Earl and I are paper people. He owned a printing company for years, mostly before online publishing came to prominence. And I was a freelance writer whose clients wanted someone to make their words read well.
All of this is ancient history, except . . .
“Hey,” I said to Earl a few mornings ago. “Have you noticed the toilet paper we bought doesn’t perf right?”
“I sure have, “ he said, not skipping a beat. ”The perf machine needs to be sharpened.”
Perhaps we’re the only two people in the universe who would live together and notice the same thing. It’s because we’re paper people. We know about bleeds and margins and binding . . . and perfs.
“Perf” is an abbreviation for perforated. It’s that printing step where something you want to tear from a toilet paper roll, a coupon, or a reimbursement check pulls away easily from the rest of whatever it’s attached to. If a client wants something “perfed,” there’s extra money involved. But it does make for a more attractive product.
If you’ve ever tried to tear something from a piece of paper that isn’t perfed, you know how that turns out. A scissors is usually helpful. Of course, in the world of online communication, maybe perforation isn’t so important.
I bet you’ve probably never thought about this before.
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