A margin built entirely of holes

A dot-matrix printer found in a warehouse office, still plugged in, still loaded with green-bar paper from a run that finished eleven years ago, offers the clearest specimen: a continuous sheet strung through two sprocket wheels by rows of holes spaced exactly half an inch apart, each hole engaged by a small plastic pin that advances the page one line at a time with a sound like a typewriter having second thoughts. The perforated margin exists purely for the machine's benefit; it carries no information for the reader and is torn off and discarded the moment the page separates from its neighbors, along the second perforation set a quarter inch in from the holes themselves, scored just deep enough to tear clean under a straight edge and a firm hand. Measured closely, the holes run a consistent 0.156 inches in diameter, a specification so exact it survived, unchanged, from one manufacturer to the next for the better part of four decades. The torn strips themselves, once separated, tend to curl into loose rings and collect in the tray beneath the printer or blow off a desk entirely, at which point they become, briefly, packing material. Some offices saved them anyway, threading dozens end to end into a paper chain for no functional reason. The mechanism they served has mostly gone quiet. The holes remain precisely where they were punched, keeping a measurement nobody now needs to check.

R. Quist