Editing The Pen Addict 4/transcript (section)

== Paper ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' So, my pilot prayer is not the main topic of the show, even though we've spoken about it for 10 minutes. So, what are we going to talk about today?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Well, aside from your complete deep dive into pen addiction, I think you're well on your way. I think today, I think we're going to cover some paper topics. People have been writing in wanting to know what type of papers I use, what type of papers you use, what's good, what's not so good, and things like that. So, what do you think? I think we'll cover a little bit of paper today.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Sounds great. All right. So, how are we going to kick this one off?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Let's kick this off with a little bit of terminology, and this kind of goes along with the glossary stuff. And I don't want to spend too much time on this because while the weight and the feel of the paper does matter and it is something to consider, I want to talk more about the brands and the things we use and why we use them. But I do want to get a couple of the small things out of the way. On lots of paper, you'll see either standard copy paper or your nice notebooks that you buy, like a Moleskine or a Rhodey or things like that. You'll see some weight measurements or density measurements. Most of the non-U.S. brands will use grams or grams per square meter. So, you'll see like an ADG paper or an ADGSM paper. And what that is, that's an actual density measurement. The GSM is grams per square meter. So, it's a measurement of density. I don't want to say how thick the paper is because there's an actual another measurement called caliper, which I won't even get to at all. But you can, the basic way to think about this is if you take, if you see a paper is ADG, that's your kind of your baseline standard paper, copy paper, notebook paper, just kind of your everyday paper that you'll see anywhere. It's going to be around that weight. And then the number, as it increases, it's going to be heavier or thicker of a page, a more dense paper. Now, that translates the U.S. as we like to do. We take every system and we muck it up into our own, right? So, instead of grams over here, we'll use pounds. So, you're saying the same 80-gram paper that you'll see is approximately a 20-pound paper here. And that's called, they use a measurement called basis weight. And that, I'm not even going to go into that because it's very convoluted on how they determine that. And I'm bored reading about it and learning about it. Just know that in general terms, the lower your number, either grams or pounds, the less dense the paper is going to be. And so, like 20 or 24-pound is your standard U.S. copy paper. And then you can move all the way up to, I mean, there's some very thick papers. But like a cover stock, say like on your field notes, there's a cover stock that could be like a 100-pound or 120-pound cover stock.

'''Myke Hurley:''' That's not even paper at that point.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's a really small card. No. So, it's just the way they measure. It's just the way to give you a guideline so you know how thick it is. Generally, the higher the number, the more dense it is. But you will find, if you look at all these charts you can find online, you can find that a certain type of 90-pound might be a little less dense than an 80-pound paper. But it's picked for our everyday use. You just need to know what you like and what feels good for you. But I wanted to cover that because I get asked that from time to time. And you know what? Every time I get asked that, I usually have to look it up. But it's not a very intuitive system.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I think probably the main thing somebody needs to take away is the thicker you want your paper to be or the better quality you want it to feel, the higher the number you want.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Right. Right. Yeah. Right. And that's not a hard, fast rule, but that's a good general rule. Yeah. Right. So, aside from that, I like to talk about how smooth or rough the paper has. And that's generally referred to as the tooth of the page. Is it smooth to the touch? Can you feel it? Any kind of – you'll see some linen paper. Like, I know it was popular. I don't think anymore. But when you used to make your resume 10 years ago, you'd get this nice linen paper to print out your – on the dot matrix printer to use. The real good stuff. Yeah. But what that does is – it's really specialty type paper because there's going to be a lot of feedback when you write. And what it's designed for if you're an artist or doing sketching or drawing or any type of work like that, when you're using your heavier materials like a charcoal or things like that, it's going to attach to the paper much better than a smooth type paper. Cool. So, if you hear me talk about how smooth or rough the paper is, that's generally what you're going to see. A lot of sketch paper, thick sketch paper. Some of it will be smooth and some of it will be – have more tooth. The day-to-day paper that you and I and most of our listeners use is really going to be generally smooth. All right. Cool. So, those kind of cover those basics. Now, we get into what I like to talk about, and that's what types of paper we use and I use and why we choose certain things and why you might prefer certain things that don't work for me. And let's start with just the page format itself. You know, there's – the general terms that all of us use when we're getting out a notebook or a journal to write in will say, do you have a blank page? Do you use a blank page with nothing on the pages? Is it lined with just horizontal lines across the page? Is it a grid or a graph pattern? There's different measurements of the squares on the page. Is it – nowadays, there's dot paper. And then there's even special consideration paper, like one of my personal favorites, Dome Paper, is a grid and line system. There's a Kokuyo brand that uses lines and dots. And for all you Dungeon and Dragon nerds out there, there's hexagonal paper. So, there's lots of special uses of paper. I know you're – generally speaking, I know I've heard you talk about you have a moleskin that you use and you have a field notes that you use. So, what – field notes are all – or not all of them, but the majority of them are gridded. So, what's in your moleskin?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Plain.