or stitched binding. Here, the margin, also known as down lines, is room used to write notes or comments. The only technical requirement for this type of stationery to be considered a true 'legal pad' is that it must have margins of 1.25В inches (3.17 centimeters) from the left edge.

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. Holley of Holyoke, Massachusetts, 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.

Spiral bound notebook