The perfect notepad...

as it turns out, is very hard to find!

*disclaimer – we are in no way sponsored for the notepads recommended below

An interpreter and their notepad is a real love story, you might go through any number of notepads but when you find THE ONE you’ll never look back. Since moving to Paris I’ve been suffering from the loss of THE ONE.

Let’s start with what I look for in a notepad – it has to be bound at the top, preferably ring bound but I can make do without that as long as the pages won’t tear off if you are writing really fast for consecutive. Another key thing for me are the lines – or lack of. I have a mental block with lined notepads, and don’t get me started on squared ones! Also, I like my notepad to be a good size – A5 is just right, A4 would be too big to be portable and held in the hand. Then finally, if I can get paper that’s not too thin then the notepad is perfect. We also need to consider the price of the notepad, I can easily get through a couple of notepads a week if I’m doing a lot of consecutive (and let’s face it I have really big handwriting!) so I don’t want to spend a fortune on notepads either.

In the UK during my Master’s I went through a lot of different notepads to find this above combination that works for me, smaller than A5, A4, lined, squared, top bound, ring bound and at one point I even made my own notepads. Then, one day, I found THE ONE…

The Wilko plain writing pad at only £1 per notepad. I will admit that I may have bought the entire stock of my local Wilko’s on several occasions – if only this was ring bound then it would truly be a match made in heaven. Considering the price, this is definitely THE ONE (at least so far!)

In France it took me two weeks to find something I would consider suitable but the issue remains the price point – at €2.79 per notepad (for 90 sheets at 80gsm) this is the closest thing I could find to my favourite notepad shown above. I do like the fact that it is ring-bound however the price is putting me off a little. Available from Cultura:

Considering the above I have decided to opt for one of the two following solutions – also in the interests of the environment as I would really like to recycle paper too.

Option 1 (inspired by Tala Noujeim) – the A5 clipboard available here:

Advantages: you can use the other side of waste paper, attractive, solid back for taking notes in different situations

Disadvantages: harder to flip pages over as no binding, you need to chop up paper quite regularly to refill clipboard, not as transportable as a notepad (also in terms of spare notepads)

Option 2 – revert to homemade notepads:

Advantages: you can use the other side of waste paper too, customisable, ring bound, transportable, you can take a spare with you

Disadvantages: you really want to buy/locate a paper cutter that you can use as it is quite time consuming to chop all the paper / can look messy if paper is not cut straight, book rings can be hard to come by depending where you live – I order mine online from the UK

These solutions are very personal as they suit my requirements as an interpreter, so perhaps you have a different solution.

Miruna prefers an A5 report style notepad and dreams of finding one with a line pre-drawn down the middle of the paper!

Lara sticks to her trusty square ruled Pignastyl A4 notepads with a line drawn down the middle that her mum ships her from Italy!

Perhaps I will take a leaf out of Lara’s book and get my parents to ship me a box of Wilko notepads if I decide not to use one of the two options above!

For information about options using technology then check out my post here.

What notepads do you use? Have you found THE ONE? Share your thoughts with us by getting in touch – we’d love to know what solutions you have adapted to your needs as an interpreter.